~ News and Views ~
Interview with poetry-filmmaker Swoon
Montana-based poet Sherry O’Keefe has posted a great interview with the Belgian artist Swoon Bildos (Marc Neys) at her blog. Marc talks about his process, his background, and how he got into making videopoetry. It was gratifying to learn what a role Moving Poems has played in encouraging him. And Marc’s thoughts about what makes an effective videopoem are very much in line with my own:
I (most of the time) try not to use obvious images. For several of my videos I used ‘city-landscape and crowded places’ where the poem is more ‘rural’, It often surprised viewers, but they like it on a second note.
I catch myself thinking in the same way; for instance for ‘The Universe’ (my last video, Poem Neil Ellman) I thought about using Ice, Northern light,… I even tried it out…then said no and turned it around.
It’s that turning around that I’m not afraid of. Be prepared to turn your work around, inside out…but with a gut-feeling.
Young David by Yehuda Amichai (with discussion by Edward Hirsch)
http://vimeo.com/24221256
Avi Dabach’s marvelous film interpretation of Amichai’s “Young David” (translated by Abraham Birman) is wrapped within a video introduction and post-film discussion by Bob Holman and Edward Hirsh at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. Hirsch describes his own, elliptical approach to politics in poetry, and says that Amichai was his major influence and model in this regard.
“Howl” now available on Hulu
The new feature-length film-poem HOWL, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, can now be seen for free on Hulu. I thought about posting it to the main site — Hulu films are embeddable — but apparently it can’t be seen overseas. I’m also told it’s available for no extra charge to anyone with a Netflix subscription. And of course the DVD is for sale.
I watched it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it, conditioned as I was by more than two years of curating Moving Poems: a brilliant melange of animation, drama, interview and flashback, I thought. I posted a review of sorts at Via Negativa.
Visible Verse Festival 2011 call for submissions
Submissions to the Visible Verse Festival in Vancouver are due by September 1. Don’t miss your chance to be part of North America’s premiere videopoetry festival.
2011 VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL
Call for Entries and Official Guidelines:
- VVF seeks videopoems, with a 15 minutes maximum duration.
- Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or-subtitled version is required. Videos may originate in any part of the world.
- Works will be judged by their innovation, cohesion and literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
- Please, do not send documentaries as they are outside the featured genre.
- Videopoem producers should provide a brief bio, full name, and contact information in a cover letter. There is no official application form nor entry fee.
DEADLINE: Sept. 1, 2011
- Send, at your own risk, videopoems and poetry films/preview copies (which cannot be returned) in DVD NTSC format to: VISIBLE VERSE c/o Pacific Cinémathèque, 200-1131 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2L7, Canada. Selected artists will be notified and receive a standard screening fee. For more information contact Heather Haley at: hshaley@emspace.com
Tree by Jane Hirshfield
Hirshfield’s reading of “Tree” is preceded by a short but eloquent statement about the role of poetry in contemporary society that really resonated with me, as well as a few words about how she came to connect with poetry as a child. (Wish I could turn off the terrible background music, though!) This is from PlumTV. Like many prominent writers, Hirshfield doesn’t appear to have her own website, but here’s what the Poetry Foundation has for her.
Invisible Man by Amir Rabiyah
Kevin Simmonds’ brief film is part interview, part reading. Simmonds is the editor of the forthcoming anthology Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality, which includes this poem by Amir Rabiyah.
Help Motionpoems animate some “Best American Poetry”
In case you missed the note to “Sea Salt” by David Motion on Monday (or the Kickstarter widget in the main site’s sidebar) let me repeat what I wrote there:
Motionpoems has some pretty exciting news: they’ve partnered with David Lehman and Scribner’s Best American Poetry 2011, and are lining up animators to produce videos for poems in the anthology. If this is the kind of thing you’d like to help support, please consider making a donation to their Kickstarter campaign. With 15 days to go, they’ve raised more than $10,000 in pledges toward the $15,000 needed. Click through for the details, including a video that tells the story of how they got started.
