Strangely enough, considering the flourishing poetry scene in Scotland, this is the first Scottish videopoem I’ve posted here. It’s evidently the first of three films Alastair Cook will be making for something called this collection, which promises to deliver many more Scottish videopoems:

this collection is a collaboration between Edinburgh writers and filmmakers inspired by these poems, which aims to create a detailed picture of day-to-day life in the city, with all its foibles and issues, through the media of poetry and film.

Basically, we have gathered 100 poems by Edinburgh writers, each poem no more than 100 words long. We’re now looking to invite filmmakers, sound designers, animators who will like to get to work on creating short films based on poems of their choosing. We then intend to showcase the poems and the films together, both online and at events across the city throughout 2010-2011.

The full list of poems is included on the blog. “Scene” is one of two poems on the list by Morgan Downie.

A beautiful animation by Tom Jacobsen from the Minneapolis-based Pixel Farm. I’ve been remiss in not posting more of Todd Boss’s work, considering he’s one of the two people behind the ambitious new videopoetry site MotionPoems.com. Here’s his website.

The Peter Principle is “an epic work poem released in blog form each week” at thepeterprinciple.org, but it just occurred to me to check YouTube as well, where I found uploads from the author, Clayton Crosby, of five of his Flash animations converted to video form. These are all very basic typographic animations, and they’re not integrated with the audio on the blog, but it’s a very interesting project and I wanted to recognize it here. On the About page, he describes its origin as follows:

In 1968, Laurence J. Peter published The Peter Principle, which held the theory that “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” He reasoned that any employee who excelled at a particular job would be promoted up the corporate chain, and though the employee might adapt to the requirements of the new job, each promotion brought him closer to a job he couldn’t know how to do. Therefore, any employee is eventually promoted beyond his level of skill and competence.

I’ve been reading Homer, and have been putting a lot of thought into heroes and poetic forms. As a result, I’m exploring the tension between epic and lyric poetry – which is to say the narrative, the expressive and what falls between.

All of these poems are completed before or shortly after going to work.

I am also in awe of the website’s design. It has to be one of the coolest single-author poetry sites on the internet. Check it out.

Jeanette Seah and Daniel Nudds directed this “Final project from the VFS Digital Design Program” at the Vancouver Film School. I’m not sure how well the video fits the poem, but the animation is too gorgeous not to share.

A wonderful evocation of an artist and a place, with original music and a poem for the narration. I strongly recommend expanding it to full-screen. The director, Lanka Haouche Perren, describes it as follows:

7 minutes non-narrative documentary exploring the work & methods of the renowned Irish artist Maria Simonds-Gooding who has been based in Dún Chaoin, Co. Kerry, Ireland, for the last 40 years. It features a poem by award winning poet & writer David McLoghlin, narrated by Dominic West.

More examples of McLoghlin’s work may be found at his website. And be sure to check out Maria Simonds-Gooding’s website as well.

A nicely conceived film with the poet as actor, by the UK-based team of poets and filmmakers behind Viral Verse (which fans of this site should also follow).

A Moving Poems production (with fingers crossed that Milosz’s heirs aren’t too litigious). The audio is Milosz himself, not the same translation as the one that made it into the Collected Poems (which you can read here).

This was “found video” rather than something deliberately planned and acted to go along with the poem, though of course I edited it to make a better fit.

Bob Borgatti (editor of Slipstream) says,

This is a segment from the film “in/word/out” by Robert Borgatti and Paul Lamont. It is a visualization of the poem “Seven-Year-Old Finds Her Murdered Mother’s Naked Body” by Lyn Lifshin. Lifshin performs the voice-over narration for the piece.

Check out Lifshin’s website for her bio and abundant links.

An experimental short to which the poem was added at the end — which to me makes for a more satisfying blend than most videopoems where words and images are tightly matched.

This is an experimental short movie made in a week (from the concept to the final release). This movie doesn’t want any interpretation. The poem was chosen after the filming. Finally was composed the music. The basic idea is to show some scenes before go to bed leaving an unhappy impression.

Hubert Sielecki made this damn-near perfect videopoem for a piece by Austrian writer, composer, and visual artist Gerhard Rühm.