Moving Poems

A jazzy illustration by Barcelona-based L’esstudi of a haiku by Mexican writer Alfredo Boni de la Vega (1914-1965). I like the video better than the poem itself, which strikes me as being too metaphor-laden to qualify as a real haiku:

Flower of sadness
that opens when tears start falling
from the sky.

A class project, according to the Columbian videographer, Felipe Meneses, but this is by the far the best Nezahualcoyotl videopoem I’ve found on the web. The poem is read in the original Nahuat with Spanish subtitles. Here’s a quick and dirty English translation (from the Spanish):

Where can we go
that death does not exist?
But should I live in tears because of that?
Your heart might as well make itself at home;
no one will live forever here.
Even great lords go down to death,
their worldly possessions put to the torch.
Your heart might as well make itself at home;
no one will live forever here.

Video documentation of a typographic installation in public restrooms by the Mexican poet Julián Herbert. The music is “Mind map”, by Jar G. This project forms part of the activities of a collective for visual and kinetic poetry known as El Taller de la Caballeriza.

The first poem says, “To translate is to {invent the light/arrange the voice} on the other side of the mirror.”

Poem and video by Daniel Iván