Nationality: Ireland

Magpie – a conspiracy story by David Bickley

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Just uploaded to Vimeo last week, Magpie – a conspiracy story is a subtle and atmospheric videopoem by David Ian Bickley in Ireland. The quiet, eerie mood of the piece is hypnotic.

This folkloric exploration imagines the ancient magpie rhyme as one created by the birds themselves, deep in some misty past. Through careful propagation a protective spell was woven through their close community. (source)

The film has a relation to the nursery rhyme, One for Sorrow, and a hint of Edgar Allan Poe. Bickley created the minimal music score as well, timed beautifully with visual changes and words appearing on the screen.

Two other of Bickley’s earlier videos have been featured here at Moving Poems, including the extraordinary Marsh, an award-winning film with poet Paul Casey.

Careful What You Wish For Orangutan by Pete Mullineaux

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Pete Mullineaux won the 2023 Poetry & Folk In The Environment competition sponsored by UK performance-poetry organization Home Stage with this highly entertaining video, a collaboration with Roj Whelan AKA The RoJ LiGht of RoJnRoll Productions in Dublin, who handled the camerawork and editing.

Crossing to Ireland by Jean Maskell

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I always tend to feel that poetry animations are best at their most abstract and minimalistic—depending on the poem, of course. This animation by Rachel McMahon AKA RaeRae won the audience award at the Liverpool Celtic Animation Festival. It’s a collaboration with Jean Maskell, “a multi-disciplinary artist and writer inspired by contemporary and historic social issues and the natural world,” who provided the voiceover and text: a poem “about the conflicting emotions of feeling a part of two countries.” Perhaps it is that sense of a provisional existence that makes the kind of tentative approach to the animation—lines drawn and undrawn on white space with a paper grain—such a good fit.

Writing Advice by Brian Mackenwells

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Humour and silliness are not commonly found in poetry films. I rejoice when I stumble upon a piece that tickles my funny bone. Writing Advice by Brian Mackenwells is one such rarity. The synopsis:

A pencil-powered matchbox theatre outlines the risk of using sub-par pencils.

This is a one-man show, with Mackenwells as writer, narrator and film-maker. The video animation is amusingly home-spun and original. A bio:

Brian Mackenwells is an Irish writer living in Oxford. Despite being quite tired, he has written for the BBC about pencils, told stories on stage about not getting sick in zero gravity, performed standup about strange superheroes, and co-wrote an audio drama every month for five years.

I found Writing Advice among the finalist films in the 2022 Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition in Ireland.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats

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A new film by Dutch artist Pat van Boeckel, featuring some stunning footage from Morocco. Yeats’ poem, originally known as Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven at first publication in 1899, also appeared

in the films Equilibrium, 84 Charing Cross Road and the Korean film Dasepo Naughty Girls. The poem is recited by the character Brendan in the final episode of season 3 of the BBC series Ballykissangel.

The Wikipedia article goes on to list multiple musical settings and uses in novels. Being well out of copyright surely has something to do with that.

Van Boeckel is a regular at Moving Poems, and you can watch more of his videopoems on his website.

Back Up Quick, They’re Hippies by Lani O’Hanlon

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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.

Four Attempts at Making a Human by Dylan Brennan

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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.

The Rope by David Ian Bickley

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This was the third place winner in the 2021 Deanna Tulley Multimedia Contest. David Ian Bickley is “an award-winning media artist whose body of work spans the primitive technological of the 1970s to the digital cutting edge of today.” We previously shared his film for a poem by Irish poet Paul Casey, Marsh. This time the text is his own, “based on a story told by Gerald O’Brien,” according to the credits.

It’s always interesting seeing how an accomplished filmmaker approaches the problem of creating a lyrical film for a narrative poem. In this case Bickley may well have crafted the poem with specific shots or images in mind. Regardless, it all adds up to a very affecting film.

Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet by Eavan Boland

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The late Irish poet Eavan Boland’s poem “Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet” in an atmospheric poetry film by Dutch filmmaker Pat van Boeckel, whose work we’ve featured here in the past. There’s also a version in Dutch.

Ramblings by Gabriel Rosenstock

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Irish poet Gabriel Rosenstock has been collaborating with filmmakers for years, often on adaptations of his Gaelic haiku. This film finds him working with Kashmiri artist Masood Hussain on a brief anthology of four free-verse videopoems, “The Poet as Untouchable,” “Broken Bangle,” “The Dismantling of the Taj Mahal” and “White Flags.”

Ramblings is a suite of short video-poems by bilingual poet Gabriel Rosenstock (Ireland), an Indophile who has been dazzled by his contact with the literary and spiritual legacy of India, her people and landscapes, but is not blind to the darker side of India, such as the caste system, Hindutva, the violence and injustices, and so on. In previous short films with his artistic collaborator, artist and auteur Masood Hussain with whom he created the book Walk with Gandhi, he has focussed on the shabby treatment of dissident poet Varavara Rao. Ramblings ends with an anarchist poem which contains a key to universal peace.