Posts By Marie Craven

Hidden Life by Elina Petrova

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Hidden Life is written and spoken by Ukrainian-born Elina Petrova, now in Houston, USA. The film is by Chap Edmonson, a native of that city. The film was in part inspired by Terrence Malick’s 2019 feature film A Hidden Life, a favorite for both poet and film-maker. The epigraph to that film is a line from George Eliot’s classic novel Middlemarch:

…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Petrova’s bio gives her home town as Donetsk, stating that “she became an American citizen in 2014, but remains a citizen of the world.” Also from her bio:

A frequent Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the post of Houston Poet Laureate in 2015… She was appointed Austin International Poetry Fest’s Featured Poet in 2019 and has been featured in the Huffington Post’s “Five Poets You Need to Know About” as one of Houston’s important emerging poets.

Chap Edmonson’s bio from the film’s notes at YouTube:

Chap Edmonson is an award-winning filmmaker based in Houston. His films have been screened in Cannes, Paris, Alfred, Los Angeles, and Houston (Calm Remains, 2021, and You are Art, 2019). Chap’s work is rooted in a deep desire to connect with those who have come before him. Through the use of unconventional compositions and soundscapes, he creates films that tell dynamic stories of a rich history, the future, and points where they intersect.

He is interviewed about the film here.

The film was produced in association with Aurora Picture Show and Public Poetry Houston, which runs the yearly REELpoetry film festival.

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

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Naomi Shihab Nye reads her own deep and beautiful poem Kindness in this excellent animated film by Ana Pérez López, a Spanish illustrator living in London. Sound and music are by Chris Heagle. The piece is from a series of poetry films produced by the On Being Project. Others from the series have previously been featured here at Moving Poems.

Singularity by Marissa Davis

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Singularity is a wonderful animated film from UK artist Lottie Kingslake and US poet Marissa Davis. Featuring a marvelous spoken and musical voice performance by the multi-talented Toshi Reagon, the film is a touching ode to life’s interconnections.

Produced by the On Being Project, it was also a part of Maria Popova‘s project The Universe in Verse.

The poem can be read towards the bottom of this page at Popova’s website The Marginalian.

Sonnet 66 by Luke Kennard

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Sonnet 66 is an animated film by Jamie MacDonald from a poem by Luke Kennard, commissioned by UK publishing and performance project Penned in the Margins.

The film was made to coincide with the launch of Kennard’s poetry collection Notes on the Sonnets, which went on to win the 2021 Forward Prize. A description of the collection:

Notes on the Sonnets… recasts Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets as a series of anarchic prose poems set in the same joyless house party.

The writing in Sonnet 66 is witty and elusive, and the film animation is cleverly simple. The whole is amusing and compelling in its short duration.

Two other films by Jamie MacDonald have previously featured here at Moving Poems.

Un Corpo / A Body by Milena Tipaldo

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Italian artist Milena Tipaldo animates her own line-sketch illustrations for Un Corpo / A Body, a film she also wrote. Widely screened at international festivals, it won the Jury Award for Best Animation in the 2022 Weimar Poetry Film Awards in Germany. A synopsis:

What’s a body? And what’s the difference between a human body, an animal body, a fruiting body, and a celestial body? A voice-over using puns drives you through the life of many bodies and their common destiny.

As with her earlier Ode all’ansia / Ode to Anxiety, the playful sound and music score is by French artist Enrico Ascoli.

Gethsemane by Toby Martinez de las Rivas

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Gethsemane is one in an ongoing series of films from Jane Glennie, made in collaboration with fellow UK poet Toby Martinez de las Rivas, and Bulgarian sound artist Neda Milenova Mirova. This poem is from the collection Floodmeadow, published earlier in 2023 by Faber.

All films in the series take an experimental approach, including layered and truncated voices, gritty sound and music, and still images animated in darkly expressive ways. The three collaborators seem artistically well-matched, the writing, sound and film-making coherently meeting. Another highlight from the series is Psalm-for-the Sea, Little Sea-Psalm.

Jane Glennie currently has a solo exhibition happening over August and September in the Art at the ARB program of University of Cambridge. Gethsemane and the other films in the series form part of the exhibition, along with her award-winning
Because Goddess is Never Enough.

We have previously featured several other of her films here. In addition, Jane regularly posts about film festivals and more at Moving Poems Magazine.

The World by Rumi

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The World is an animated film by Ella Dobson from writing by the Persian mystic Jalal ad-Din Rumi, who is widely known simply as Rumi (1207-1273). The words are spoken beautifully by contemporary Iranian academic Fatemeh Keshavarz, who also was translator. Sound and music are by Chris Heagle.

This is a one in a series of poetry films produced by the On Being Project, a non-profit initiative. Another video from the series was earlier featured here at Moving Poems, from Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things.

The Grains Are Rough Here by Claire Rosslyn Wilson

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A poetry film in eight parts, The Grains Are Rough Here is by Australian-born writer, film-maker, researcher and editor, Claire Rosslyn Wilson. Footage and sound were collected in Melbourne, Chiang Mai, Singapore and Barcelona, the latter her current place of residence.

In the video notes she describes the film as “a suite of 8 videopoems”. Indeed, each of the eight parts could stand alone, but I find them cohesive as a single film. The intertwining of personal and political reflection is emotionally affecting. Rhythmic repetitions of words, phrases and lines deepen the sense and impact of the text. The effective editing of images and sounds suggests an experienced film-maker.

Wilson speaks her own poetry in the film, accompanied by subtitles. To some this may seem unnecessary doubling up. But I enjoyed being able to visually read the poetry at will, as well as to hear it, allowing different perspectives on the writing. The 13-minute duration invites an easy shifting of focus across each element of the film.

From the ‘About‘ section of her website:

I take an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach that explores creative ways to look closely at the world around us. This stems from my personal experience working in a number of cultures (Australia, Spain, Thailand, Singapore), which has given me an appreciation for the importance of an open and multifaceted worldview, necessary when adapting to diverse cultural contexts.

Life Sentence by Sissy Doutsiou

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Moving Poems‘ own Jane Glennie, an award-winning film-maker in the UK, teams up with Greek poet and performer Sissy Doutsiou for this urgent, angry protest video titled Life Sentence.

The music by Rolvd is a key part of the piece, which in some ways resembles music video. Recording, mixing and mastering are credited to Incognito M and Pipeline Music Lab. Doutsiou’s spoken-word performance of the text is powerful in the mix.

Jane Glennie brings her signature kinetic animation style to the video. Well-chosen images and visual textures flicker in a rapid stream, meeting well with the voice and music.

Aside from her writing and performance work, Sissy Doutsiou has over the past decade been director of the International Video Poetry Festival in Athens, and editor of the more recent Film Poetry website.

Act of Creation by Najm al-Din Razi

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Act of Creation translates the words of 13th century Sufi poet Najm al-Din Razi into music video. The film-maker is Montreal-based Tanya Evanson, who also gives voice to the piece. The soundtrack comes from her music album Zenship. Evanson is also an award-winning poet and has produced four studio albums with musicians of African, Caribbean, European, Middle Eastern and South American descent.