~ News and Views ~
Sheila Packa on creating live, moving poems at an exhibition of transmedia art
This sounds as if it must’ve been absolutely delightful:
At the art opening last Friday, I was one of the writers who could “input” text into the film generator. [Kathy McTavish’s] art was the “origin of birds.” This posting is about my experience with it, a meditation on the “origin of words.” Entering words was addictive. My text was not the only text on the wall– the generator was randomly combining live twitter feed, climate reports, data, and other phrases. A few other poets were entering phrases as well. The effect was similar to spraying graffiti on a wall, only to have it drift away and replaced by other graffiti.
On my computer, at her web-page, whatever I entered in the text box would appear in the projection on the walls. This was new! wild! Generally as a writer, I do my work in solitude at my desk. In the film, the text was performing live. It was me performing live, actually, but because I was at a table in the corner, I was not visibly part of the exhibit. My words appeared whenever I pressed ‘enter.’ I noticed interesting juxtapositions and flows. I had surprises and sudden flashes of inspiration. It occurred to music (her compositions in cello were also part of the film).
Sometimes, I’d share my text box with friends. Cecilia Ramón sat down at my computer and translated the text she watched on the projection into Spanish for our viewing pleasure. The other designated poets showed some of their friends how to access the text entry point, so a number of people were participating at the same time. Some of the writing sparked material I intend to go back to when I’m at my desk. Some was silly or forgettable. It cascaded or even precipitated on the screen, like the live tweets. My writing evaporated (much like the way that ‘too much information’ is ignored or disregarded in other settings). I did walk away with the appreciation of how poetry, with its concentrated form and powerful image and sound elements, makes an ideal text for video work.
Motionpoems’ Season 5 premiere set for May 22 in Minneapolis
Mark your calendars for the 2014 world premiere of the latest crop of Motionpoems.
Motionpoems will unveil Season 5 in the luxurious cinema at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis on May 22, 2014, at 6:30 and 8pm.
[…]
Both screenings are free! Our emcee: MPR movie maven Stephanie Curtis! Meet the poets and filmmakers, and join the after-party!
Here’s the trailer, courtesy of Ditch Edit:
https://vimeo.com/90584427
(Note that Motionpoems’ use of the phrase “moving poems” in the trailer and on their website is not meant to imply any connection to this website. We’re very separate entities.)
Twin-sister videopoetry collaborators featured at Connotation Press
For her Third Form column at Connotation Press this month, Erica Goss interviewed Cecelia and Justine Post, the artist and poet behind the videopoem/book trailer Beast (which I also shared at Moving Poems a few weeks back).
Poet Justine Post and her identical twin sister, artist Cecelia Post, collaborated on the video book trailer for Justine’s poetry collection Beast, just out from Augury Books. I spoke with Justine and Cecelia separately in February about the video, collaborations, and being twins in two creative, distinct yet overlapping disciplines.
“Many of our memories are the same since we were together all the time growing up. I often use ‘we’ instead of ‘me.’ We even share the same dreams. We live apart now but we are still very connected,” Justine told me. She is currently earning her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Houston, and her sister is a visual artist who runs Fowler arts collective in Brooklyn. According to Cecelia, “Justine’s poems articulate my visual work, and we understand our work better through each other.”
“I think poetry and the visual arts are well-fitted,” Justine said. “I always loved Cecelia’s video, ‘You Made Me (Sewing).’ I pushed my sister to finish it. The poem and the video tell different stories, but they enrich each other.” In the video, a young woman (played by Cecelia) sews herself into a nylon, flesh-colored bodysuit while the narrator (Justine) reads Justine’s poem “Self-Portrait as Beast.”
Transatlantic Poetry has a new home on the web
Transatlantic Poetry, the YouTube- and Google+ Hangouts-enabled online reading space for British and American poets founded last summer by Robert Peake, has a brand new website on its own URL, translatlanticpoetry.com. Please adjust your links and bookmarks. Peake writes,
Since our first broadcast in July, TRANSATLANTIC Poetry has featured 25 poets in nearly ten hours of poetry readings and conversations, garnering upwards of 2,200 views in 67 countries. We have done this with the help of five outstanding poetry broadcast partners, and are in conversation with several others. So, it only seems right that what began as a simple portal page on my personal website should now fledge to its own domain.
Part of the intent of the new site is to support partners with the tools they need to promote and host their own shows autonomously. From the beginning, my intention has been not only to take them fishing for world-class poetry programming, but also to teach them to fish in this big ocean of new technology. Giving the community its own dedicated website is therefore another step toward my assuming an increasing educational and supportive role in relation to these readings.
