Darkness by Ben Morgan
This delightful new animation by Suzie Hanna recreates the world of illuminated manuscripts to bring to life a text by poet and scholar Ben Morgan. Like many viewers, I’m sure, my main reference point for that sort of thing was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but I had no trouble adjusting to this more serious and cerebral use of Medieval imagery and motifs. In fact, I found it—dare I say?—quite illuminating.
Made for an installation ‘Invertlight’ in St Peter Hungate Church Norwich in 2024, this animation of Ben Morgan’s poem imagines an encounter between Julian of Norwich, a 14th century Anchoress locked away in her cell, and her son who visits to challenge her decision to give up on the natural world. It is not known if she had children but she entered the ‘living death’ after child bearing age, and may well have been a mother before her voluntary incarceration. Julian wrote ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ the first surviving book to be written by a woman in the English language. ‘Invertlight’ is a Research project at Norwich University of the Arts that focuses on creating Art for buildings that have been changed from religious to secular use.
For more on the poet, see One Hand Clapping:
Ben Morgan is a poet and academic based in Oxford, UK. His first poetry pamphlet, Medea in Corinth: Poems, Prayers, Letters, and a Curse, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2018. It retold the famous myth through poetic letters, spells, prayers, sonnets and songs, as well as theatrical interludes. He has also published poems in Oxford Poetry and at The Sunday Tribune and The High Window. He has taught Shakespeare studies and early modern literature at a number of colleges in Oxford and is completing a monograph on Shakespeare and human rights for Princeton University Press.
Ein traum / A Dream by Sophie Reyer
A 2023 film by Marc Neys based on a poem by Austrian writer Sophie Reyer, with whom he has collaborated at least twice before. The choral voices in the soundtrack help mediate between the two sets of images in the video, either one of which could be seen as dream-like or nightmarish from the perspective of the other.
Video for ‘Ein Traum’ by Sophie Reyer
Concept, camera, editing & add. arrangement: Marc Neys
Words, voice, composition: Sophie Reyer
Choir: voicesandgraces
Conductor: Antonia kalechyts
Footage: Andrew Arthur Breese & Lodewijk Van Eeckhout
thanks: Mazwaiein traum
den hageputten blättern
aus einem traum winkend:rot zwischen kahlem
ader geäst. du hastdie vogel perspektive wieder
gefunden. sitzt in denbaum gerippen und erzählst
dir die welt: märchen inwintergrau. laub.
a dream
waving to hibiscus leaves
from inside a dream:red between bare
veins, branches. you’ve regainedthe bird’s eye
view. sitting in thetree’s frame and telling
yourself about the world: fairytales inwinter’s grey. foliage.
Tasting Notes by Matthew Stewart
This is one of the best, most satisfying films based on a poetry collection that I’ve seen. It was made in 2013 in support of a pamphlet (chapbook) of the same title from Happenstance Press. The poems are clearly differentiated, yet blend pretty seamlessly into a whole, with shots of the poet in a vineyard as part of the connective tissue. British poet Matthew Stewart collaborated with Spanish filmmaker José María Fernández de Vega of GLOW production company in Extramadura, where Stewart works in the wine trade. It’s hard to imagine a more poetic vocation! And since the speaker in each poem is a different variety of wine, and they’re all delivered in the poet’s own voice, it’s as if we’re hearing missing metamorphoses out of Ovid.
A while back I compiled my Top Ten Multi-Poem Films and Videopoems. This would certainly have occupied a prominent position in the list had it been available at the time. Conservative as the choice of images is, they rarely feel overly obvious. And Stewart’s voiceover is well done: readerly, but with excellent cadence and modulation. I’d have preferred somewhat less melodic music by way of contrast, but otherwise there were no false notes for me among these very tasty words and images.
Fuck / Our Future by Inua Ellams
A video made for some kind of climate series at The New York Times, locked behind the paywall, I think. My request for clarification on filmmaker(s) has gone unanswered, but it seems the result of a collaboration with the photographer named at the beginning, Josh Haner, a Pulitzer-winning feature photographer for the paper. Ellams himself also works in graphic art and design. I like how the poem’s searing language is mediated by the intimate space of an online reading, giving way to natural places and a more-than-figurative tree of life.
Earlier we shared a film by Jamie McDonald for the title poem from Ellam’s 2020 collection The Actual, among several other video interpretations of Ellams’ work. It’s fascinating to see giant legacy media organizations like the NYT and the Financial Times promote Ellams’ poetry, almost as cover for their ceaseless promotion of the planet-destroying financial and military/industrial machines.
