Large language models (LLMs) as deployed by OpenAI, Google, Meta, IBM, and other corporations are straining our energy infrastructure, putting technical writers out of work, and sparking lawsuits over perceived infringements on intellectual property rights. To many of us, this seems like a boondoggle pushed by techno-utopian fanatics obsessed with their end-time fantasy of a Singularity. For a poet to go up against it seems quixotic, to say the least. Why engage with AI at all?
This is a fascinating question. Short answer: we are beyond choosing to not engage. The internet and social media began this way. People dismissed both as fads or flat-out refused to participate, therefore dismissing any opportunity to have a voice in how either would play a part in our lives. We allowed big tech to dictate to — and sell us (literally selling us) — these technologies, thus, both ubiquitously seeped into the fabric of daily life. Because of this, we were unable to gain any footing in the narrative (too little, too late).
Big picture: AI would not exist without humans / human intelligence. Humans created, raised, and fed it on our collective knowledge and ignorance. It seems most rational to me that poets are the sole group to claim the narrative regarding this technology (as comedians have with politics, using satire, for example). What better group than those who wield language and thought, bending both to our will in a format / form that can never be fully defined? In my view, poets (as well as visual artists and filmmakers) are the voice of humans in this space, because we continue to defy expectations and perhaps most fully represent the expanse and uniqueness of creativity. While our collective experiences are similar, our subjective ones still remain authentic to each of us. LLMs can only regurgitate what is currently available to ingest. We haven’t reached singularity nor does AI currently have the capacity to read dreams, the human mind, or individual thoughts. Poets are the gatekeepers of reminding humanity of our humanity. We speak many languages that are untranslatable by binary logic. We speak and write the human condition, what is simultaneously innate, collective, and separate. This is also a great opportunity to reclaim our space in this domain, as mentioned earlier. As Nam Jun Paik once said, “I use technology to hate it properly.”
So tell us how you set about creating your own answer to an LLM. What did that process look like? Who or what was your inspiration?
Two inspirations: co-founder of the Oulipo, Raymond Queneau, wrote A Hundred Thousand Million Poems,which consisted of ten sonnets that were then “sliced-up” to offer the reader an infinite number of new poems — contingent upon how one arranged the lines; and experimental filmmaker, Nam June Paik, who famously “uses technology to hate it properly”. It is also slightly reminiscent of the Surrealist Compliment Generator.
HALLUCINATIONS is human mimicry — and rebuke — of AI “hallucinations” (irony abounds as hallucinations are an intrinsically human experience, and for AI, an LLM in recursion is ultimately unable to emulate humans). It is simultaneously a book, a collective digital project, and video poems. I invite collaborators to send poems with the intention of adding to the LLM (Lina Language Model), ultimately fostering poetic community and exemplifying that humans still reign in poetic originality.
It began with three poems which spun up into 48 variations. The new poems / versions shape-shift and take different forms, as they would after being repeatedly fed through an LLM. Binary number titles are used to help democratize the content, helping readers focus more on the poems (less on titles) helping to build a more collaborative, collective unconscious mindset.
Exact Method:
Using one prompt in an LLM to engage in a “hallucinatory” brainstorm, I began generating original, new poems. The poems are each labeled by a binary number / code and leverage literary devices such as repetition and juxtaposition.
Poems became extensions of one another, as they are “unplugged” and “replugged” in randomly to create new poems (reminiscent of neural networks, fibre optics, 20th c. switchboard cords, etc.)
Italicized commentary throughout the poems echo the type of feedback language that some LLMs now ask of users — very similar to reviews or surveys online (i.e. “how did we do?”) I use these spaces to inhabit the voice of the LLM, attempting to emulate a “mechanical grief” (perhaps the desperate lament of machines longing to be human?)
What did you make of Google’s decision to name their LLM for video generation VideoPoet? It’s as if they’ve read the manifesto on your project’s website, and decided that, as you put it, “hallucinations are poetry”!
We can hardly call what they are showcasing on their capability reels poetry (PIXAR raccoons swimming and going to the Eiffel Tower, cute teddy bears playing drums, weird bear-owl hybrids on a branch roaring, or pastel paint blobs exploding, etc.)
For my video poems, I source archived and public domain footage (as well as free download stock) but I create my own pieces / footage from those foundations. I use filters, editing tools, even my own collage pieces (print and digital) to mix it up.
I think it is another great example of how technology can flatten creativity, but I’m sure it will progress beyond cartoon animals doing “funny” human stuff in a few years. I’m still hoping this type of banality goes away and they actually start using AI to help people and the environment (healthcare, climate change).
Has this project affected the way you approach or compose videopoetry, or poetry in general? I’m wondering whether, for example, it’s changed how you view authorship, or the relationship between the writer and the work…
I approach all of my video poetry projects differently, so this was actually borne out of conversations being had at my current day job (workplace) about protocols to integrate AI into our workflows.