For now, the site is basically a copy of the old portal page. Over time, I expect it to expand, and hope to include new voices in the news section as partners step to the fore to promote their programming. We have excellent poets, excellent partners, and an excellent audience. Over time, we hope to have an excellent website as well.
It already looks pretty damn good to me.
Call for entries: OLE International Festival of Electronic Literature
A month-long International Festival of Electronic Literature—OLE—will be held in Naples and its environs in October. There is of course some overlap between videopoetry/filmpoetry and electronic literature; here’s how the festival website describes the latter:
Electronic Literature, also known as eLiterature or digital literature, includes a wide genre of works that make use of digital media (from the computer to the Internet to single software) to be created and / or to be used. It is therefore not about traditional works subsequently digitized, but born digital works that generate real new languages and, therefore, new literatures.
The festival is divided into two sections, one “made up of internationally renowned artists from all over the world,” and the other for younger artists. The call for proposals targets the latter group:
Present Call is addressed to young people of any nationality who are under 35 years of age. The theme of the Festival is “Memory of the future: to know ours roots to plan a common future”. The other sub themes are: “conditions for peace, sustainable development, knowledge and cultural diversity,” in parallel with the theme of Universal Forum of Cultures.
The works they’re seeking include:
2. ELECTRONIC POEMS
- videopoetry
- kinetic poetry
- interactive poetry
- 3D poetry
- multimedia poetry
- hypertext poetry
- flash poetry
- generative poetry
- code poetry
The deadline is May 15. Refer to the website for the rather complex submission procedures (which may be more comprehensible in Italian).
Visual, film, and sound artists sought for collaborative project with Minnesota poet
Duluth, Minnesota’s Prøve Collective (which counts among its members the cellist/composer and videopoem maker Kathy McTavish, whose work I’ve featured on Moving Poems) recently issued a rather unique call for artists to collaborate on multimedia projects with poet Kathleen Roberts, culminating in a two-week exhibition in August. Here’s the call as it appears on mnartists.org:
Accepting submissions of visual, film, and sound art for With Sirens Blaring. Deadline: July 1
Duluth’s Prøve Collective announces an open call to filmmakers and artists for its upcoming show, “With Sirens Blaring”.
Deadline: 1 July, 2014.
Prøve Gallery, Duluth, Minnesota’s independent and artist run contemporary gallery, is proud to announce “With Sirens Blaring”, opening 8 August, 2014.
Show Description: Poetry is, above all things, an attempt to view the world through language. This summer, Prøve Collective will display a body of work linking poetry to visual, film, and sound art. Pursuant to a grant from the McKnight Foundation, award-winning Duluth poet Kathleen Roberts is creating an assembly of films and artwork by local and regional artists based on her words. These works will be displayed permanently on her website and in Prøve’s August exhibition, “With Sirens Blaring”. Artists in all disciplines are encouraged to inquire.
Mission Statement: Prøve Collective is a cultural organization dedicated to the role of art exhibition as a conduit of powerful ideas and diverse viewpoints. Our mission is to foster a greater appreciation of the contemporary arts, to bridge cultures, to create and expand community, and to provide cultural exchange, networking opportunities, and educational outreach through regular interaction with the contemporary arts. It is the goal of Prøve Collective to present monthly gallery shows, collaborate with like- minded arts organizations, and provide an arts retail environment.
Submission guidelines:
Interested parties may contact Kathleen via e-mail at kathleen@provegallery.com. Please include a brief statement of purpose and Curriculum Vitae. These will be works of collaboration, and we are interested in sharing in your ideas about poetry and its intersection with other art forms.All submission materials must be written in English. Prøve Collective will provide publicity, exhibition invitations, mailings, and an opening reception. All work resulting from this project will be under Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY), which requires that anyone distributing this work or making derivative work must give attribution to the original artists.
Submission does not guarantee that your work will be displayed.
Please e-mail kathleen@provegallery.com if you are interested in participating in this moving poetry project.
Deadlines:
• Submissions are due by 1 July. As this collaboration will take time and communication, it will be necessary for artists to initiate contact well in advance of the deadline for submission.
• The opening reception for “With Sirens Blaring” will be 8 August from 7-11pm.
• The show will run for two weeks and conclude on 23 August.
