Posts in Category: Book trailers

Torch by Aoife Lyall

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A paean to the power of the imagination from Scottish poet Aoife Lyall and her publisher Bloodaxe Books, directed by Irish poet and filmmaker Luke Morgan, with music by his brother Jake Morgan. The poem evidently appears in an upcoming collection called The Day Before:

Focusing on the earliest weeks and months of the pandemic, these intimate and meticulous poems mark the lived experience of someone who must navigate a world she no longer understands, exploring first steps and last breaths, milestones, millstones, emigration, fly-tipping and the entire world to be found in the space behind the front door.

Childhood’s End by Howie Good

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I LOVE this new videopoem! Belgian artist-composer Marc Neys (aka Swoon) is of course a Moving Poems regular, as is retired journalism professor Howie Good — one of the most productive poets I know. The fit of images to words hits that sweet spot half-way between random and literal, and the font seems chosen for maximum contrast in feeling with the dark content of the text.

The video does double duty as a trailer for Good’s new collection, a chapbook/pamphlet from Laughing Ronin Press called Heart-Shaped Hole.

“Hunger” and “What I Did” from The Echo Chamber by Michael Bazzett

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From filmmaker Sherng-Lee Huang and actress Veronika Nowag-Jones, whom Huang calls “a stalwart of German cinema and stage,” these two trailers for The Echo Chamber by Michael Bazzett each feature a complete, short poem from the collection. US independent literary publisher Milkweed Editions has been producing video trailers off and on for the better part of a decade. As anecdotal evidence for their effectiveness, I ordered a copy of The Echo Chamber before I even finished posting this! Here’s the publisher’s page for it.

Hat-tip: Sean Thomas Dougherty on Twitter.

Startling by Linda France

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British filmmaker Kate Sweeney, whose work we’ve featured here in the past, collaborated with one of my favorite contemporary ecopoets, Linda France, for a poetry film in support of her tenth collection with Faber. Here’s the YouTube description:

A short film by Kate Sweeney, with poetry written and read by Linda France.

“I have taken to counting what I want to call ‘Startlings’. They are creatures who, sensing their species is facing extinction, feel the cell-tingling impulse to evolve and ensure their survival. Within their tissue and bones, hearts and minds, they enact the necessary transformation. For every Endling there is a Startling.”

To celebrate the publication of Linda France’s tenth poetry collection – influenced by her three years of writing the climate – artist Kate Sweeney has created a new film responding to Linda’s words.

Linda France’s residency as Climate Writer was supported by New Writing North, Newcastle University and Arts Council England. Startling was published in partnership with Faber Books.
Find out more about the residency and its projects: https://newwritingnorth.com/event/writing-the-climate/
Order a copy of Startling: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571379026-startling/

sex & violence #4 : what’s inside a girl? by Kristy Bowen

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I’ve featured a few of Chicago-based poet and publisher Kristy Bowen’s video poetry book trailers, but not this one yet, which was made in support of her 2020 collection with Black Lawrence Press, sex & violence. It might be my favorite of hers to date. Nobody knows better than the poet herself what kind of mood she was trying to create, and if she happens to have the graphic design skills and technical know-how to bring that to life in video form, as Bowen does, the results can be wonderful (even if, as here, also super creepy). She resurfaced the video recently on her blog as part of an annual #31daysofhalloween series.

As always, visit her YouTube channel for more. The latest trailers are in support of a collection due out on Halloween called Automagic.

Memoir in Bone & Ink (#1) by Kristy Bowen

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The first in a projected series of author-made videopoems for Kristy Bowen’s upcoming collection Memoir in Bone & Ink. As a publisher herself (dancing girl press), Bowen’s relationship with books is more hands-on than the average poet’s, and that’s what drew me to this videopoem: the bibliocentric images and text come from a place of deep knowledge. The result is a poetry book trailer that feels like a commentary on book promotion generally, the author trying to coax a book out from under the covers.

Here’s the bio Bowen used for the YouTube description:

A writer and book artist working in both text and image, Kristy Bowen creates a regular series of chapbook, zine, and artist book projects. Since 2005, she has blogged about writing, art, and other creative pursuits at dulcetly: notes on a bookish life. She is the author of eleven full-length collections of poetry/prose/hybrid work, including the recent SEX & VIOLENCE (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and the self-issued ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MONSTER; DARK COUNTRY; and FEED.

