~ Videopoems ~
Videopoetry, filmpoetry, cinepoetry, poetry-film… the label doesn’t matter. What matters is that text and images enter into dialogue, creating a new, poetic whole.
Extract from ‘Hellseason’ (‘Une Saison en Enfer’ by Arthur Rimbaud as a custom Broforce level) by Jon Stone
British writer, editor and researcher Jon Stone has just uploaded this experiment, created as part of his research for Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Video Games (De Gruyter, 2022: Volume 3 in the series Video Games and the Humanities), noting in the description that “I wanted to see if I could rewrite the opening of this long Rimbaud poem as a playable action sequence. In the end, I decided it wasn’t working — but it makes for a fun video.” He has a new essay in The Conversation going into more detail about the project: “Can a poem be adapted into a video game? Here’s what I learned from trying.”
Perhaps the most longstanding case of existing poetry being used as the basis for a game is Hyakunin Isshu Karuta, a competitive Japanese card game in which players match the different parts of poems from the Hyakunin Isshu haiku anthology. The actions of the players here embody the principle of “two worlds in one breath”, which some have argued is central to haiku.
But with the plethora of digital game-making tools now available to poets, as well as the enduring literary penchant for modernising classical texts – see Alice Oswald’s Memorial (2011), or Simon Armitage’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2000) – it’s likely that we’ll begin to see more efforts to convert classical poems into video games.
One example is Dante’s Inferno (2010) by Visceral Games. This third-person adventure re-imagines Dante’s circles of hell as battle arenas, honouring some of the poem’s more memorable imagery, such as “the infernal hurricane that never rests”. Inevitably, though, in the case of violent action games, it’s the narrative arc of the story which is the focus.
On the more experimental end, Gotta Eat the Plums! with William Carlos Williams by Calum Rodger remakes Williams’ poem This Is Just To Say (1934) as a miniature role playing game for the Game Boy. The original poem can be interpreted as concerned with the everyday perversity of human desires, about which we are simultaneously apologetic and boastful (plums, like all juicy fruit, being symbolically linked to forbidden knowledge and sex).
But Rodger adds subtle commentary to this symbolism. He gives the player the option to refrain from eating the plums three times, using up their willpower gauge until they are eventually compelled to consume them.
In a Minute There is Time (2023) by Aster Fialla, meanwhile, is a short text-based game using T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) as its springboard. It plays specifically on the theme of time, forcing the player down various avenues using a countdown timer. This puts them physically in the position of Prufrock, who is haunted and vexed by the inevitability of death.
Read the rest. Discussing the Rimbaud video, he says:
This attempt uses a flaming tropical jungle, replete with machine guns and exploding barrels, as a metaphysical representation of Rimbaud’s psychological turmoil, with the player battling toward self-understanding. It ran aground, however, due to the difficulty of following the poem alongside the colourful action sequences.
Video game adaptations of poems are not impossible. They do, however, need to leave space for readers to engage with the specific effects of language.
Experimenting further, I found the video game genres which admit the presence of poetry most readily are those which require careful calibration and thoughtful probing from the player. For example, puzzle games, story-rich role playing games, games of exploration and visual novels. Where the two mediums can be integrated, there is great potential for a doubling up of their powers – video games’ ability to draw us into alternative worlds and poetry’s propensity to speak lasting truths.
Water for Canaries by Doyali Islam
the last singing descendants of a burning world
the first heirs of a new
So often, the poems most effective at making a political statement are not overtly political at all. Here’s a 2019 animation by Suzie Hanna, an Emerita Professor of Animation at Norwich University of the Arts whose “current personal focus in research and practice is poetry animation made in collaboration,” according to her website. I found a good micro-review on the Palestine Cinema website:
How can we witness a world in which the moon and the drone hang in the same sky? What can the evolution of dinosaur into bird tell us about human survival? In “water for canaries”, award-winning Toronto poet Doyali Islam contemplates an Associated Press photograph taken during a ceasefire within the July 2014 bombing of Beit Hanoun. Islam’s poem acts as solemn witness but also achieves a moment of lift-off in which Palestinians reveal their extraordinary courage, resilience, and mercy. UK animator Suzie Hanna has collaborated to create a short poetry film using hand-cut stencils and paint to emphasize the chaotic atmosphere and to celebrate the fragility of life amid destruction. doyali-islam.com & suziehanna.com
The poem “water for canaries” is from Doyali Islam’s 2019 poetry book, heft, published by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada.
