Moving Poems

A collaboration between Scottish poet Samuel Jackson and filmmaker Ali Hayes, produced for the This Collection project of videopoems set in Edinburgh, which now has a cool new website. You can read the poem here.

Directed by Gerard Docherty. Aside from the sloppy spelling, this is a fine video and seemed worth sharing. Duffy is, of course, the current Poet Laureate of Great Britain. I assume this video was made without her permission, and thus represents a kind of stealing itself — and/or an homage and act of generosity, depending on your view of intellectual property rights.

I’m going back to posting five videos a week here, at least until I can shrink the current queue of draft posts. So much good stuff coming out these days!

It’s not often I get to see a new videopoem for the work of a poet whose blog I’ve been reading for years. This is a poem from Juliet Wilson’s debut collection, Unthinkable Skies, from the Scottish Calder Wood Press. The film is by the indefatigible Alastair Cook, who adds that this is the “the first of a series of films with Juliet, which will be premiered at my upcoming solo show at the Drill Hall in Leith on 29th July this year: outoftheblue.org.uk“

Another film by Alastair Cook for the This Collection project of 100 videopoems about Edinburgh, and his second in collaboration with Morgan Downie — the first was Scene.

Another film by Alastair Cook for the This Collection project of 100 videopoems about Edinburgh. I found the soundtrack particularly effective.

Another film from the This Collection project of 100 videopoems about Edinburgh. This one is by Alastair Cook. Claire Askew is one of the project coordinators, and the text of the poem is on the Vimeo page.

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.