Here are Angella and Todd to tell their story and give their pitch:
Please note that I am not connected with Motionpoems in any way other than that I like Angella and Todd and believe they are advancing poetry animation enormously in this country, comparable to, but more ambitious than, the efforts of Comma Press in northwest England. Of course, there is some enlightened self-interest at work here: I’m eager for more quality poetry videos! But I would also encourage other poetry video makers to consider following Angella and Todd’s example and get more aggressive about fundraising — and let me know if you do, so I can promote your efforts here.
Once again, here’s the link to help Motionpoems meet their $15,000 goal. The deadline is June 15.
Videopoem contest deadline extended to April 22
Howie Good and I have decided to extend the deadline for Moving Poem’s first videopoem contest by one week, to April 22. Here are the guidelines. We’ve gotten some fantastic submissions already, and if we ended the contest tomorrow as originally planned, it would still be a success. But now all of you with poor memories or a tendency to procrastinate — my people! — have one more chance to participate as well.
Poetry in Film Festival 2011 now accepting submissions
Like our own videopoem contest, PIFF 2011 challenges filmmakers to make a short film in response to the same poem — in their case, “Four Letters, Three Words” by Brenda Hilton. But their contest is a much more high-powered affair with entry fees and screenings and whatnot, and they also don’t require that the poem be incorporated into the film, only that the film should be a response to it. Here are the rules and regulations.
Fearless Laughter: Yusef Komunyakaa’s Advice to Young Poets
A video created by Sampsonia Way magazine for Rattapallax. Komunyakaa was interviewed by Elizabeth Hoover, and the video production and editing are by Glen Wood.
Videopoem contest: now with prizes!
I’ve revised the last paragraph of the contest announcement to read:
You can enter as many times as you like. From all the entries, we’ll select an indeterminate number of finalists to feature on the main site. Howie has generously offered to give copies of his books Rumble Strip, Anomalies, and Disaster Mode to his top three favorites, with the first place winner getting all three, second place the first two, and third place getting the last. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
Howie’s academic publications include three book-length studies of film and culture, so I’m grateful for his offer to help judge the contest, as well.
Announcing Moving Poem’s first videopoem contest
UPDATE (4/26): We have winnners! There were seven finalists in all. See contest winners 1 and contest winners 2.
1. The gist
In order to showcase and celebrate diverse approaches to making videopoems and poetry-films, I thought it would be fun to have a contest where everyone would use the same poem in its entirety, either in the soundtrack or as text (or both). Please join us! Post the results to YouTube or Vimeo and either email me the link (bontasaurus[at]yahoo[dot]com) or put it in a comment below, no later than April 15 April 22. I’ll post the winners to the main site.
2. The poem
Fable
by Howie Good
A messenger arrived
from a countrycolonized by magpies.
I have two sons, he said,one whose name
means wolfand one whose name
means laughter.It felt like rain,
what’s calleda baby’s ear moon,
false angel wing.They hanged him
in a cornfield.The world is made
of tiny struggling things.
from Rumble Strip (Propaganda Press, 2010)
3. The nitty-gritty
Howie Good is the author of 27 (!) print and digital chapbooks and three full-length collections of poetry, not to mention the 12 scholarly books he’s written in his other career as a journalism professor, which include several studies of film. For a fuller bio and links to some of his online work, see his blog, Apocalypse Mambo. I am grateful to Howie for giving us carte blanche to interpret his poem however we want.
As stipulated above, I’d like all videos to include the complete poem. They should be true videos or films — no video slideshows, please. You should also have permission for any images, footage, and sounds you might use, or be able to make a strong case that (for U.S. material) your use of copyrighted material is sufficiently transformative as to fall under generally accepted definitions of fair use. Please include Howie Good’s name and a link to his blog in the video description at YouTube or Vimeo.
For details about fair use and loads of links to free-to-use video and audio, please refer to our new page: Web resources for videopoem makers. Of course, I encourage those with the means to do so to shoot fresh footage, compose or mix your own music, etc. But if all you have access to is some free video- and audio-editing software and lots of time and imagination, you can still contribute.
You can enter as many times as you like. From all the entries, we’ll select an indeterminate number of finalists to feature on the main site. Howie has offered to give copies of his books Rumble Strip, Anomalies, and Disaster Mode to his top three favorites, with the first place winner getting all three, second place the first two, and third place getting the last. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