Here’s the link to heft. Doyali Islam’s website seems to be offline, but here’s a good bio. “Water for Canaries” wasn’t the only poem from heft to get adapted into a poetry film; “Letter” had three different adaptations for the online Visible Poetry Project in 2019, including one by Moving Poems’ own Jane Glennie: see here. And we’ve shared a number of Suzie Hanna’s animations over the years.
scrambled transmission #3 by Matt Mullins
This month, American writer and poetry film artist Matt Mullins released a new author-made video poem on his Vimeo channel, titled “scrambled transmission #3.” It’s the most recent work from Mullins, who took second place at this year’s Filmetry 24: The Poetics of Cinema with his film, “Janet Leigh is Afraid of Jazz,” which is based on a poem by Marsha de la O and was previously profiled by Moving Poems.
“scrambled transmission #3” leads with an interesting soundscape, one which reflects the poem’s title, by way of a fuzzy, mechanical, radio-out-of-tune loop. It pairs well with the black and white found footage. The film’s opening image highlights a compelling fusion of insect and machine, and its following frames continue riffing on this same visual theme, which often make use of repetition. This piece also uses intertitles, so between the footage and its filter and the text on screen, “scrambled transmission #3” makes direct connections with the silent film era.
The poem itself, voice-overed by Mullins, evokes something of Hunter S. Thompson in its themes and tone: a third-person narrative in fragments highlighting mundane acts of violence and estrangement on a “typical atypical day,” mind-altering substances, memory, and American underground art subculture. Overall, the links between the insect world and the human psyche are made quite clear through the poem’s intertitles, voice-over, and found footage. I also thought that the delivery of the poem, particularly its cadence and sense of addled urgency, vaguely recalled the Beat Poets.
As for the filmmaker himself, Mullins’ description of his latest poetry film is refreshingly simple, as he writes: “Some things, one hopes, are self-explanatory.”
View the videopoem here.
Endlings by Angela France
UK poet Angela France reads her poem “Endlings” in a film directed by Helen Dewbery for Nine Arches Press. “Endlings” was nearly the title poem for France’s latest collection, Terminarchy (2021), as she noted in an interview:
I came across the word ‘endling’, which means the last of any species, a while ago. For a long time this collection was going to be titled ‘Endling’ but then a poet in the USA brought out a collection with that title and there is also a series of fantasy books and a computer game called endling. The other word for the last of a species is ‘terminarch’. I didn’t like terminarch as much at first, it had an ugly sound to my ear. Adding a ‘y’ softened the sound and suggested a different direction; we are used to talking about patriarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, perhaps we should think about whether we are heading for terminarchy.
I liked the sound of the word endling but also thought a lot about what it means to be the last. The strongest, most urgent drive in nature is to reproduce so an endling is driven into hopelessness. The endlings in the poem ignore their prey because of that ‘older, greater need’ and only find release, and peace, in death.
I suspect most of us could name at least a couple of extinct animals, such as the Tasmanian Tiger (the thylacine) but when I started researching the species lost in the last few years, I was astonished, and saddened, at the number of them. Some of the names were just wonderful, such as the ‘Gloomy tube-nosed bat’ and the ‘Darling Downs hopping mouse’. They didn’t find their way into this poem but they have remained in my memory, perhaps for another time. There is a very particular grief, for me, in discovering these things after they have left us.
The form of the poem is a loose terza rima, with slant rhyme. I like this form because of its subtle music and also because the interlocking rhyme scheme can have the effect of looking back while stepping forward. I usually prefer slant rhyme because I find full rhyme can fall very heavily on the end of the line unless it is used with great skill.
I feel I should explain something about Sparrow who appears at the end of this poem. William Sparrow was a historical character in my last book, The Hill. He was one of the ringleaders of the local riots over the closure of rights of way on the hill, in 1902. He was a road-sweeper and was literate, witty, and furious, writing daily letters to the newspapers. He has insisted on having a voice in this book but he is not now William Sparrow. He is not Sparrow the man, nor is he sparrow the bird, but something else entirely and he speaks up in a few poems through the book. I am not sure what he is except that he seems to take the role of an ecological conscience. Here, he weeps for all we have lost and are losing, the hopelessness of not having an ark.
In Conversation – Angela France
Le Mince Rideau (The Thin Curtain) by Henrique Costa
Brazilian American poet Henrique Costa says,
I wrote this poem in 2019 and made it into a film with Jonny Knowles in mid-2020.
Another collaboration with the outstanding Mr. Knowles, in which we sought to capture l’air du temps.
Jonathan Knowles is an award-winning filmmaker and animator from Huddersfield, UK. This is his sixth poetry-film collaboration with Costa; this is the third we’ve shared here, and you can watch the others on Costa’s Vimeo page.
The current events unfolding in this four-year-old film still feel current, with so much civil unrest and the hegemonic world order continuing to unravel, so the blend of French in the voiceover with English in the subtitles and scenes from Brazil and elsewhere seems fitting.
