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.
A brilliant musical adaptation and video remix of A.S. Kline’s English translation of Mallarmé’s poem by D. Estrada, AKA Vox Poesis (YouTube, Instagram, Bandcamp). The sped-up images of water have a propulsive force to match the music and intoned text, for an effect that’s at once meditative and unsettling—as the poet probably would’ve wanted.
Pattern noster is a video poem about the importance and influence of patterns. Whatever the figure, the infinite is only a sequenced series of textures.
Be sure to click the CC icon if you need the rough-and-ready English translation.
Bobie is a videopoet from Provence with an active online presence and a growing body of interesting work. I’m not sure why it’s taken us this long to feature his work at Moving Poems. He’s had an interesting trajectory as a culture worker, according to the bio on his website:
My apprenticeship began with writing and drawing. In 1994 I started a garage punk band (Mike Hey No More). Then in 2004 I discovered the dialogue between words, sounds and images on stage within the multimedia trio Ana. Since then, I explore works where the verb surveys different media: stage (Printemps des poètes, BPI Pompidou, Capc Bordeaux, Jimmachine’s tour in Japan, …), devices (Chevaux 2 Vent, Viral…) and exhibitions (Couper-coller, Frgmts collective). In recent years I have mainly devoted myself to collages and video poetry.
Or as he put it on Vimeo,
I write without being a writer. I make collages, without being a visual artist. I make video poems, without being a director. I imagine and play music too. Anyway, poetry remains my path. From my media experience, I have kept a taste for short and incisive forms.
Seattle’s Cadence Video Poetry Festival has kicked off for 2020. The event has been rapidly moved online this year, evolving with world circumstances. Each of the programs are being made available for viewing at any time during a series of 24-hour slots, from 15-19 April 2020. So far I have seen just the first program, Sight Lines, and was rewarded with some outstanding films.
To give readers a sense of the high quality of the programming, I am sharing T.I.A. (THIS is Africa). It is a collaboration between director Matthieu Maunier-Rossi and poet Ronan Cheneau. Congolese dancer and choreographer, Aïpeur Foundou, is a compelling, dancing presence throughout this moving film.
Tickets to the remaining four sessions of the festival are on a ‘pay as you can’ basis (from $0 upwards). See the Cadence website for more information.
Announcements of winners of the different competition categories are spread out over the five days, one or two revealed in the video intros at the start of each day’s program.
German film-maker Patrick Müller here adapts to the screen Charles Baudelaire‘s poem, “L’homme et la mer (Man and the Sea)”, from the poet’s most famous collection, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), first published in 1857. This is his second adaptation of a Baudelaire poem, after Le Chat (2013).
The piece displays a distinctive approach by the film-maker, who shot it on the tiny and mostly obsolete super 8 celluloid format, popularised as a home movie medium from the time of its release by Eastman Kodak in 1965. Müller’s artisanal work includes hand-processing the film himself, then transferring it to the high-quality 4K video format for completion. This combination of analogue and digital creates uniquely beautiful images, with the sensuality of the film grain rendered in uncharacteristic clarity, and the choices in colour grading adding further to the poetry of the visual stream.
The softness and quiet passion of Müller’s voice entices us inwards to the text and the film. As with Caroline Rumley’s, Open Season, shared on Moving Poems yesterday, the soundtrack of L’homme et la mer is punctuated by sudden breaks to silence, as if to give moments of contemplation before beginning anew with the next fragment of the film.
The French-English translation of the poem in the subtitles is by Lewis Piaget Shanks (1878-1935).
Müller’s detailed process notes on the film may be read at filmkorn.org.
This film version of an Henri Michaux poem by Francois Vogel was one of my favorites at the 2014 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. The program description:
A whimsical look at movement in the city. While reciting the poem, Francois Vogel »walks grainy« on the stairs of Montmartre, in Paris.
For this version, Vogel recites an English translation of the poem, but if you know French, the original is also on Vimeo.
(Hat-tip: ZEBRA Poetry Film Club.)
A charming animation made for French television in 2014 by Caroline Lefèvre. (There’s also a version without subtitles.) It’s one of thirteen shorts made by different directors for the collection “En Sortant de L’École,” a televised tribute to Prévert. For more on the making of Âne Dormant, see the blog.
And I return, a shadow on the white ground,
To your sleep that haunts my memory,
I pluck you from your dream, which scatters,
Being only water filled with light.
To mark the July 1 death of the great Yves Bonnefoy, Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon made public what he called “an older (and personal) videopoem, never released before,” featuring his own reading of Bonnefoy’s poem “La Branche” in a Dutch translation by Jan H. Mysjkin with the English translation by Alison Croggon in subtitles.
https://vimeo.com/151340667
A fascinating, silent-film-style theatrical interpretation of Baudelaire by Ryan Kiggell of aya theatre company and Olivia Rose of GoodDog theatre company.
A fool, marked to die by a capricious king, is made to perform for the last time. A re-working of the prose poem by Charles Baudelaire; a modern parable on the place of art within the landscape of power and wealth. Both film and theatre, the piece was devised and filmed on a single evening in a public square in Paris.
Made by Ryan Kiggell and Olivia Rose, with GoodDog Theatre Co.
Produced by George Moustakas for aya and Green Rooms.“An Heroic Death” forms part of a longer film, “The Last Songs of Lucan”, based on the poetry collection “Le Spleen de Paris” by Charles Baudelaire. This is a 17 minute silent film accompanied by live percussion by Jamie Misselbrook.
I don’t usually share poetry films or videos that include so little of the referenced poem, but this piece really captured the essence of Baudelaire’s melancholy text, I thought. Two English translations of “Une Mort Héroïque” are available online through Google Books, one by Aleister Crowley and another by Louise Varèse.
An animation of Desnos’ poem produced for French television by Emma Vakarelova.