Nationality: United States

The Hugeness of That Which is Missing by Forrest Gander

16 April, 2019 by Dave Bonta - Leave a comment - Posted in Author-made videopoems
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Forrest Gander‘s latest collection Be With has just won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry — congratulations to him. As someone who shares his interests in Latin American poetry and ecopoetry, I’ve been cheered by his growing prominence in recent years. Not to mention the fact that he’s one of the very few major American poets who makes his own videopoems. Here’s one he re-edited just a few weeks ago. (I think the original video appeared around 2012.) The text appears in his 2001 collection Torn Awake.

The Danger Meditations by Marc Zegans

12 April, 2019 by Dave Bonta - 1 Comment - Posted in Videopoems
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Directed by Ellen Hemphill and Jim Haverkamp of Archipelago Theatre as a companion piece to Manicotti, based also on a poem from Marc Zegans’ Typewriter Underground, with the voice-over this time by Tom Marriott. See its dedicated webpage for the full credits, and the main Archipelago Productions listing for more of their cinematic and theatrical works.

Like Manicotti, The Danger Meditations premiered at the Henry Miller library, and has also been screened at the Durham Typocalypse and an Athens Typewriter Underground event. In addition, it was an official selection of the 2018 Juteback Poetry Film Festival in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Read my interview with Zegans in Moving Poems Magazine.

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Manicotti by Marc Zegans

11 April, 2019 by Dave Bonta - 2 Comments - Posted in Videopoems
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An interpretation of one of the poems from Marc Zegans’ Typewriter Underground co-directed by Ellen Hemphill and Jim Haverkamp from the Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based Archipelago Theatre. Haverkamp is the narrator and one of the videographers, along with Alex Maness, and the score was composed by Allison Leyton-Brown. Click through to Vimeo for the full credits.

This film, together with a companion piece which I’ll share tomorrow, premiered at a theatrical production of the Typewriter Underground at the Henry Miller Library, Big Sur, California. It was also screened at the 2019 Cosmic Rays Film Festival, at the Durham Typocalypse, “a celebration of all things typewriter,” and at the Athens [Georgia] Typewriter Underground.

Read my interview with Zegans in Moving Poems Magazine.

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A Clack in the Tunnel by Marc Zegans

10 April, 2019 by Dave Bonta - 1 Comment - Posted in Animation
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Continuing with this week’s feature on Marc Zegans, here’s the first of three videos I’ll be sharing based on texts in his latest collection, circulated to select video artists and filmmakers while still in manuscript. This one is described on YouTube as “retro-collagist Eric Edelman‘s animation of the First Fragment from the Typewriter Underground. Full text can be found in La Commedia Sotterranea della Macchina da Scrivere: Swizzle Felt’s First Folio from the Typewriter Underground. Available from Pelekinesis March 1, 2019.” The publisher’s webpage calls La Commedia

a gathering of verse fragments and collages describing and illustrating the life of the Typewriter Underground, a spontaneous sub-cultural phenomenon that appeared with near simultaneity in a variety of cities and smaller locales across the globe in the late 20th and early 21st Century.

Read my interview with Zegans in Moving Poems Magazine.

Broken Lines by Marc Zegans

9 April, 2019 by Dave Bonta - 1 Comment - Posted in Videopoems
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Oakland-based video poet Jenn Vee makes a poem by Marc Zegans her own in this charming mash-up of poetry film and vlog. It’s the first of four films based on Zegans’ work that I’ll be featuring this week. The poem appeared in his 2015 collection The Underwater Typewriter.

Read my interview with Zegans in Moving Poems Magazine.

Reflections on La Scapigliata by Lois P. Jones

5 April, 2019 by Dave Bonta - Leave a comment - Posted in Videopoems
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Los Angeles-based poet Lois P. Jones supplies the text and part of the voiceover (along with Katia Viscogliosi) in this wonderful new poetry film by Jutta Pryor. It’s the April 5 installment in the Visible Poetry Project‘s release of 30 poetry films in 30 days, which anyone with an interest in poetry film or videopoetry should be following, either on Vimeo or at the website, which includes much more information about the poets and filmmakers (but sadly shoehorns all the videos from each year into a single post, making subscription impossible and download times formidable for those of us with DSL connections).

The Center by Annelyse Gelman

3 April, 2019 by Dave Bonta - Leave a comment - Posted in Author-made videopoems
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A simple but powerful videopoem by Annelyse Gelman, from TriQuarterly 155. Here’s how editor Sarah Minor introduces it:

Our second video, “The Center” by Annelyse Gelman has us eyeing the eerie potential for non-human entities to replicate or replace human jobs, relationships, and even literature. Like examples of video art that pushed the limits of early green screen technology, “The Center” repurposes face swap and text-to-voice in a savvy, uncanny pairing of poetry and digital media that brings out the specific resonances of the text. Gelman’s project nods to animal experiments involving cages with electrified flooring, centers and peripheries that implicate and confront the viewer: “Are you thinking about your own heartbeat?”