• Pick up will be August 28-30 from 3-7pm.Please direct any questions to Kathleen Roberts, kathleen@provegallery.com.
PRØVE Gallery 21 North Lake Avenue Duluth, MN 55802 info@provegallery.com www.facebook.com/provecollective www.provegallery.com
Remixing the vocabulary of orchids: an interview with Diane Lockward
This is the tenth in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? Our tenth interview is with Diane Lockward (website – blog).
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
DL: Letting someone else work with my poem was not at all a difficult choice because I was familiar with The Poetry Storehouse project and had seen numerous examples of the work that was being done there. So I knew the poems were going to a good place and that if they did get picked up for a video I’d be happy with the result. (That’s kind of like submitting poems to journals, i.e., it’s important to be familiar with the journal before you submit or you might end up being sorry you submitted.)
The idea of seeing my work in another format was exciting, not intimidating. I’d previously had poems set to music, a few set to dance, and one sung by a choir of opera singers! So this video project struck me as a nice possibility for my work.
Certainly, I feel that I own my own work and would be less than pleased if someone just took it and used it without permission, but everything with The Poetry Storehouse is out in the open. I chose to submit, knowing that my poems might be used for a remix. The result is a true collaboration.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at The Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
DL: I was absolutely thrilled with Nic’s video interpretation of my poem “Orchids.” She got it just right, although I had no idea what “right” was until I saw what she’d done. Then I said, Oh yes, oh wow! That’s just right! The artwork selected, a group of still images by Adam Martinakis, is deliciously sexy and mysterious, much as orchids are, so the artwork seemed perfect for the poem. The music track and the pacing all came together just right, even though there’s not one single orchid pictured in the video. It’s really a new interpretation.
I consider myself to have been extremely lucky in that another filmmaker, Paul Broderick, selected the same poem and Nic’s reading of it for his own video interpretation. This second video is very different from Nic’s but also wonderful and full of sexiness and mystery—and lots of gorgeous orchids.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
DL: I absolutely would do this again. There’s no downside, no reason not to. This is one more way of spreading the word about poetry and of breathing new life into individual poems. My advice to other poets considering submitting is to choose poems that have a strong visual element and that appeal not just to the sense of sight but to the other senses as well. I suggest selecting fairly short poems as the video will include some lead-in time and some closing time for credits at the end. I read somewhere that the typical viewer won’t hang around to watch a video for more than two minutes, so the submitter should keep that in mind. Finally, I suggest lyric poems rather than narrative ones, poems that suggest, that are open to interpretation, poems with some layers.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
DL: No, I can’t think of a thing I’d suggest changing. Just keep on doing what you’re doing and continue to get the word out about what you’re doing.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
DL: It was fun from start to finish. I’d like to mention that I wrote the poem “Orchids” after reading The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession, by Susan Orlean. The book is about orchid hunting in Florida. I found the vocabulary of orchids fascinating and the lure of the hunt intriguing. I used some of the vocabulary in the poem and tried to capture the intrigue that orchids exude. So you could say that my poem is a sort of remix of the book. There’s also a movie based on the book, Adaptation—another kind of remix. So it pleases me to see yet one more incarnation for orchids.
ReVersed Poetry Film Festival 2014 set for first weekend in April
Working at break-neck speed, the organizers of the brand-new ReVersed Poetry Film Festival slated for April 4-6 in Amsterdam have scheduled a full program of screenings and events — it looks great. They even found time to make the above trailer. Timo Geschwill is the filmmaker, with text and voiceover by Daniel Vorthuys and sound design by Sinan Guven.
In other poetry festival-related news, Filmpoem has a slick new website — check it out.
Free, three-hour screening of filmpoems at Hidden Door Festival in Edinburgh, April 5
Hidden Door is a nine-day festival of art, music and poetry beginning on March 28 at Market Street Vaults, Edinburgh. It offers “FREE ENTRY to Exhibition Spaces, Project Space, Bars, Cinema” every day from noon to 6:00 PM, and this includes three, 40-minute screenings of filmpoems on the last day of the festival, April 5. Here are the details, according to the event listing on Facebook:
3pm -6pm: Alastair Cook and Luca Nasciuti are introducing, performing and talking about Filmpoem in the afternoon from 3pm – come and see previews of this year’s festivals, watch some beautiful films and enjoy the rest of the Hidden Door experience at a leisurely Saturday afternoon pace.
