A poem by Danielle Legros Georges from the anthology Voices Amidst the Virus: Poets Respond to the Pandemic (Eilenn Cleary and Christine Jones, eds., Lily Poetry Review, 2012), adapted by Michigan State University-based filmmaker Pete Johnston for last year’s Filmetry festival.
Irish filmmaker Fiona Aryan‘s latest collaboration with poet Lani O’Hanlon, “an author, poet, dancer and somatic movement therapist living in South East Ireland near the sea,” as her website puts it. The poem first appeared in Poetry magazine in 2018.
The Firth is the most recent piece from the renowned moving image and poetry project, Filmpoem, founded in 2010 by artist, editor and director, Alastair Cook. As with so much of the work from Filmpoem, The Firth is a moving and beautiful piece of work. The film-making team here also includes regular collaborators, Luca Nasciuti (composer) and James William Norton (cinematographer). All three are based in Edinburgh.
The film draws on two poems by Scottish writer John Glenday, who also voices them for the film. They are from his collection, The Firth (Mariscat Press, 2020). His comments on them:
salve regina is a rebirth poem, of course, but based on the story of my brother almost getting washed out to sea on a home made raft when he was about ten or twelve. The coastguard found his raft, with his clothes on it, in the middle of the estuary, and assumed he had drowned. It’s also a poem of escape from the family, in a way. Some part of him walked home naked, another part never went home again.
dune grass in january is a portrait of my mother, who appears and reappears in The Firth, and I suppose by extension, a portrait of that typical, restrained, self-sufficient Scottish personality. Troubled, but untroubling. Approachable but prickly at times.
Moving Poems has previously shared more than 50 films from Alastair Cook, a major figure in poetry film world-wide.
This film by Shanghai-based director Luu Anh Laporte brings Dickinson’s famous words into the 21st century, hitting a bit differently in a hyper-modern context where isolation and alienation have become the norm.
The full title of this videopoem is Four Attempts At Making A Human – (not) after the Popol Vuh. In recent days it was announced as the winner of the poetry film competition at the revived Drumshanbo Written Word Weekend in County Leitrim, Ireland.
Writer Dylan Brennan and film-maker Jonathan Brennan are the creative duo behind the piece. From their statement at Vimeo:
Popol Vuh is an ancient Guatemalan/Maya text. It is the origin story of the Maya people. In it, the Gods make several attempts at creating humans using a variety of materials: from mud or clay to wood and corn. However, each of these substances prove unsuccessful until they try to make humans out of corn. Finally they succeed.
The poem is in three parts, each with a different tone and pattern on the page. The video recreates this using three sections, each employing a different technique from handheld to stop motion animation to kaleidoscopic effects. Subtle sound effects feature in sections one and two.
Poet and film-maker Colm Scully adjudicated the competition. From his statement on the winning film:
Perhaps about fertility, perhaps a dystopian Frankenstein like horror with a twist at the end, it worked beautifully. Partly filmed in Leitrim Four attempts at making a Human deserves rewatching over and over again, and the visual impact forces rereading of the very powerful poem.
Congratulations to the winning artists and organisers of the event, a further development in the culture of poetry film in Ireland.