Nine Moons by Janet Lees
Until recently I lived for many years in the Isle of Man, where my mother’s family is from. I was deeply drawn to the paintings of Breton-born Bruno Cavellec, who was widely acknowledged as one of the leading artists working on the island. I also greatly admired his illustrative work for album sleeves and book covers. Frankly, I was starstruck. When he approached me at an exhibition opening and floated the idea of us working together, it felt like some kind of celestial door opening (accompanied, of course, by the doom bell of imposter syndrome-induced terror).
This was the beginning of a collaboration that unfolded gradually over several years, and culminated in our first work together, Nine Moons, winning Best International Poetry Short at the recent Bloomsday Film Festival in Dublin. This was the first screening for the film. It was also one of the first public accolades for Bruno’s music, the art form which is closest to his heart and which he started working with in earnest just a few years ago, under the name of Mablanig.
Bruno says, “Ever since I saw Janet’s videopoems, I’ve been an admirer of her very distinctive style and powerful narrative. With her, it’s almost as if I discovered a brand-new language, so unique and expressive, which I find deeply moving and inspiring. Writing a score for her was a big dream of mine.”
The first couple of years of our collaboration didn’t involve any creative work – at least, not any concrete work. We knew each other’s work, but we didn’t know each other. While I was still living in the Isle of Man, we met a few times, most memorably in Bruno’s studio, surrounded by his work and his influences, and just talked. It became clear that there was a lot of common ground, and each time we met we dug down deeper into it.
Finally, about a year ago, we set out to make a film, collaborating via Zoom as by this time we were in separate countries. It was an ambitious collaborative project, a videopoetry triptych that was a kind of multilateral ekphrasis. We wanted to respond to each other’s work, which collectively included my poetry, film and photography, and Bruno’s music and paintings. We also wanted to include both our voices.
As we got into the work, Bruno suggested bringing even more of ourselves to the project, in the form of photographs of people who have left a mark on us. Thanks to his Photoshop skills we were able to combine these with some of my images that include frame-like devices, such as windows in old walls. These animated stills make up the third section of the film which for both of us is the most powerful and, in terms of how the music, visuals and text work together, the most seamless.
It was a profoundly affecting experience putting the whole film together, and particularly this section. While I was editing the sequence of images it was as though I was holding my breath, standing on the edge of another world. This was due in large part to Bruno’s hauntingly beautiful and transformative music, which I had playing on repeat the whole time. There’s something he does, an interweaving of darkness and light, sorrow and bliss – which suffuses his paintings too – that is absolutely in tune with my inner landscape.
This was a collaboration in the true sense of the word, and it came with challenges as well as huge rewards. When you are used to working in isolation, making all the creative decisions, it’s a big leap to sharing each step of the process with someone else. I had to consciously let go of both my fear of being creatively ‘wrong’ and my need to control, which I know comes from a need for psychological safety. For me, this wasn’t actually as difficult as I’d expected, because of the trust between Bruno and myself. Fear kills the creative impulse. In hindsight, because we had spent a lot of time not actually doing anything together but just being together, the space we created for the work to grow in was a fertile one.
BIOS
Janet Lees is a lens-based artist and poet. Her films have been selected for festivals and screenings including the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, the International Videopoetry Festival and the Aesthetica Art Prize. In 2021 she won the Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film competition, and in 2024 the first prize at Filmetry Festival. Her poetry is widely published in journals and anthologies, and her art photography has been exhibited around the world.
See more of Janet’s poetry film work here.
Mablanig is the music output of Breton artist and illustrator Bruno Cavellec. After 25 years of designing album covers and film posters, he is now embracing his new career as a composer, and released his first album in 2022. Described as cinematic and atmospheric, his textured compositions are often permeated with a strong sense of drama.
Hear more of Mablanig’s music here, and see more of Bruno’s paintings and other artworks here.
“What Memphis Needs” by Alexis Krasilovsky
Acclaimed author and filmmaker Alexis Krasilovsky recently spoke with Moving Poems about her videopoem, “What Memphis Needs” (1991). The film offers a unique view of social inequalities prevalent in Memphis, Tennessee throughout the 1970s and 80s but feels just as relevant today. Featuring original 16mm footage taken by Krasilovsky in the 1970s while she was working on the documentary, Beale Street, she is also the author and narrator of the poem around which the film is centered.
The story behind “What Memphis Needs” reveals a small piece of videopoem history and serves as an interesting reminder of how this form has always held a close relationship with technology and continues to evolve. Editing for the videopoem took place in the early 1980s and 90’s and the work was completed and screened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1991. Krasilovsky writes, “Back in those days, I relished using sharpies and yellow grease pencil to mark off frames of 16mm soundtrack and workprint on the Moviola while figuring out the rhythmic beats and counterpoints of ‘What Memphis Needs.’” The result is a poetryfilm which serves as a snapshot of an American city at historical and social crossroads, as well as an enduring social commentary on racial tensions in the South.