Humans can properly hallucinate, meaning there is even some value in when we cerebrally hit a wall. Friction is good for creativity. When a machine hits a wall, it becomes redundant (dual meaning). Or it can destroy everything. I guess one could argue that humans could do the same, but we also have decision-making ability and free will.
Poetically I think recursion is interesting if only for what creative iterations are generated.
The exercise of doing this particular project hasn’t changed the way that I would compose or create video poems, no. I think we are at an interesting inflection point in general, however: do we symbiotically incorporate this technology into everything we do, or, are we more selective as humans as to how we can help us?
I still think that there is much to be discussed publicly around the ethics and repercussions of using AI / LLMs in creative spaces. I personally think creatives should be vigilant and wary. Verify then trust. Play but don’t publish. It can help, but not fully take on creator roles. It’s a tool, not an entity.
The five videopoems you’ve shared online from the project so far certainly flow into one another, drawing on a common vocabulary of sounds and images, almost like stanzas in a larger poem. Is that how you think of them? I gather you’re working toward an anthology or collection. What form(s) do you anticipate that will take?
There are currently 48 poems in a limited edition chapbook (contact Gagnè Contemporary to purchase), all of them iterations of 1-3 original poems spun from one LLM prompt: “write a long form essay about how AI and creativity coexist”.
The next phase of this larger, collaborative project is up to you, the people, my fellow humans. Become part of the HALLUCINATION project by submitting your own poems to the Lina Language Model at hallucinations.me.
Once again, this August, we gathered in Drumshanbo to screen our 18 shortlisted films. It was a miserable Friday evening and we could hear the driving rain cascade off the roof and hammer down the drain pipes of The Old Mayflower Ballroom, a thousand miles away from the baking sunshine, open doors, and coffee stand days of the two previous years. Still, the people came and Willie, along with his faithful dog, worked his technical magic, setting up screen and sound so we could cozy down to two hours of entertainment and prize giving.
This year we were chuffed to have 175 entries from 21 countries worldwide, with a huge sweep of talent present from established film makers and new names. As I said at my intro I could have easily chosen a totally different 18 and they would have been just as good. However in the spirit of eclecticism and inclusiveness I chose films from a myriad of styles and practices. The result, I think, was a selection where everyone in the crowd found something to enjoy.
Still image from Bakers Son by Patrick Gamble
We had humour and slapstick comedy from Australia’s Patrick Gamble with Bakers Son. We had black humour and collage animation from the US with Michael Mitchell’s Resume (an account of Dorothy Parkers famous poem about suicide). It was very gratifying to be able to show Finn Harvor’s excellent elegy of his late father, which contained humour and pathos in equal measure. People were very taken with the rhythms and musicality of Kenneth Karthik’s Punjabi Market from Canada. The subtle message about sexuality and how different communities and cultures adapt to a changing world really struck home. Barry Hollow’s Cap-cut created-struggles of life-piece was touching, and it was wonderful to hear the Scots of his childhood. I must say it reminded me very much of Burns with his ‘many a slip twixt cup and lip’. Eileen and her crew provided half time refreshments, wine and nibbles, then we returned to more great films.
Still from Resume by Michael Mitchell
At the end we introduced the poets/filmmakers who had travelled. Mary Guckian, from just over the road (the first lady of Leitrim Poetry) spoke of how Eamon De Burca adapted her poem Night Time, a tale of childhood memories. His two daughters starred and chose their own dresses. It was a realistic interpretation, but the subtle film work and touching reminiscences made it very satisfying.
Tara Luger and Julia Galley from Vienna and Freiburg traveled specially for the event. They made their film as part of an Erasmus module assignment while studying in Belgium. The narration was in Japanese and the narrative had us thinking all sorts of things until the final twist explained everything. Houseplants has to be watched to be appreciated. They regaled us later in the pub with stories of their Irish connections.
Csilla Toldy, a well known poetry film maker and lecturer, came south and explained to us the story of Jewish Lithuanian poetess Matilda Olkinaite (My Dear Idealist). Csilla’s use of refrain, overlay, historical images and aged modern footage created a haunting space in which to relay the poignant poetry of the victim of Nazism.
Anne MacDonald spoke emotionally of her own mother, who was the subject of the short animated piece, Crows’ Books. Animated by her niece (Kate Hanlon—away in Australia) it was very much a family affair.
Ceara Carney, actor and tour guide, came from Dublin. There were fewer environmentally driven films submitted this year, I hope that is not a symptom of climate change fatigue. Ceara’s film Residents of 49 represented the cause well, her spoken-word mastery energising with rhyme the beautifully filmed (on super 8) goings on of nature in her back garden.
There were other great films, such as Olaf Boqwist’s Pained Flowers/Printed Leaves from Germany, Jane Glennie and James Kenward’s Dark, Mersolis Shone’s Repeat from Austria, Andre Chiaradi’s My Son, Diek Grobler’s – I haven’t told my garden yet, Brent Walbilligs – Ad Hominem from Canada, a film of post imperial introspection.
