Swoon’s latest in his series of videos for poems by Howie Good is something a bit different: a short called “Not Again (Pripyat),” using footage of the abandoned city in the Chernobyl evacuation zone, with Howie’s text appropriated for a kind of surreal documentary. Let me quote the description on Vimeo for the credits and such:

The images in the film are footage from a film about Pripyat (credit to Golden Movies Productions,2009)

Images before the disaster at the nuclear plant, images of the evacuation of the town, images of the ghost town now. Hence the title of the film, Not Again.

Although the poem by Howie is about other things and places, I wanted the images from Pripyat [to] add another dimension to the story, the poem, the atmosphere of the whole film.

Words: Howie Good
Voice: Nic S. for Whale Sound
Concept, videotreats, editing and music: Swoon

“An armed man lurks in ambush” is the title poem of a full-length collection forthcoming from Despertanto (who also published Howie’s third book, Everything Reminds Me of Me, back in March). The text of the poem may be read on a site Swoon has set up for the texts used in all his videopoems to date, as well as in the Whale Sound audio chapbook, Threatening Weather, in which it originally appeared.