Lament For Graham Parkinson by Karl Parkinson
An intense, affecting videopoem from Irish poets Karl Parkinson (text, voiceover) and Dave Lordan (video), along with musicians Conor O’Connor, Claus Jensen and Charlotte Hamel from The King Mob. Parkinson wrote about the making of the videopoem for The Irish Times. The poem came first, arising from his grief at the death of his nephew Graham from cancer at the age of 21.
Graham was my sister Elaine’s only child, and he grew up living alongside me in the same flat in O’Devaney Gardens, on Dublin’s northside. With him being an only child, and me having no brothers, we formed a very special bond during his short life. After his death, I wanted, as a writer, to create something beautiful and lasting in his memory, and eventually wrote a long elegiac poem about his fight with cancer, and also my own grief for his passing.
He studied the canon, re-reading the great “poem[s] of elegy and mourning, especially from one male on the death of another male.” The resulting poem
was first broadcast on RTÉ’s Arena arts show, on the first anniversary of Graham’s death, and recently published in my collection Butterflies Of A Bad Summer (Salmon Poetry). But I felt that the best way to honour Graham’s memory was to make a video poem, to take it to a larger audience, particularly those in my own community, the Dublin council estates, and inner-city working class, where to be honest poetry books are not big sellers.
[…]
The video draws on new technology and on the history of avant-garde cinema/film, especially modernist experiments of the 1920s and ’30s. It’s a 16-minute long piece in which we tried to push the video-poem tradition at least a small bit in the way of serious artistic expression. We hoped to merge the old poetic tradition of elegy and lament with the new and very exciting medium of indie video art, now open to almost any artist in the western world, at a relatively small expense, compared to what it would have cost 20 years ago. I feel, and hope, that we have done justice to Graham’s life, struggle and memory with something that may have a lasting appeal for others that have been affected by cancer, or any other life-stealing disease, or by the loss of someone young and dear to them.
THESAURUS dot COM by Kassy Lee
Narrative poetry film done right: Kassy Lee‘s quiet, devastating poem, which originally appeared in Apogee Journal, has been turned into a film by Michelle Cheripka for the Visible Poetry Project.
Die Angst des Wolfs vor dem Wolf / The wolf fearing the wolf by Stefan Petermann
This stunning German poetry film from poet Stefan Petermann and director Juliane Jaschnow is the Film of the Month at Poetryfilmkanal, where it’s written up (in English) by Marc Neys AKA Swoon. He calls attention to
A poem that seems written for the film rather than the other way around. Unless they came together in the process of the making and collaboration, in which case they did a perfect job reinforcing each other ideas. The poem seems to struggle to comply with the imposed visual frame and rubs frantically against the borders of that frame. Like a caged animal looking for a way out. That struggle makes the poem stronger and gives it a strong sense of urge. A narrative poem full of imagination is visually retranslated in an original way.
The Shrouding of the Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
Filmmaker Devansh Agarwal and singer-songwriter Sonali Argade collaborated on a music video-like poetry film of John Webster’s 17th-century poem for the Visible Poetry Project. Argade is also the actress. Her musical interpretation appears to be a cover of the 1924 Peter Warlock composition, from his 3 Dirges of Webster, now in the public domain. Here’s a more standard performance by the Baccholian Singers of London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzNavCXcghg
Wishes for Mom by Sojourner Ahebee
Sojourner Ahebee‘s words meet Reva Santo‘s filmmaking, with actress Alana Ogio and a score by Avila Santo, in today’s film from the Visible Poetry Project, a NYC-based initiative to produce a poetry film for every day of April. I’ve been remiss in sharing their videos here, but expect at least 75 percent of them to appear on Moving Poems eventually, because the quality has been really high so far, and they’ve been amazingly varied, as well. I also like the project’s openness to emerging as well as accomplished poets from all walks of life; they had an open call for submissions back in January.
You can watch all the videos on their website or Vimeo page, and/or attend one of the live screenings still upcoming in Brooklyn, Manhattan, upstate New York, or Beijing. Here’s how they describe the project on their About page:
The Visible Poetry Project brings together a collective of filmmakers to create a series of videos that present poems as short films. Drawing from works created by renowned poets, including Neil Gaiman and Tato Laviera, as well as emerging poets, the Visible Poetry Project strives to make poetry accessible, exploring how we can recreate and experience poems through the medium of film.
Throughout the month of April – National Poetry Month – we will release one visual poem each day at 9 AM EST. An exercise in translation and a reclamation of both poetic and film discourses, the resulting thirty videos will explore how we read, interpret, visualize, and hear poetry.
The Visible Poetry Project is no longer accepting submissions from poets and filmmakers for the 2017 series. We will reopen for 2018 submissions in December 2017. If you would like to be involved with the Visible Poetry Project, or have any questions about our organization, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at visiblepoetryproject@gmail.com.
Coventry Glossolalia by Martin Green
An experimental videopoem from Martin Green (text, voiceover) and filmmaker Emily Wright, one of the 27 poetry films produced for the Disappear Here project focused on the ringroad around Coventry, UK. Every week another three films appear on the project blog, together with biographies of those involved. This was my favorite of the three films by Green and Wright featured on April 2; I thought that the recitation of vehicle registration plate codes as if they were text gained a peculiar pathos from the conjunction with a stained-glass-like video collage of the ringroad map.
Wright’s bio states that “Brutalist architecture is a strong inspiration for her work as she is interested in drawing attention to anything unpopular and unloved.” And Green is described as more of an artist than a poet, whose “work explores joining sculpture, writing and performance together.” (This is especially evident in “T“.) Read — and watch — the rest.
Mondes / Worlds by Jean Coulombe
It never fails: I take a week off and a tsunami of great new material hits. Let’s start with this videopoem by Québécois poet Jean Coulombe (text and images) and Gilbert Sévigny (montage and video treatment), with piano by Vincent Gagnon. It’s one of several recent additions to the Coulombe Larose-Samson (AKA CLS Poésie) Vimeo page. I especially like the contrast between the contemplative pacing of words and images and the frenetic soundtrack here.
application for the position of abdelhalim hafez’s girl by Safia Elhillo
Motionpoems’ latest poetry film is directed by Donna Lamar using a poem from Safia Elhillo‘s collection January Children. The Sudanese-American poet stars in the film.
Apartment 15 by Josh Jacobs
A brief but effective film combining animation and live action by Atlanta-based motion graphics artist Liah Honeycutt, who notes in the Vimeo description that this is
A second installation of my visual poem series in which I team up with poet Josh Jacobs and bring his written word to life. I allowed myself to feel insecure and uncomfortable by including my own face and body in this piece (something I loathe) in order to connect a little deeper with the overall tone of isolation, inadequacy, and insecurity found in the poem and, to be honest, in my own life.
The first short animation in the series, Goldfish, is also worth checking out.