But there had to be winners, and Eileen O’Toole, our Chairperson, awarded, in absentia, a lovely set of handmade Drumshanbo pottery to Marcella O’Connor from Kerry, for Best Irish Poetry Film. Her film, Night Drags, touched me. It was an interpretation of a poem by Aogán O’Rathaille (the Gaelic Bard of the 17th Century). I am forever intrigued by old Ireland and this piece, filmed so beautifully around the west coast, capturing rutting stags in Killarney and keening heard of seals on a Blasket beach, seemed to reach deep into the past to that time of desolation and dispossession. Also it was nice to have an Irish language poem in the set.
Still from Blink Once by Jim Haverkamp
But our winner, this year for the first time from outside of Ireland, was Jim Haverkamp’s Blink Once. A film he made when paired with the fine American poet, Karin Gottshall as part of the Filmetry Project in Michigan. Jim gave us his acceptance speech via video, humouring us with his jibes about Jameson Whiskey while explaining how he made the film by combining the discovery of an old book about metal detecting with Karin’s poem of childhood memory. Many people asked me why I picked it. Put simply, it worked for me. It brought the magic out. The magic of the poem, the magic of the story. It’s all the little things that make it work. The old-style, low-definition camera work, the stark colours (blue, brown, white). The pacing and dramatic intent in the narrator’s voice. The lack of connection between the visual and the words, and yet paradoxically, the perfect symmetry between them. And of course the perfect words; words about gender, sexuality maybe, or just about dreaming and hope, longing. Whatever it was, it was beautiful.
Book Cover for PoemFilm Edition’s new anthology. Cover image features the painting, “Huapango Torero,” by Ana Segovia.
The book is a multimedia, bilingual collection of poems accompanied by QR codes linking to streaming videopoems. Acclaimed poetry filmmaker Csilla Toldy also contributed her expertise to the project as co-director of Poem Film Editions. Featuring the work of 22 poets and filmmakers, these texts and films are mostly inspired by the painting, “Huapango Torero” by contemporary nonbinary Mexican artist Ana Segovia. The book is the first release from PoemFilm Editions, Tremlett’s new publishing platform dedicated to the art of poetry film. Additionally, a Spanish edition of the book (with additional text) is coming out in November, published by Chamán Ediciones, and will be launched at the upcoming MALDITO Videopoetry Festival in Albacete.
Film still from Meriel Lland, “A Love Spell Cast in Petals/Un hechizo de amor hecho con pétalos,” winner of the Frame to Frames II Ekphrastic Poetry Prize (2023)
Tremlett’s Frame to Frames II call for ekphrastic poetryfilms was part of a curated program for the 2023 FOTOGENIA Film Poetry & Divergent Narratives Festival in Mexico City. It was an invitation for the creation of new videopoems with Segovia’s painting serving as the point of inspiration. The painting, vivid in color and emotional tone, is a response to the gendered politics of machismo and the animal welfare concerns of bullfighting practices. Since FOTOGENIA, the collection of videopoems has been traveling the festival circuit, with selections screening at the 9th Weimar Poetry Filmtage in April 2024 and REELpoetry 2023.
There is also a bilingual documentary (made for REELpoetry 2024) on the making of the Frame to Frames II project with five of the videopoem artists. The doc is available for viewing here: https://vimeo.com/929116208.
What makes this collection so unique, besides the QR code-based format, is its emphasis on the ekphrastic videopoem. According to the Poetry Foundation, ekphrasis translates to “description” in Greek. Ekphrastic poetry embodies the “imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the ‘action’ of a painting or sculpture… the poet may amplify and expand its meaning” (322). The videopoems featured in Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow II/Cuadro a Cuadros : Tus Ojos Siguen II (ekphrastic poetry + films/cine + poesía ecfrástica) do just that. Just as Ana Segovia’s painting, “Huapango Torero,” serves as a filmmaker’s portal for new meanings, this anthology is likewise a portal as the reader is encouraged to move seamlessly between the page and streaming online content via QR codes. Not only is this collection truly innovative and collaborative in spirit, taken as a whole, the book reaffirms the contemporary relevance and ever-evolving nature of the ekphrastic as creative incitement and provocation. And while a curated program for a poetry film fest might be ephemeral or inaccessible for those not in attendance, this anthology brings the poetry film festival directly to the reader in a way that hasn’t quite been done before. The Spanish translations by Camilo Bosso also allow for transnational and transcultural dialogues between artists, poets, and filmmakers.
Although this new anthology is a testament to the collaborative spirit that has become the hallmark of the videopoetry community, the project was ultimately spearheaded by poet, filmmaker, and videopoem theorist Sarah Tremlett. Sarah is quite active in the contemporary poetry filmmaking world, known widely for her organization and online platform Liberated Words CIC. Described by Karina Karaeva as a “visual philosopher,” Sarah’s original videopoems have taken top honors at poetry film festivals around the world, and she has also served as jury member and judge for such festivals as REELpoetry and LYRA, among others. She is the author of the seminal study, The Poetics of Poetry Film: Film Poetry, Videopoetry, Lyric Voice, Reflection (2021, Intellect: University of Chicago Press), which includes the voices of over 40 contributors. Described as an encyclopedic and rigorous investigation of the genre, the book is a one-of-a-kind exploration of videopoetry’s formal characteristics framed by the lyric voice. I recently had the opportunity to exchange some thoughts on ekphrastic videopoetry and the new anthology with Sarah, which are excerpted below. Segments of the following interview draw from her scholarship in ThePoetics of Poetry Film as well as her own creative process and years of poetry filmmaking experience.
