Posts in Category: Performance Poetry
The Altruist by T. Carmi
A moving tribute to the power of poetry from Israeli filmmaker Avi Dabach and PTSD-sufferer Micha Shalvi, who describes how the poem by T. Carmi — which he reads at the end — saved his life.
Plasticman by Mark Gwynne Jones
http://vimeo.com/37756338
A great spoken-word performance in a supermarket by Mark Gwynne Jones, filmed by Andy Lawrence, as part of their psychicbread series of poetry films. It’s fun to see how the other shoppers react (or don’t react, as the case may be).
Bill Murray reads Wallace Stevens: The Planet on the Table and A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts
Actor Bill Murray reads two poems by Wallace Stevens at Bubby’s Brooklyn, as part of Poets House’s 17th Annual Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge, Monday June 11, 2012
Poets, take note. This is how a proper poetry reading is done.
Kata by Lavinia Greenlaw
Another in the Winning Words series of poetry videos filmed by Andy Hutch. “Here professional parkour athlete Jolade Olusanya reads Lavinia Greenlaw’s ‘Kata’ in Stockwell.” I don’t have a category for parkour, but this seems close enough to some of the poetry dance videos to include in that category.
The text of the poem, which appeared in the 2011 collection The Casual Perfect from Faber & Faber, is here. For more on Greenlaw, see her website.
The Confession: poetry and conversation with Yehia Jaber
Lebanese poet Yehia Jaber discusses his beliefs about war and peace, God and poetry, and recites one example of his work in Arabic (with English in subtitles). The British/Iranian filmmaker Roxana Vilk got help from Maryam Ghorbankarimi (editing) and Pete Vilk (music and sound design).
Yehia Jaber is also a visual poet — see Everitte.org for a beautiful and easily comprehensible example of vispo/concrete poetry in Arabic calligraphy.
Compromise by Steve Connell
Gabriel Sunday directed. The description on Vimeo reads,
Steve Connell is a world-famous Spoken Word poet and performer. Faye Reagan is a world famous Porn Star.
Accept the truth of our times… embrace the Compromise.
That’s right: according to the Wikipedia, the actress usually known as Faye Reagan has performed in 174 adult films and one videopoem. For more on Connell, the Wikipedia also appears to be the best source.
Color of Home by Meena Alexander
http://vimeo.com/43268894
With spoken word videos, sometimes setting is everything. Ram Devineni filmed Alexander on the Highline in New York City for a Meena Alexander feature in Issue 3 of Ratapallax magazine. For more on the poet, visit her website.
When I Move by Khary Jackson
I’ve posted a lot of dance + poetry videos and a lot of spoken word videos, but I believe this is the first in which the poet dances as he recites his poem. This was produced by the St. Paul, Minnesota-based organization Poetry Observed, which according to the description on YouTube “is committed to producing high quality videos of performance poetry, filmed off the stage. Our first series features Minnesota spoken word poets and was produced in collaboration with Button Poetry.”
IO game over by Sergio Garau
This videopoem by Angelo Saccu, performed by Sergio Garau to music by Antonio Marra, betrays influences from all over: it’s equal parts concert video, sound poem and concrete/kinetic-text poem. I ran the YouTube description through Google Translate:
The violent encounter between political identities, economic, cultural, language here is staged through an ironic game of opposites. The ‘I’, translated into machine language 1 0 (zero), cut into pieces for binary digital misunderstood as grotesque chaos of contradictory slogans of contemporary power, explodes in a syncopated rhythm outside of himself. For tris doubly impossible breaks down the end of his world.