When asked about the origins of the title poem, Krasilovsky’s response highlights a fascinating history:
“What Memphis Needs” is my own poem: I wrote it myself. I also included it in my chapbook, Some Women Writers Kill Themselves (A Street Agency Publication: Los Angeles, 1983) and my DVD, “Some Women Writers Kill Themselves: Selected Videopoems & Poetry by Alexis Krasilovsky” (Rafael Film: Los Angeles, 2008). However, I was inspired by Etheridge Knight and his Free People’s Poetry Workshop, which he held in Memphis, Tennessee in the late 1970’s. (I was one of the token white members of the workshop.) I later became Etheridge Knight’s West Coast poetry tour coordinator and dedicated the poetry video, “What Memphis Needs,” to him.
Described in the poetry film’s abstract as providing “a searing cross-section of Memphis history and society,” the piece also features musical acts by Harmonikeys and Roosevelt Briggs. The production of “What Memphis Needs” runs parallel the blues documentary work Krasilovsky was doing at the time for the film Beale Street (1981. black and white, sound, 28 min). The filmmaker explains that, “It was an interview-intensive documentary with over a hundred hours of B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Ma Rainey II, Little Laura Dukes, Rufus Thomas, Nat D. Williams, Fred Hulbert, the Hooks Brothers, Ernest Withers, and many others who knew this 125th Street of the South, where Martin Luther King, Jr. last marched before he was assassinated. It was taking forever to complete (—although we did finally complete it: it’s available on Kanopy.com), and in the meantime, Eastman Kodak was offering free samples of a new 16mm film stock to select filmmakers to test out its color palette.” This is one reason why “What Memphis Needs” is marked not only by the rhythms and sounds of the blues but also by an iconic color palette.
Alexis Krasilovsky continues producing quality videopoems to this day, having recently collaborated with poet Rodger Kamenetz to create a film based on his poem, “Rafael,” originally published in his collection, The Missing Jew: Poems 1976-2022. The poem spoke to Krasilov on multiple levels because, as she explains, “Rodger’s poem is about the angel Rafael, but Rafael is also the name of my film company, and my middle name.” Krasilovsky continues:
I greatly enjoyed these experiences in collaborative poetry filmmaking. “Rafael” was awarded Best One-Minute Film at the Luis Buñuel Memorial Awards in Kolkata, India. “A Petal Pushed By a Breeze” won “Best Mobile Film” at the World Film Carnival in Singapore and other awards. And “Positive Thinking” won Best One-Minute Film at the Filmzen International Competition in Paris, France, as well as at the Cult Jury Film Festival in Gurgaon, India. “Positive Thinking” also won the “Free Speech” Award at the Gangtok International Film Festival in Goan, Sikkim, and was an official selection along with “A Petal Pushed by a Breeze” at the Crimean Tatar Cultural Center in Odesa, Ukraine on May 28, 2023.
In addition to producing videopoems, Alexis Krasilovsky is a screenwriter (member of the Writers Guild of America West) as well as the author of the book, Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling (Routledge – 2nd place winner, 2019 International Writers Awards). On an interesting note, one of her poems, “No Sex, No Violence,” which also came out of the Etheridge Knight Free People’s Poetry Workshop, is being made into a film. But, she explains, “rather than make a poetry film from my ‘No Sex, No Violence’ poem, I wrote a novel.” Krasilovsky is currently putting her expertise in screenwriting and adaptation to work as she adapts this novel, titled A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman. She explains,
I love the interfacing of visual media with written poetry,” and her recent book, Watermelon Linguistics: New and Selected Poems (Cyberwit: India – finalist, 2022 International Books Awards) “includes three short poems that are woven into the soundtrack of my 2021 poetry film, ‘The Parking Lot of Dreams,’ which is about the pandemic. The film’s visuals are collated from dozens of photocollages that I made in a deserted parking lot, which was the only safe place I could find to take walks during the early months of Covid.
For more information about Alexis Krasilovsky’s videopoems and books, please see www.alexiskrasilovsky.com and https://canyoncinema.com/catalog/filmmaker/?i=182
BIO: Alexis Krasilovsky was born in Alaska, survived sexual assault at gunpoint, and knows what it’s like to be completely deaf. After graduation from Yale and receiving an MFA at CalArts in Film/Video, Krasilovsky became an award-winning filmmaker and the author of “Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling” (– 2nd Place Winner, 2019 International Writers Awards). Her recent book, “Watermelon Linguistics: New and Selected Poems,” was a finalist for the 2022 International Book Awards. She also contributed to Reclamation: A Survivors Anthology and Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence. As writer/director, her films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art and in festivals around the world. Her recent poetry films won an Outstanding Achievement Award (Experimental Film) at the Tagore International Film Festival in India and the Best Original Concept Award (Experimental Film) at the Jane Austen International Film Festival in the UK, and other awards. Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center has called her “Southern California’s poetry video diva.”