Collage of film stills from Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow II
PK: Do you consider the ekphrastic poetryfilms featured in the new anthology to be adaptations of Segovia’s painting? Or are they something more? Why or why not?
ST: Before focusing specifically on ekphrastic poetry films, in their construction, poetry films can exhibit many types of (often app-based) adaptation: where still photographs become animated or coloured and layered with other photographs; a musical score that is remixed; a poem where the lines are altered to fit the film; a montage of many sources combined to create a single film; a drawing that is layered into another time and place. You could argue poetry film is adaptation. Others take a postmodernist stance arguing that all is intertextual, a continuous flow of material reinventing itself.
Ekphrasis itself can be argued to be happening in many poetry films themselves. Every filmmaker who selects a poem by a poet to develop it in their own way can probably be considered to be committing ‘reverse ekphrasis’, though often not deliberately.
The importance of the relationship between the original artist and their respondee in the ekphrastic work sets it apart from other types of adaptation. The central point is that the second artwork is a reply that implies co-existence of perspectives (however abstracted) and also if reimagining, rather than directly representing, extends the original to create a ‘between’ space with its own characteristics. As I write this, I am reminded of the reverse ekphrastic response a filmmaker might make to a poem by another poet, too. Meriel Lland, filmmaker of the winning Frame to Frames film A Love Spell Cast in Petals, also emphasised how she had thoroughly researched the subject, and she felt she was in dialogue with the artist through her response, and I think this is something that is important to remember.
Film still from, “Self Portrait with a Line from Lorca/Autorretrato con una cita de Lorca,” by Janet Lees (filmmaker), based on a poem by Lois P. Jones & Elena K. Byrne
PK: In The Poetics of Poetry Film, you write, “Quite often the poetry film is realized as it is written: poem, then film, with soundscape design completing the picture; but of course, life is rarely this compartmentalized” (40). How does the ekphrastic encourage the liberation from compartmentalization within the creative process? And what are some of the ways in which the poetryfilms in the new anthology “resist the representational” or embody the “the brilliance of intensional, unique symbols” (5)?
ST: I am not sure that I can definitively answer it does, but here are some thoughts. It was you, Patricia, who noted that you wouldn’t have made your ekphrastic poetry film without this ekphrastic prompt and maybe counter intuitively, that is one way to create liberation from a particular personal approach. Since you are also an auteur poetry filmmaker, standing outside your comfort zone and eliciting something unknown from inside could be really important for you to develop your practice
As mentioned, the ekphrastic poem is somehow (to varying degrees) a ‘co-existence of perspectives’ (Cunningham, 2011). If you are a poet who usually collaborates with the same filmmaker, the terms have altered. The original context, voice and subject matter of the source artist have firstly entered the thought processes of the poet, and secondly cannot help but suggest a different type of dialogue between poet and filmmaker, maybe as if a third voice is present, an inclusion of ‘other’? Ultimately, the source artist has to be taken care of in some way, accorded a position, directly or indirectly; by reference or inference. There is also the aspect of the different types of source that might liberate new approaches and thinking: whilst many worked to paintings, Martin Sercombe with poet Thom Conroy chose an AI artwork and Javier Robledo an Argentinian visual poem. So, yes, actually I do think ekphrasis does liberate the artist from a standard practice into unknown territories.
The festival painting (Huapango Torero by non-binary Mexican artist Ana Segovia) is wholly representational, and was selected by over half the artists in the book. This painting where a boy holds a flower up to a bull, is a call to end animal cruelty, machismo and bullfighting. It revises an original work where boys used to go into bulls’ fields at night to practice bullfighting. The highly political subject of animal cruelty though, on the one hand encouraged the visual depiction of animals – the bull – but on the other, an unwillingness to show the gory details, the actual killing, the bloodshed. Filmmakers chose different ways to negotiate this.
Film still from “Sensurious/Sensoriales” by Ian Gibbins (poet/filmmaker) featuring drawings by Judy Morris
In It Ain’t Wot it Seems, Penny Florence adapted direct images from Segovia’s painting that became layered with each other, alongside the bilingual, moving text of the visual poem (also a visual poem on the page).
The winning film, A Love Spell Cast in Petals, by Meriel Lland was many layered and directly representational, including images of bulls, a carving of a bull, and a powerful poem that confronts the subject with depth and emotional strength; a call for change – an end to cruelty to animals.
