Concerning Melchior (a chain of things that make me warm) by Hilde Susan Jægtnes
A Poetry Storehouse poem by Norwegian poet Hilde Susan Jægtnes gets the Swoon treatment.
I used her reading to create this soundtrack [SoundCloud link]. For the visual part of the video I wanted a strong contrast between blurry images of light (filmed at an exhibition on the history of light design) and extreme close ups of human skin and hair. Trying to create a mix of sensuality and a weird sensation of fright. Alienated.
Nic S. has also made a video with this text, using her own voice in the soundtrack, but I can see why Swoon chose Jægtnes’ reading: she’s the rare example of a poet who’s also an excellent interpreter of her own work—which is especially impressive considering that English is, I assume, not her first language. She is the translator too, I think: the Poetry Storehouse bio indicates that she’s published a collection of English translations of prose poems drawn from her first two Norwegian collections.
A Day at the Mall Reminds Me of America by Sarah Blake
Motionpoems has just kicked off its 6th season with this tour de force from the Turkish-American filmmaker Ayse Altinok. The cinematography is by Greg Schmidt and the music by William Orbit.
Sarah Blake‘s poem appears in her debut collection Mr. West, an “unauthorized lyric biography of Kanye West” which Evie Shockley calls “tender without being sentimental, funny without being cruel, and obsessive without being exploitative.” Check out Arisa White‘s interviews with Blake and Altinok at the Motionpoems website. Blake says, in part:
I love the film. I felt like [Ayşe] made me a version of Kanye West’s music video for his song, ‘Flashing Lights’—a version of it just for me and my poem.
And Altinok notes that she deliberately chose a shorter poem with lots of room for cinematic exploration:
“Less words, more story” is very interesting to me in any discipline. I didn’t want to explain the poem, I wanted to duet the words and the meanings explored in the text. When I read the poem, I immediately saw the 14-year-old girl and her world. It wasn’t a struggle to bring her to life. It was a very relevant subject to me. I love youth culture and also visual poetry; this was a heavenly project. […]
After I read the poem I immediately started writing a script. It was more of a shot-list at first. I didn’t bother writing the happenings in a poetic way, I thought the poetry was already written by Sarah Blake, so I only put ideas on paper in a very practical manner. It was literally a list of scenes. I definitely knew my character needed to be the 14-year-old, rather than the woman who is the pregnant narrator. She didn’t seem too interesting to me, like myself—I can never make a film about me, but I want to make films about things I like. Rather, things I find fruitful (story-wise). I also thought my writing sucked, so at that point, I turned to photography. I started looking at pictures, mostly portraits, and created this character, and give her an identity. I felt very free—that was the best part of working with a poem.
In terms of script, though, I had to structure it in a way that felt compelling, and with a sense of beginning, middle, and end. It was a fragile story, I didn’t want to make a big statement, but I didn’t want to create just fluff, with a bunch of beautiful images and no thread, either—it was a gentle balance, not too much story that kills the poem, but not too freestyle that loses its meaning. I wanted people to feel what it’s like to live this character’s life, rather then me telling them how to.
Bees by Beverley Nadin
Kate Sweeney directed this film for Beverley Nadin’s Commended poem in the 2014 National Poetry Competition.
From the judges: ”This poem of historical abuse works powerfully because it’s written with a tremulous watchful grace. The adult perspective recalling the child perspective is very finely done, as the bifurcated character remembers the day that clove her in two. Its rhymes are halting, haunting, they come and go as if desperate both to remember and forget.” – Glyn Maxwell.
The Poetry Society’s annual National Poetry Competition is for previously unpublished single poems.
Filmpoems have been commissioned in partnership with Alastair Cook and Filmpoem for all eleven winning poems, and will tour at festivals around the country and beyond.
Considering Luminescence / Consideraciones Sobre la Luz by Laura M Kaminski
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Spanish filmmaker Eduardo Yagüe has once again taken the difficult route and produced two entirely different films for the English and Spanish versions of a text. The author is U.S. poet Laura M Kaminski. For Considering Luminescence, Yagüe used the voice recording by Maureen Alsop at The Poetry Storehouse and music by Fourhands Project, and worked with the actress Gabrielle Roy. Consideraciones Sobre la Luz features Yagüe’s own translation and voice, music by Martin Rach, and the actor Faustino Fernández. Both films were shot this May, the first in Madrid and the second in Gijón.
But tell me, who are they, these Travellers, by Tony Williams
Director Alan Fentiman worked with poet Tony Williams to produce a documentary on the relationship between dog-walking and writing, concluding with a poem that grew out of the film-making process. I first saw Roam to Write at the 2013 Filmpoem Festival in Dunbar, Scotland, and when I got back to the States I shared the link with some friends who study the literature of place but inexplicably forgot to share it here. It was brought back to mind by a new video released by the same two guys, a film of a pub discussion about poetry film, which I posted at Moving Poems Magazine on Sunday.
Roam to Write was funded by Northumbria University, where Williams is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing. Fentiman has a page about the film on his website:
“Roam to Write” is a short documentary film which I filmed, edited and produced in Alnwick Northumberland. The 15 minute film follows poet Tony Williams as he walks the same route over 5 days. Each day Tony addresses different aspects of the creative relationship between walking and writing.
I especially love working with artists and writers, and documenting their creative process. I want the audience to gain an understanding of how ideas develop and emerge through a piece of work. Working with Tony was a especially rewarding as we developed the idea for the film over many months. It allowed me time to absorb and reflect on Tony’s writing process and work out ways of showing this through film.
