Posts By Dave Bonta
Only by Rebecca Foust
A poetry film by interdisciplinary artist Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş based on the title poem of Rebecca Foust‘s seventh book, Only (Four Way Books, 2022). Kevin Martinez was the videographer. It was shot at Limantour Beach, California in April 2023.
The publisher’s description does make the book sound intriguing:
Urgent from the outset, Rebecca Foust’s ONLY insists that the only thing worth writing about is everything. Prompted to confront what she does not know, the speaker lists, “Null. All. What’s after death or before.” This book scales the cliff-face of adulthood, that paradoxical ascent in which the longer we live the less we know of life, in which we find that each of us is only ourselves and yet delicately interconnected with everyone, everything, else. These candid lyrics ponder our broken political systems, family (dys)function and parenting challenges, divergent and intersecting identities, the complexities of sexuality and gender, natural refuge and climate catastrophe, and in general what it means to be human in a world that sometimes feels as if it is approaching apocalypse. At the ledge of this abyss, however, Foust reminds us of the staggering beauty of life, the legacies of survival in the echoes of care that outlast us: “I came / to the canyon rim and saw // how best to carry you: I let the stone go.”
Witte Vlag/White Flag by Pat van Boeckel and Pieter van de Pol with Peter Verhelst
Belgian poet Peter Verhelst is the author of the four lines of poetry recited in the film, but I had to include the filmmakers in the title as well because their symbolic, Tarkovsky-influenced style is at least as central to the poetry of the film. Pat van Boeckel is a regular at Moving Poems, and many of his best films spring from other artists’ projects or exhibitions, as this one did. His fellow Dutch artist Pieter van de Pol, who’s the actor in the film, I think, is involved in something called the White Flag Art Project based in Essen, Germany and coordinated by artist Katharina Lökenhoff: “An international art project exploring the white flag meeting global contemporary challenges.” Peter Broderick composed the music.
As an older white male poet myself, watching this led me to ponder the relationship between the Romantic ideal of a heroic lone creator and the larger capitalist culture, its production of ruin in the course of a consumerist atomization of society, and how the apocalypses we conjure in our imaginations have their own daimonic power. None of these lessons are necessarily implicit in the film; I bring them up merely as a way of saying how thought-provoking I find this contemplative style of poetry filmmaking.
Afterimages by Mackenzie Duan
I love everything about this animation by Evan Bode, though the first time I watched I wasn’t completely sold on the high school-aged poet Mackenzie Duan’s voiceover. On second viewing, I changed my mind, discovering, as Bode evidently did, that a youthful lack of assertiveness can code as sincerity and a kind of wisdom when one absorbs it in the overall context of the sound design, the intense colors, and most importantly the gorgeous lines of poetry. The film was created for Season 4 of the literary magazine Counterclock‘s Patchwork: Film x Poetry project,
a nine-week interdisciplinary arts fellowship open to filmmakers and poets. Filmmakers and poets are paired together to create original film-poems, or short films inspired by poetry. In the first half of the fellowship, each poet works to produce an original poem informed by both their and their partner’s creative interests; in the second half of the fellowship, each filmmaker works with their partner to adapt their partner’s poem into a short film.
Visit the film’s page at Counterclock to read the poem and bios. Here’s a snippet from the former:
Behind us, the hills
slope in brushstrokes over a lake,
soft and washed out, like the placefires go after burning.
Our bodies become stations of lightwhen the sun dips.
Crossing to Ireland by Jean Maskell
I always tend to feel that poetry animations are best at their most abstract and minimalistic—depending on the poem, of course. This animation by Rachel McMahon AKA RaeRae won the audience award at the Liverpool Celtic Animation Festival. It’s a collaboration with Jean Maskell, “a multi-disciplinary artist and writer inspired by contemporary and historic social issues and the natural world,” who provided the voiceover and text: a poem “about the conflicting emotions of feeling a part of two countries.” Perhaps it is that sense of a provisional existence that makes the kind of tentative approach to the animation—lines drawn and undrawn on white space with a paper grain—such a good fit.
Cuando Fui Clandestino / When I Was Clandestine by Juan Garrido Salgado
This recent collaboration between Chilean poet Juan Garrido Salgado and Australian filmmaker Ian Gibbins incorporates other texts in the process of evoking quite different places from where the film was shot, which could’ve gone wrong in so many ways, I was astonished by how well this all works—how authentic everything feels. Ian has posted some process notes which are worth sharing in full:
Juan Garrido Salgado immigrated to Australia from Chile in 1990, fleeing the Pinochet regime that burned his poetry, imprisoned him, and tortured him for his political activism. Since then, his poetry has been widely published to acclaim, and includes eight books, anthologies and translations. His readings are renowned for their passion and dedication to social justice. His latest collection, The Dilemma of Writing a Poem, has just been published by Puncher & Wattman.
Some time ago, we decided to make a video of one of his poems. It was a hard choice, but we settled on Cuando Fui Clandestino / When I Was Clandestine from his collection of the same title, published in 2019 by Rochford Press. The poem is strongly autobiographical and refers to time he spent in Moscow as well as living under curfew in Chile.
Making the video was a challenge. It was not possible for me to film in Russia or Chile, and, in any case, the political and social changes have been so great in each country, it was not clear what footage would be appropriate. We could have used archival footage in the public domain, but, in general, I prefer to use my own original footage in my work. Given that Juan has lived in Adelaide for many years now, we decided that I would film sites around the city that reflected the mood of his original experiences, while being clearly set in a contemporary context. All the footage was taken at night at locations I know well. A few scenes have been composited from more than one site. We went back to a key location not far from where Juan lives to film him there after dark with his poetry.
The music is an original composition, written and performed by Juan’s son, Lenin Garrido. After a small amount of editing, the structure of the music ended up being a key element in pulling together the various components of the video.
The language of the poem is complex. Although it is published in Spanish and English, we decided to have the spoken word element only in Spanish. A truly bi-lingual version would have been ideal, but we decided it was not necessary this time.
Part of the complexity of the poem relates to its references to the work of other poets: Nicanor Parra, Pablo Neruda, Vladimir Mayakovski and musician Violetta Parra. In recognition of the use of public walls for propaganda, advertising, street art and protest, excerpts from the poems referred to in Juan’s text appear on dark walls, in different languages, alongside public domain portraits of the authors. These are the poems and their sources (click on the texts for relevant links):
El Premio Nobél
Nicanor Para: Antipoems – How to Look Better and Feel Great
New Directions 2004Домой! (Homeward!)
Vladimir Mayakovsky: Maximum Access
Sensitive Skin Books 2018Oda al Hombre Sencillo
Pablo Neruda: Odas Elementales
Editorial Losada 1954