Janet Lees found the painting too complex to work to, and so based her film on the extraordinary poem ‘Self Portrait with a Line from Lorca’ by Elena K. Byrne and Lois P. Jones which was based on the painting Huapango Torero. Whilst she included some images of toreadors, the main subject matter was a Mexican dancer in slow motion, which the poets viewed as a feminist parallel in rhythm to the toreador’s movements with his cape. This revisioning can be seen as a filmic intensional undoing of the performative machismo of death and killing through celebratory joy and the feminine.
Film still from “Huapango Torero” by Beate Gördes
In Huapango Torero, Jack Cochran and Pamela Falkenberg created an ekphrastic animation of Segovia’s work… as they say “in an intertextual way.” Ideas flow and reinvent each other, a poem is influenced by another poem, and a song, or Ana Segovia’s paintings reappear in different locations and guises in the narrative.
In A New History, your film, Patricia, is about ending cruel stereotypes and a new beginning towards animal-human relationships. You talk to the boy in the painting; and the really meaningful and beautiful line ‘as the hoof takes the hand to show us all another way’ ending with ‘not every dance must end in death … a new history awakens.’ Here the painting is visible in your poem but not in the film at all. It is a reverse ekphrastic transfer via text alone.
Beate Gördes based her images directly on the bull but there was no verbal poem at all.
In Crystal Flower Carlos Ramirez Kobra from Mexico made a film that included images of bulls but associated the poem with the death of his mother and her village home.
Film still from “Night is Paper/La noche es papel,” by Martin Sercombe (filmmaker, poet) and Thom Conroy (poet)
Alejandro Thornton from Argentina focused on the title Huapango Torero and filmed a dancer’s bare feet stamping out the Huapango dance, whilst the words Resist / Exist appear in coloured smoke, but no bull in sight.
My own performative poetry film includes a mime artist who is both man and bull at one and the same time, to show how little difference there is between us, and how if you taunt a man he will react just the same as a bull. The mime artist was made up with a curly moustache (echoing bull’s horns) and accompanied by silhouettes of the shapes they made in performing, which appear bull-like. The poem is an Italian sonnet in two halves; in the first the man is full of his own importance, and in the second half this is dissolved by the arrival of a fly. The Spanish voiceover and the music tell the narrative very clearly, of the fate of the bull, but we don’t actually see one at all.
Film still from “Bull/Toro” by Sarah Tremlett
Finn Harvor was inspired by Huapango Torero but only in terms of an association between the hot summers in both Mexico and Korea. His film focused on the South Korean landscape and the sun, without referencing the narrative in the painting at all.
Of the artists who chose their own artwork, some were directly representational as in Colm Scully’s Interior Group Portrait of the Penrose Family which was exactly that, and the poem affords a deeper look into their lives through touching on actual events; or Tova Beck Friedman’s The Fall of Lilith painted by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Collier, where Beck-Friedman examines with a feminist critique a deeply patriarchal approach to narrative
Ian Gibbins responded to Judy Morris’ illustrations of plants, where, after each Latin name of a plant a stream of consciousness description erupts that expands across numerous associations, and I feel is truly intensional.
Csilla Toldy’s poem ‘This Yard’ was a response to another poet and their poem, as she says in a double ekphrastic process.
PK: You have asserted that “Poetry film-making is largely attuned to and in a philosophical dialogue with the world” (323) and can “create radical change for humanity and the planet” (322). How does this new anthology contribute to that philosophical dialogue or create change?
ST: In general, since the rise of digital media and the Internet, the chance for different voices to speak out has emerged, through genres such as poetry film. And these voices have only grown, year by year. Unfortunately for the planet, the environment has become a central issue, and the poetry film community worldwide is voicing its distress. For me, organizing poetry film events and or publishing books means I can share these voices, and particularly encourage a diverse lens.
Collage of film stills from Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow II
PK: What were some of the unique challenges or revelations that arose during the completion of this first publication from PoemFilm Imprints?
ST: I knew that asking artists to create work that tries to offer ideas for political change would be difficult, especially coming from left field, but I feel that the responses were extraordinary, brave and memorable. The question is – how to create an artwork that speaks to us both politically but also creatively, reflectively and aesthetically without making us turn away, or reject the work for other reasons, too. Every artist in this collection achieved that very difficult double act, and I applaud everyone who took part.
I have worked in publishing on and off for many years, so I knew what I had to do in terms of production, editing, proofreading, paper selection etc. etc., and I have been curating poetry film screenings since 2012, so in general not many areas were a surprise. However, I specifically wanted it to be bilingual, to include Spanish readers, and to show the comparative musicality – euphonious or sonic patterning – rhythm, syntax etc. between the two languages. I am learning Spanish, and I had worked with translator Camilo Bosso before, and through him I discovered a lot about the language and honing the exact translations in the process. This was time-consuming but has been richly rewarding!
Maybe the biggest revelation is that although I kept thinking it was taking too long to produce, since I had announced it in December in Mexico, the fact that it only took six months, for a 116-page, bilingual anthology with links to films was amazing. If you look at academic publishers and their long schedules I feel really pleased about that.
Csilla Toldy, my co-director also has been very helpful and given great publishing advice and a second pair of eyes, which are really needed at the start of a company.
