Moving Poems

Expand this to full screen and turn the sound up: this is Hopper Confessions: Room in Brooklyn for cello, interactive electronics and interactive video. The music is by Joseph Butch Rovan, and the video is by Rovan and Katherine Bergeron. The page on Vimeo includes a rather academic disquisition from which I’ll quote only the opening paragraph:

This multimedia work draws its inspiration from “Room in Brooklyn,” a poem by Anne Carson, published in her collection Men in the Off Hours (New York: Knopf, 2000). Carson’s poem is itself polyphonic, exposing two different voices that speak to the condition of passing time: a painting by Edward Hopper (the 1932 canvas “Room in Brooklyn”) and a passage from St. Augustine’s Confessions. Carson measures the nostalgia of Hopper’s Americana with a tiny thread of verse that hangs on Augustine’s temporal philosophy like a second melodic voice over a stolid cantus firmus.

George Anderson, a Canadian living in Australia, reads his poem in this video by Laww Media, filmmakers from Wollongong, Australia.

An excerpt from the poem by Al Purdy, brought to life by Bruce Alcock and Global Mechanic.

A fluid, vibrant and kinetic riff on one of Al Purdy’s best-known poems, recalling the experimental, interpretive work of Norman McLaren. It’s not a literal adaptation, but something more free-associative that visually accompanies the text while staying true to the playful, erudite spirit of the poem and Al Purdy’s imagination. We used oil paint, acrylics, graphite, charcoal, wire, cut paper, a beer mug, linoleum, bottlecaps… you name it, we art-worked and animated it. Almost all the animation was done in-camera, except for a bit of compositing after the fact.

This is the last of six YouTube selections from Anne Carson’s Possessive Used as Drink (Me), a lecture on pronouns in the form of 15 sonnets, with three Merce Cunningham dancers and video direction by Sadie Wilcox. See playgallery.org for more on the project.

Poem by Anne Carson, the fifth of six excerpts on YouTube from her lecture on pronouns in the form of 15 sonnets called Possessive Used as Drink (Me). See “Recipe” for more information on the series and the production.

Poem by Anne Carson, the fourth of six excerpts on YouTube from her lecture on pronouns in the form of 15 sonnets called Possessive Used as Drink (Me). See “Recipe” for more information on the series and the production.

Poem by Anne Carson, from Possessive Used as Drink (Me), a lecture on pronouns in the form of 15 sonnets

Video by Sadie Wilcox

See “Recipe” for more information on the production.

Poem by Anne Carson, from Possessive Used as Drink (Me), a lecture on pronouns in the form of 15 sonnets

Video by Sadie Wilcox

See “Recipe” for more information on the production.

Poem by Anne Carson, from Possessive Used as Drink (Me), a lecture on pronouns in the form of 15 sonnets

Video by Sadie Wilcox

Dancers: Julie Cunningham, Rashaun Mitchell, Andrea Weber

Carson writes,

I had to compose a lecture on pronouns for a conference at Harvard and this was the result. I wrote a sonnet sequence, which Stephanie Rowden recorded and made interesting. Then three Merce Cunningham dancers improvised choreography in response to the sonnets. Sadie Wilcox videotaped everything they did and edited it to fit (or not) the sound score.

Carson has generously uploaded six excerpts from the 25-minute performance to YouTube. I’ll probably link all of them eventually, but in the meantime they can be accessed via playgallery.org.