~ Nationality: United States ~
We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
A lot of kinetic type poetry animations don’t really say anything about the poem, I feel, so don’t make the cut here. This was an exception: somehow the colors, typography and design seemed just right. It’s by Tamisha Harris, “a designer, visual storyteller and a student at the London College of Communication [whose] creative practice revolves around graphic moving image.”
Another reading worth checking out is the one at Poets.org, in which Brooks discusses the background and reception of the poem in her introduction.
The Stockholm Syndrome by Howie Good
For his fourth film for a Howie Good poem, Swoon enlisted the help of a couple of other cameramen. Here are the credits as given in the film description on Vimeo:
Words and voice: Howie Good
Camera: Diego Diaz, Anthony Jackson and Swoon
Treats, editing and music: SwoonCredit and many thanks to: Diego Diaz (woman in shower) and Anthony Jackson (man on balcony) for their footage and great camerawork.
Howie sounds especially sinister slowed down like this. The stark black-and-white imagery and unusual wide-screen format are also a great fit with the poem, I thought.
The poem may be read online at Threatening Weather, the audio chapbook from Whale Sound.
on being constantly civil towards death by Nic S.
A new Moving Poems production in support of Nic S.’s chapbook Dark And Like a Web: Brief Notes On and To the Divine, which is available in a variety of media: online text with audio players; free downloads in MP3, PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats; audio CD and print-on-demand.
For links to more of Nic S.’s work, see her blog Very Like a Whale. Nic’s other online projects include the audio poetry journal Whale Sound and Whale Sound Audio Chapbooks. I blogged about the making of this video last night at Via Negativa, for anyone who’s interested in the process.
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.
Where Babies Come From by James Tate
James Tate probably needs no introduction, but check out his page at the Poetry Foundation to hear more audio of him reading his work.
Zachary Schomburg probably needs no introduction to fans of videopoetry, either, but here’s his new tumblelog. I am still anxiously awaiting the release of his poem-film Asteroid, a three-minute trailer for which he released six months ago, saying that the full-length film would be “Forthcoming from Rabbit Light Movies in June 2011.” That issue doesn’t appear to be online yet.
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.
My Father’s Advice by Howie Good
http://www.vimeo.com/24165960
A film called Parental Guidance by Belgian artist and composer Swoon, his third for a poem by Howie Good.
Manahatta by Walt Whitman
A dramatic reading by George Wallace, writer-in-residence at the Walt Whitman birthplace on Long Island, forms the soundtrack for this neon animation by Jack Feldstein. According to Feldstein’s Wikipedia page,
His trademark style is the “neonizing” of a combination of live action video recording and public domain material, particularly cartoons. “Neonizing” is a complex computer technique that renders the lines of an image to be like a neon sign. […]
Feldstein was a scriptwriter for many years before, as he puts it, he woke up one morning and began making neon films. In the 1990s he was instrumental in developing series for Australian television. He then went on to be Head Writer for Brilliant Digital Entertainment where he was involved in creating 3D computer animated multipath webisode series which included Xena-Warrior Princess, Superman and Ace Ventura.
He describes neon animation, (neonism)…as a deconstructionist, post-modern animation filmmaking style that utilises appropriation and pop art techniques in a ”Warhol meets Vegas” look. It is a stream-of-consciousness narrative with a cartoon aesthetic. Neonism takes modernist stream-of-consciousness filmmaking into a post-modern and humorous form.
Metempsychotic (reincarnated) modernism is another description of Feldstein’s neon animation aesthetic.
Neon animation has also been described as re-animation.
Dog Star Man by Howie Good
Update: Video has been made private.
Swoon‘s second film for a poem by Howie Good (look for the third here next week). I think the fugal structure works really well with this poem, especially in light of the last sentence:
You can hear if you really listen
the common names for things
weeping noisily beneath the music.
The poem appears in Lovesick from Press Americana (2009). Here’s a review.
Cold Poem by Mary Oliver
Some lines of Mary Oliver’s get what I like to think of as the film equivalent of the illuminated manuscript treatment from artist Stephen Ausherman — another in his “e-scape” series made during a residency at the C-Scape dune shack on the Cape Cod National Seashore.
the wanderer’s blessing by Nic S.
This new Moving Poems production features a poem and reading by Nic S. from her collection Forever Will End on Thursday. She blogged her reaction to the video here. “The wanderer’s blessing” originally appeared in the online journal Escape Into Life.
For more about Nic, including links to a number of her poems online, see the bio page at her blog.