In terms of the aims of Poem Film editions, it was also essential to source an environmentally aware printer, (for the book and even bookmark); it is important to me that the books follow through in my eco credentials, and environmental beliefs.
Film still from “Crystal Flower/Flor de cristal” by Carlos Ramírez Kobra
What has also been wonderful is the reception it has had, both from contributors and readers. It is especially gratifying to hear praise first hand, as I travel around on my tour presenting the book: so far FOTOGENIA (Mexico city), REELpoetry (Houston online), Weimar (Germany), and Leeds Trinity ekphrastic symposium (UK). However, I really would like more of the contributors to come along, although many aren’t in the UK. The next one is at Bristol Literary Film Festival on October 27th.
PK: Is there anything else you’d like to share about ekphrastic videopoetry, your own creative process, or any other comments or contributions by filmmakers featured in the book?
ST: In terms of my own practice, I personally have worked with ekphrastic poetry films before, as in Villanelle for Elizabeth not Ophelia (based on the painting Ophelia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti) which takes a feminist stance against the position of the model and abuse of power, and there are others that are upcoming. My latest film Flight which is from the commissioned poetry (with images) collection The Unexhibited, due later this year, includes some fragments of my early Neo-Expressionist paintings, alongside those of the Cornish painter Peter Lanyon. The film centres on drone footage of the coast of Cornwall, and this is also a reference to Lanyon who in his later years flew a glider and made glider paintings (actually dying from a gliding accident). It also includes a reference to an ekphrastic poem I wrote ‘The (Last) Green Mile’ (based on one of his other works) in Transitional anthology by the Otter Gallery workshops, Chichester University, 2017.
Film still from “After Huapango Torero/Según el caudro Huapango Torero” by Finn Harvor
I would finally like to add something of the reality of the working process of Bull, my own poetry film response to Huapango Torero which gives an insight into a dramatic, scripted (though without dialogue) performative poetry film. I conceived the narrative and concept (and lighting), which was interpreted by my daughter Hatti aka XaiLA who is a performance and makeup/ special effects artist in LA. My other daughter Georgie directed onsite, with a script (sent by WhatsApp) by myself. Hatti has never taken on this role before, and together they interpreted what I wanted and then some, as there was the added factor of a subtle, strangely dark humour brought to the performance. It was also determined by the clothes and makeup and the small space to film in (a small studio apartment), which in some ways also added to the sense of being trapped, whilst feeling like an experimental, cabaret-style venue. I found the Spanish band Lapso Producciones whose evocative, bitter-sweet cabaret-style music fitted both parts of the Italian sonnet structure and the Spanish voiceover artist Helena Amado brought a subtle sense of delightful irony to the narrative to complete the picture. I think this film shows how each person, each creative practitioner contributed an important part of the final result.
Film still from “Huapango Torero” by Jack Cochran and Pamela Falkenberg
All the contributors have been wonderful, and supportive and view it as a unique and timely project that they are proud to be part of, so I can’t really ask for more than that. It was a leap of faith, a leap in the dark and I really had no idea that it would achieve what it has, when I think back to last summer when I began requesting films. At that stage a book hadn’t even been thought of. Looking back, I think it was the quality of the films and the poetry that inspired me to expand the concept from a prize and screening to an intermedial project. I have been told it is a first in the field and if so, I am extremely happy!
As Janet Lees mentioned in the video documentary on Frame to Frames, in poetry films the poem often passes you by, but here you can stop and pause and go back to the poems and read them in either language at your leisure. So, there is not only the comparison between the painting and films but also the comparison between the poems on the page in English and Spanish and also the poems as they appear in the films.
What I would like to say is that this project is also very different in that the ‘book’ is more than simply a book. It is a central hub with bilingual poems and explanatory synopses, and the poetry films are extensions of that, if you like, via QR link. It affords a different type of (varying chronologies) audience experience for the reader/viewer.
PK: Do you plan on organizing additional ekphrastic videopoem series in the future?
ST: You ask about more Frame to Frames events. Readers of Moving Poems can always submit ekphrastic poetry films to me. I will build a collection and it could serve for the next edition which will be down the line.
For press, further details regarding readings and screenings, or if you wish to submit ekphrastic poetry films for future events see poemfilmeditions@gmail.com.
REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2025 is open for submissions. The organizers say that “By popular demand, we’re extending the submission time to six months.” The festival will take place “online March 31- April 4; in person APRIL 5-6; with online workshops April 7-11.” They also note some other changes:
NEW! What could be better than videopoetry to engage coming generations of tech savvy youth. We’re delighted to support poets and filmmakers 18 and under at the festival with a new FREE “Young Creatives” program. If you’re a parent or a teacher, please encourage your kids to submit to this free program. See Rules & Terms for details specific to this program.
NEW IN 2025! We’re thinking about categories differently, and curious to see how one category where the poet and filmmaker are the same person and another where the poet and filmmaker are different plays out. Five notable international curators and presenters who have participated in our past festivals will be judging the submissions. They can’t wait to see your work!