Filmpoem is dedicated to the filming of words and is a collaborative venture committed to attracting new audiences to new writing. Filmpoem at Hidden Door is a match made in filmic festival heaven – on Saturday April 5th, we will be bringing poets, films and performance to these great Edinburgh arches, running three forty-minute screenings:
3pm: Filmpoem Felix Screening – Curation from our archive mixed with sneak peaks at some of the work for Filmpoem in Antwerp on June 14th this year, in partnership with Felix Poetry Festival.
4pm: Filmpoem Live with Luca Nasciuti. Luca explores and performs filmic soundscapes with poetry film, with live readings.
5pm: Filmpoem Poetry Society, an exclusive curation in partnership with The Poetry Society
It’s part of a larger programme of films at the festival called Hidden Cinema — an enticing mix of animation, shorts and experimental film.
“Anything I create belongs to anyone who wants it”: an interview with Bill Yarrow
This is the ninth in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? Our ninth interview is with Bill Yarrow.
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
BY: I don’t believe in private property (alas, I live in a world which does), and neither do I believe in private intellectual property. As far as I’m concerned, anything I create belongs (excluding rights reserved to any and all publishers of the material) to anyone who wants it, and everyone can, with attribution (and respecting publishers’ rights where applicable), use it in basically any way he or she likes.* So when I found out about The Poetry Storehouse, I was delighted because its philosophy of sharing and collaborative creativity is my philosophy as well.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at the Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
BY: When you send your work out into the world, you are releasing it, you are giving it away. It no longer belongs to you. You can’t control how people read it, react to it, interpret it, or, in the case of The Poetry Storehouse, reuse and remix it.
I am delighted that other artists found two of the poems I put in The Poetry Storehouse of enough interest and inspiration to fashion from them something of their own. Othniel Smith’s fashioned a literal rendition of my poem “Florid Psychosis.” I found his video remix an extremely witty and entertaining translation. Nic S. sought a poetic counterpart to my poem “Need” and created (adding her own brilliant reading of the poem as well as a beautifully haunting soundtrack) a mesmerizing video. I was enchanted by her remix. I especially liked that both creators found their material in the Internet Archive, Othniel using film clips from films in the Prelinger Archive, Nic using footage mostly from NASA archives.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
BY: In a heartbeat!
My advice to other poets? Submit your BEST work to The Poetry Storehouse in a heartbeat!
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
BY: I just write poems. I don’t have imagination for much else.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
BY: Yes, two things.
- The Poetry Storehouse accepts previously-published poems! Do you understand how important, how generous, and how amazing that is?
- Having your work available to further development and expression (personally, I see it as resurrection) is a great blessing. Being published on The Poetry Storehouse is a munificent opportunity. If you don’t take advantage of it, you have only yourself to blame.
*That is to say, a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode
“We relinquish control the moment we agree to publish our work”: an interview with Lennart Lundh
This is the eighth in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? Our eighth interview is with Lennart Lundh.
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
LL: Unless someone decides to edit my words, changing their meaning to suit different purposes, I’m not all that possessive or reactive. We relinquish control the moment we agree with the editor who wants to publish our work. Some presentations carry the words, and some drop them from a tall building. We take that chance. I confess I had a moment’s paternal concern (or perhaps culture shock) when Nic S. recorded one of my poems which was clearly written in a male voice, but only because mine is the sole voice that had read my work aloud up to that point. After a mental step back, I recognized the reading as excellent and life went on.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at the Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
LL: The recorded readings by Siddartha Beth Pierce and Nic have pleased me. They’re true to my intent in gathering the words, even with different choices in cadence and emphasis. The video and soundtrack choices in the remixes by Nic (Sandburg and Photograph), Marc Neys (Elegy), and Paul Broderick (also Elegy) represent somebody else’s visions of what the words mean, and I respect that — not because it’s what I signed on for, but because I don’t believe any piece of art means precisely the same thing to any two beholders (or to any single one across repeated meetings). The end result is fascinating to me in how the shifted colors and nuances of my words still work nicely through those different interpretations.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
LL: Hell, yes, I’d do this again, and hope to get the chance. It’d be lovely if repeat submissions became part of the policy. As for other writers, my advice would be to think in terms of the larger process, follow the Poetry Storehouse’s guidelines — and if in doubt or puzzled, ask Nic her opinion; she’s a pleasure to work with.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
LL: There’s nothing I’d change. This has been a great learning experience, and I’m pleased with how my words have been handled. It’s certainly broadened my horizons and offered more paths for me to follow as an artist.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
LL: Yeah: Thank you!