During filming Tony worked on a piece of poetry called “But tell me, who are they, these Travellers” which he performs at the end of the film. This poem reflects on his earlier observations about writing and walking.
I shot the the film over a week with a Panasonic AF101, a steadicam and a GH2. We developed the initial ideas during fireside discussions at The Tanners pub in Alnwick. Tony then wrote the script and together we developed the storyboard over egg and chip lunches and the odd evening pint. After logging the footage in Adobe Prelude, Tony sat with me throughout the editing process.
Williams expanded his thoughts into an open-access journal article, “The Writer Walking the Dog: Creative Writing Practice and Everyday Life.” Here’s the abstract:
Creative writing happens in and alongside the writer’s everyday life, but little attention has been paid to the relationship between the two and the contribution made by everyday activities in enabling and shaping creative practice. The work of the anthropologist Tim Ingold supports the argument that creative writing research must consider the bodily lived experience of the writer in order fully to understand and develop creative practice. Dog-walking is one activity which shapes my own creative practice, both by its influence on my social and cultural identity and by providing a time and space for specific acts instrumental to the writing process to occur. The complex socio-cultural context of rural dog-walking may be examined both through critical reflection and creative work. The use of dog-walking for reflection and unconscious creative thought is considered in relation to Romantic models of writing and walking through landscape. While dog-walking is a specific activity with its own peculiarities, the study provides a case study for creative writers to use in developing their own practice in relation to other everyday activities from running and swimming to shopping, gardening and washing up.
Green Enchantment (Verde Embeleso) by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
I made this video for a new series I’ve started at the literary blog Via Negativa, “Poetry from the Other Americas.” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is one of the greatest poets of the last 500 years, and it bothered me that I didn’t have anything of hers at Moving Poems yet. Luck was on my side, because (as is often the case with me) I shot the meadow footage without knowing how I’d use it. Then a few days later I found the translation in my files and the proverbial light bulb went off. Since this is a “green” poem, I suppose we should imagine an LED light. But as I said in my process notes at Via Negativa, verde or green has all kinds of connotations, including some that Sor Juana couldn’t have imagined in 1688, and I think it’s fine to suggest some of them in a contemporary videopoem. Through the choice of fonts and music, I tried to bridge the gap between the 17th and 21st centuries.
I also did something a little out of the norm for films/videos of poems in translation: I put the original language into subtitles and a reading of the translation in the soundtrack. To me, this approach makes sense if the primary audience is people who need the translation to understand the poem. Though I personally find reading subtitled movies very easy, I’m told that a lot of people have trouble with it, and in any case, most traditional poetry makes its strongest appeal to the ear, not to the eye. On the other hand, people in the target audience with hearing disabilities will not be well served by this approach.
The black-and-white footage is sourced from two television ads produced in the 1960s, found via the invaluable Prelinger Archives. The music is also in the public domain, courtesy of MusOpen. Thanks to Luisa A. Igloria for the terrific reading.
Part 5 by Claire Williams
Claire Williams is both poet and performer here—but this is not a performance-poetry video, as you’ll see. Cinematography, design and editing are by Etta Jaffe, with production assistance by Grace Williams.
Apology of Genius by Mina Loy
A blog post about modernists by Ira Lightman, current digital poet-in-residence at the Poetry School, made me realize I’d never posted anything by Mina Loy at Moving Poems. Searching Vimeo, I found this film by the Finnish videopoet J.P. Sipilä.
This film poem is based on a poem ‘Apology of Genius’ by Mina Loy. I have always read this poem as a poem against futurism, even Loy was herself considered as a futurist. It stand agains the rough and hard world where thoughts and time are replaced by power and speed. And this is something I have underlined on this film. This film poem is about inequality, about something that prevents us from understanding each other. It’s an apology of understanding.
The music is credited to Samuli Sailo, with additional sounds from freesound.org. Though the film uses a little less than half of Loy’s text, it strikes me as very true to her spirit. (Read the complete poem at allpoetry.com.)
I wonder what Loy would’ve thought of videopoetry? I’ve always loved her definition of poetry:
Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea.
Jeg sætter mig / I take a seat by Morten Søndergaard
Danish poet Morten Søndergaard‘s reading of his poem for Lyrikline, as well as the English translation there by John Irons, are featured in this videopoem by Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon, who writes:
A big thanks to Arjen Vandrie for being the recording engineer of the different instruments I mistreated in this track.
The visual idea for the video came to me when going through different sources looking for footage for another project.
I picked out pieces depicting several (powerful) forces in nature (water/waves, wind, lightning,…) and some with a clear human presence in it. One piece (The hand above the water) was the perfect carrier for the words. The repetition of that calming gesture worked perfectly with Morten’s voice.[…]
poem & voice: Morten Søndergaard
(from: Bier dør sovende – Copenhagen: Borgens Forlag, 1998)
Audioproduktion: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin 2008
Concept, editing, treats & music: SWOON
recording engineer music: Arjen Vandrie
Cinematography: cinematography: Sarah Lee (from ‘Under The Sea’)
Leonard Soosay (from ‘For Benny’) – Michael Raiden (from ‘ A Quick Hour’)
under the Attribution license (CC BY 3.0)
Thanks; Orange HD, videoblocks, Mazwai, Lyrikline
Surprisingly, I’ve never shared a Danish poetry film here before—this is the first. I hope it won’t be the last. (I’d love to see a filmmaker do something with Henrik Nordbrandt’s poetry, for example.)