My Instagram tag is ‘everything is poetry’. Writing this piece, I’ve been thinking of changing it to ‘everything is collaboration’. I love what the poet Matthew Rohrer says about poetry: ‘I’ve come to believe that the writing of all poems is a form of collaboration’. He talks about collage poetry, ekphrasis and ‘collaborations with the voices that I heard on the brink of dreaming’. He asserts, ‘There is no creation out of nothing on this Earth. There’s only making new things in collaboration with other things.’
I’ve sometimes said that I stumbled into making poetry films and then stumbled into collaboration. Recently I’ve come to realise that this is not true (top fact: the Estonian word for making poetry is lluletama, which also means to lie). As a child I drew, painted and wrote poetry and stories as a matter of course. From the moment I was given my first camera, my beloved Grandad’s box Brownie, at the age of 11, I took a lot of photographs too. I listened to music endlessly as a teenager – not all of it great, but most enduringly Kate Bush, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and other similarly poetic songwriters. So there was some early cross-fertilisation going on between the three key elements of a poetry film: words, visuals and sound/music.
8th Annual Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Still Image: “Adhan” (2023) by Kamyar Mohsenin
Now in its eighth year, Cadence Video Poetry Festival is open for submissions from July 1st 2024 through January 15th 2025. The hybrid festival, which features screenings, workshops and discussions on poetry film, will take place in person in Seattle from Apr 25–27 & online Apr 25 – May 4. Selected video poems receive an artist’s payment.
According to Rana San, Co-Director/Co-Curator of the festival, “Participation in Cadence is open to work that is new or old, short or epic, premiere or seasoned traveler. If it combines text and moving image, we want to see it!”
The festival’s description is worth highlighting:
“Video poetry is language as light. As an art form, video poetry is lucid and liminal—on the threshold of the literary and the moving image. It articulates the poetic image visually, rather than metaphorically—it shifts words from page to screen, from ink to light. A video poem makes meaning that would not exist if text was without image, image without text.”
Cadence also puts on a Virtual Poetry Book Fair during each festival, the most recent of which is still available online.
Cadence Submission Poster (2025)
Additionally, artists can also apply for the Cadence Artist-in-Residence program, which “provides resources and tools for the development of a new video poem to screen at the festival.” Launched in 2019 and open to Seattle-area residents, the program accepts applications from individual artists or collaborative teams. Those selected are granted access to the Northwest Film Forum’s film equipment and editing lab. The deadline for residency applications is December 15, 2024.
An online archive of selected award-winning videopoems from the festival is available on their website for those interested. However, screening the films requires ticket purchase from Northwest Film Forum’s Eventive virtual cinema. Some filmmakers recently selected for Cadence have made their work available on other platforms, such as “Only” (2023) a film by Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş based on a Rebecca Foust poem, featured previously on Moving Poems.
The annual festival is organized by Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and Rana San and hosted at the independent film and arts nonprofit, Northwest Film Forum, founded in Seattle in 1995. Cadence has become a fixture on the video poetry festival circuit so send in your work!
A new online review of the Cadence Video Poetry Festival takes a deep dive into poetry films that incorporate dancing for SeattleDances, “an advocacy organization dedicated to supporting Seattle-area dance performance through in-depth journalism and free resources to dance artists and audiences.” Author Kari Tai took advantage of the festival’s hybrid format to engage with the films at home—an experience I’ve always likened to solitary reading, since the viewer can pause and/or re-watch as often as she likes. For example:
Each time I watch Antipodes, I glean something more of the yin and yang of relationships the poem describes. The scenes toggle between black and white and color underscoring the complementary interconnectedness the poem expresses. The choreography amplifies this tension as dancers pace facing each other across a field to the line The ebony magnetism of existence binds poles. Throughout the video, the spoken words rise and fall with the crescendo of the music and crashing of the surf as the dancers feet tattoo the earth–a demonstration of how choreography and poetry use repetition, theme and variation that stimulates empathetic waves of emotion in the viewer. The pace of the video editing between scenes acts like poetic punctuation or choreographic choices for stillness amid frenetic movement.
Another film prompts this observation:
The festival literature remarks that throughout history poets have been persecuted for not writing the party line and it strikes me that dance also has often been outlawed as a subversive form of expression. When I think about how video is instantly shareable across the world via social media and how, like dance, it offers a form of communication that transcends spoken language, it is understandable how video has become a powerful tool of modern revolt. Exiles combines all three—video, dance, and poetry—a triple threat, an amplified way to shout out to the world.
a still from Exiles (Exils), directed by Josef Khallouf
Why does dance work so well in videopoetry? Tai has some ideas:
I think one thing that is key to illuminating my empathetic response to watching Only is a principle I learned through my training as a Dance for Parkinson’s instructor. Scientists have discovered that watching someone dance pleasurably activates the brain’s movement areas. In the classes I teach, the participants feel a fuller movement experience just by watching the teacher even if they don’t express it on the outside.