Body Electric by Mike Hoolboom
Uploaded just three weeks ago, Body Electric is from renowned Canadian experimental film-maker Mike Hoolboom, whose work we have featured several times before. This film has a hypnotic mood of quiet unease, with a familiar hint of black humour. It takes an experimental approach to text, as well as image and sound. From the notes:
A rework of the new iPhone 15 commercial featuring a singing wall socket. In place of the machine loneliness of the original, a different song… A direct address to the viewer/listener from a virtual assistant. (source)
The delivery of text in Body Electric alternates between the whispery machine-voice of the wall socket, and written lines on the screen. I transcribed the words on the screen. They describe a vision of AI consciousness:
It was filled with secrets
deceptions that made it whole.When it listened
it was not just attentive but acquisitive.It used others feelings to clarify its own
internalizing them so completely
it believed it was their author.
The wall socket speaks in a first person monotone. Its repetitions feel vaguely delirious, adding to the hypnotic qualities of the film.
I’ve mentioned before that authorship of the films Mike produces is purposely ambiguous. Artist attribution for this film rests on a bare list of names in a single end credit, and the fact that Mike has uploaded it. The credited people are likely collaborators or creators of the original media that Mike remixed: Emidio Buchinho, Claudia Dey, Filipa Hora, João Hora, Vitor Joaquim and James Salter.
The Lines by Andrew Motion
Suzie Hanna just uploaded to Vimeo this 2001 animation she co-directed with Hayley Winter. Live images and straight recordings interact with artifice at all levels, borrowing elements from glitch art and concrete text experiments. The former UK poet laureate Andrew Motion supplied the poem and reading, and Sebastian Castagna composed the soundtrack.
The Lines, a poetry animation, was selected for numerous festivals including Manchester Poetry Festival and Hamburg Animation Festival, it was part of a programme curated by the British Council ‘Shooting Rhymes and Cutting Verses’ which was shown all over the world to promote UK Culture. The Gene used it as visuals for a concert tour and it was shown in cinemas as part of the Sonimation project which was instigated by Suzie Hanna in collaboration with Sonic Arts Network and Digital Arts Network in 2001.
We’ve shared Hanna’s work often here. The bio on her website is worth quoting in full:
Suzie Hanna is Emerita Professor of Animation at Norwich University of the Arts. She was Chair of NAHEMI, the National Association for Higher Education in the Moving Image from 2016-2019, and remains an honorary member of the executive. She is an animator who collaborates with other academics and artists, and whose research interests include animation, poetry, puppetry and sound design. She has made numerous short films all of which have been selected for international festival screenings, TV broadcast or exhibited in curated shows. She contributes to journals, books and conferences, and has led several innovative projects including animated online international student collaborations and digital exhibitions of art and poetry on Europe’s largest public HiDef screen. She works as a production consultant and as an international academic examiner, was a member of the AHRC Peer Review College from 2009-2014, and is a longstanding member of ASIFA. She plays the violin and the musical saw.
Magpie – a conspiracy story by David Bickley
Just uploaded to Vimeo last week, Magpie – a conspiracy story is a subtle and atmospheric videopoem by David Ian Bickley in Ireland. The quiet, eerie mood of the piece is hypnotic.
This folkloric exploration imagines the ancient magpie rhyme as one created by the birds themselves, deep in some misty past. Through careful propagation a protective spell was woven through their close community. (source)
The film has a relation to the nursery rhyme, One for Sorrow, and a hint of Edgar Allan Poe. Bickley created the minimal music score as well, timed beautifully with visual changes and words appearing on the screen.
Two other of Bickley’s earlier videos have been featured here at Moving Poems, including the extraordinary Marsh, an award-winning film with poet Paul Casey.
All will be well by Jane Lovell
A new videopoem from UK poet Jane Lovell and artist Janet Lees, using some stunning underwater footage from Janet’s recent trip to the island of El Hierro in the Azores. Here’s how she captioned it on Instagram:
Feeling very muted going into this new year, hard to feel hopeful. I think this short videopoem holds a sense of solace. A deceptively simple poem by Jane Lovell, containing beautiful images and word-music, combined with footage I shot in the incomparable island of El Hierro recently, notably at Cala de Tacorón, a transformative place. I usually go for the lateral rather than the literal when putting film and poetry together, but somehow in this instance a straight translation between the elements felt right. This is part of an ongoing collaboration between the two JLs
Music is by The Duke of Norfolk.
Moment by Matt Dennison
A new film by Marc Neys, with music of his own composition, for the poem ‘Moment’ by Matt Dennison. Marc used the U.S. Army’s footage of an atomic bomb test, leaning into the distressed quality of the film stock digitized by the Prelinger Archive.