Arrival at Elsewhere (extract) by Karen Dennison, Carl Griffin et. al.

A filmpoem by Karen Dennison, who also supplied the voiceover. The text was written by Jemma Borg, Annie Butler, Kerry Darbishire, Catherine Fletcher, Bashabi Fraser, Carl Griffin, Philip Gross, Chrys Salt, and Alina Stefanescu. Here’s the YouTube description:

Arrival at Elsewhere is a book length long poem response to the pandemic, curated by one poet, Carl Griffin, but written by 97. This is an extract from the book. It’s published by Against the Grain poetry press and available to buy at https://againstthegrainpoetrypress.wordpress.com/arrival-at-elsewhere/

From the description at that link:

Poets from across the world speak in one voice in response to 2020’s life-changing pandemic. Not a definitive voice, nor an authoritative one. But a contrasting, contradicting, confused voice, set both in the UK and everywhere else, represented by one narrator who, just like the rest of us, is made up of a hundred different people. A narrator cohesive only in his/her/their contemplation of Elsewhere.

A Better Place is Hard to Find: two poems by Aaron Fagan

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We’re always keen to showcase book trailers that take the form of videopoems. Here are two very different but equally compelling, brief animations by multidisciplinary artist Camilla Ha for poems in Aaron Fagan’s new collection, A Better Place Is Hard to Find (The Song Cave, 2020): “The Good Light” and “Quietus.”

Aaron Fagan has been an active proponent of videopoetry for as long as I’ve been publishing Moving Poems—nearly 12 years now—sometimes collaborating with filmmakers, sometimes making videos himself. So it’s no surprise that he would have not one, but two films for his first full-length poetry collection since 2010.

The Actual / Fuck by Inua Ellams

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This animated typography film by Jamie MacDonald is a trailer for Inua Ellams‘ forthcoming collection. In a blog post yesterday, he wrote:

It gives me the greatest pleasure to share with you the trailer for The Actual / Fuck. This poem is made up of all the titles in the collection, essentially a list poem in its own right. It was put together by Jamie MacDonald (who created the trailer for An Evening With An Immigrant) and shows his incredible skills and attention to detail.

Don’t forget, you can pre-order the collection right now from Penned In The Margins.

And from that latter link, here’s the publisher’s description:

The Actual is a symphony of personal and political fury — sometimes probing delicately, sometimes burning with raw energy.

In 55 poems that swerve and crackle with a rare music, Inua Ellams unleashes a full-throated assault on empire and its legacies of racism, injustice and toxic masculinity. Written on the author’s phone, in transit, between meetings, before falling asleep and just after waking, this is poetry as polemic, as an act of resistance, but also as dream-vision. At its heart, this book confronts the absolutism and ‘foolish machismo’ of hero culture-from Perseus to Trump, from Batman to Boko Haram.

Through the thick gauze of history, these breathtaking poems look the world square in the face and ask, “What the actual—?”

sex & violence #2 | honey machine by Kristy Bowen

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It’s always great to see a poet making her own book trailers — I mean, it’s even better to see poetry presses doing that for their poets, but for most, that’s not part of the deal, I guess. What’s cool about Kristy Bowen is that she’s also a publisher, running the chapbook press Dancing Girl Press, and skills she’s honed there as an artist and graphic designer stand her in very good stead on her first foray into videopoetry production. Let me just paste in the YouTube description:

sex & violence
by Kristy Bowen
(Black Lawrence Press, 2020)
https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/

A writer and book artist working in both text and image, Kristy Bowen is the author of a number of chapbook, zine, and artists book projects, as well as several full-length collections of poetry/prose/hybrid work, including the recent salvage (Black Lawrence Press, 2016), major characters in minor films (Sundress Publications, 2015) and girl show (Black Lawrence, 2014). She lives in Chicago, where she runs dancing girl press & studio

This is the second of three videos so far that Kristy has made based on excerpts from sex & violence; you can watch them all on her YouTube channel. As she noted in her blog, for honey machine, “I’ve been playing a bit more with public domain footage and my own words..this time, a little more text oriented and without the distraction of my own voice.”