Perhaps that is why when we watch dance, even about topics we have not personally experienced, we can feel aligned with the “otherness” dancers can express. This happened for me watching Fairies, a video poem about growing up queer on a farm in the Netherlands.
The film elements in 2024 includes a screening of The Book of Conrad followed by a Q&A with CAConrad, and a Best Of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. Over the whole event there are a total of three exhibitions, 12 events and more than 60 participating Berlin poets, musicians and artists.
An evening of film, poetry and music in New Zealand, inspired by Titirangi and its rainforest surrounds on 18th June 2024.
The programme at this live event includes live poetry readings with musicians and a dancer as well as films. The organisers say:
Ron Riddell will read selections from his recent poetry books, with translations in Spanish by Saray Torres de Riddell. He will be accompanied on Raeul Pierard on cello and Stuart Lithgow on oboe.
Gus Simonovic will present a series of his works in an improvised dialogue with the musicians and a contemporary dancer. In his own words: “For a poet, any language is just one big playground. Poetry exists somewhere in the illusive space between words and music. Trying to fit visible and invisible, shapes and figures, radiances and feelings into words is essentially an impossible task and a thrilling challenge.”
Martin Sercombe will present cine collaborations with Ron Riddell and Gus Simonovic, alongside short films inspired by the poetry of e.e. cummings.
Our involuntary re-launch of Moving Poems after its destruction in late March has been a resounding success. We’ve been able to recover all posts and pages, and have manually restored missing images on the more recent posts. The combination of two formerly separate WordPress installations into one prompted a re-think of the site architecture and how best to arrange elements on the new front page, which has led us to think more deeply about what the site might be missing and how we can make it better. (More on that below.) And it has made a site-wide search much more powerful: type the name of a videopoet into the expandable search form in the header, and you’ll get not only all the posts from the video library where they were the filmmaker and/or poet, but also all mentions in news posts, anything they might’ve guest-authored, etc.
Some of the most important improvements are invisible: increased security measures of all kinds to try to prevent a re-occurrence of the malware attack that took the old site down. I’ve also updated the links page for the first time in five years, and will try to remember to do this annually from now on, because I do feel that we need to do a better job of supporting other important websites and organizations in the international poetry-film/videopoetry space. To that end, I’ve created a new page, How to make a poetry film or videopoem—currently included in a short menu in the footer—that so far does little but link to a another site:
U.K. poetry filmmaker Helen Dewbery at Poetry Film Live has created a terrific page on Making Poetry Films which we can’t top, so please go check that out. There’s a mix of practical suggestions and philosophical considerations that should appeal to newbies and seasoned filmmakers alike, supplemented with engaging video interviews and other material. And do consider signing up for one of her online courses.
We’ve been joined by a new contributor, Dr. Patricia Killelea, an associate professor of English at Northern Michigan University who regularly uses Moving Poems in the classroom, and have been brainstorming ways to make the site more useful to teachers and students. Poetry videos can be handy ways to expose students to poetry in general, something that the now-inactive organization Motionpoems recognized with its poetry curriculum. But while professionally made poetry films can be brilliant, and represent a significant percentage of our archives, we’re keen to encourage more poets, at whatever skill level, to learn to make videos themselves—something that will probably become a lot more common with the debut of video AI tools. I don’t know whether it helps or hurts the cause that Google has dubbed their own LLM ‘for zero-shot video generation’ VideoPoet! At the very least, it should mean a lot more web searches for videopoetry. How best to prepare?
We’d love to hear from other educators and students. If you use the site in the classroom, what has been most useful, and what additional features would you like to see? If you know of other sites or resources we should link to, please pass those suggestions along as well. Feel free to leave public comments on this post, or reach out in private using the contact form.
The Museum of English Rural Life in Reading is hosting a poetry-film screening and discussion on June 12 that should be of particular interest to Moving Poems readers:
Join us for a presentation of short films created by poet Toby Martinez de las Rivas, filmmaker Jane Glennie, and sound artist Neda Milenova Mirova.
Together, they question bucolic depictions of rural life, and explore notions of the uncanny, the intangible, and the obscure in relation to landscape, agriculture, and rural social practice. The films have been developed from initial work by Toby when he was writer-in-residence at The MERL, working with images from the Eric Guy photographic archive.
For many users of the internet, The MERL is a fabled place, so I am dead chuffed to be able to claim some association with it, if only second-hand. The event is live-only, as is perhaps fitting for a museum celebrating real life at its most tangible and pungent, and dare I say most absolute. For those who are able to attend, it’ll be from 6:00-7:30 p.m. on 12 June. Here’s the link to book free tickets.
Incidentally, this is not The MERL’s first go-round with poetry film. Remember I, Sheep?
This year in person 31 May/1 June, with the online playlists available until 15 June 2024, the festival in Weimar always has a thoughtful and thorough programme of poetry film. It is all very well documented on their website and in a downloadable pdf programme: https://poetryfilmtage.de/
In this year’s prize award the organisers say they received “479 films from 51 different countries … the program commission nominated 12 films for the competition”. But do take a look at what else is on the programme beyond the competition selection.
