Nationality: United States
What Day, from West: A Translation by Paisley Rekdal
Salt Lake City-based filmmaker Jennilyn Merten collaborated with Utah’s former poet laureate, Paisely Rekdal, on an online video installation for Rekdal’s cycle of poems West: A Translation,
a linked collection of poems that respond to a Chinese elegy carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station where Chinese migrants to the United States were detained. “West” translates this elegy character by character through the lens of Chinese and other transcontinental railroad workers’ histories, and through the railroad’s cultural impact on America.
West connects the completion of the transcontinental railroad with another significant American historical event: the Chinese Exclusion Act, which passed thirteen years after the first transcontinental’s completion.
This is What Day, which was also featured at Terrain.org. It’s the one that works best as a stand-alone film, in my opinion. Rekdal also has a 20-minute video on YouTube of her reading from the collection.
West: A Translation is slated for publication in book form by Copper Canyon Press in May 2023.
Morning Walk by Joyce Sutphen
A new film from Motionpoems—the first in a couple of years—underwritten by the Center for the Art of Medicine (CFAM) at the University of Minnesota Medical School. My elderly mother takes a morning walk every day, so Joyce Sutphen‘s poem really resonated—especially as embodied by the actor here, Debra Magid. Zack Grant directs.
The text on the front page of Motionpoems suggests that while the nonprofit organization has shut down, we can expect more occasional films like this one:
Motionpoems Inc., was a 12-year initiative known for turning contemporary poems into short films, while also producing educational programs, public installations, and events. Founded by filmmaker Angella Kassube and poet Todd Boss in 2008, and officially dissolved in 2020 after having made 150+ shorts, today Motionpoems is a project of Todd Boss Originals.
This is Motionpoems’ third film made in cooperation with CFAM, after 2020’s On Lockdown and To be of use.
Flush by Luisa A. Igloria
This recent videopoem by Marc Neys may be one of my favorites of his to date, exploring each line of a text as one might explore a new beach on holiday, with several lovely and joyous surprises amid the contemplative flow. The text is from Night Willow, a 2012 collection of prose poetry by Fil-Am poet Luisa A. Igloria, who just concluded her second term as the Commonwealth of Virginia’s poet laureate. (The poem originally appeared at Via Negativa, a daily poetry blog that Luisa and I both contribute to.)
This is, by my count, Marc’s sixth film with Luisa’s poetry, though I may be forgetting about one or two. Nor is Marc the only filmmaker to work with Luisa; here’s her page at Moving Poems. So many brilliant films there (plus two of mine).
How to Triumph Like a Girl by Ada Limón
This is “An animation created for MTV’s Women’s History Month. It was made using watercolor cut paper stop motion” by Providence, Rhode Island-based artist and animator Hayley Morris. Ada Limón is the poet. See Vimeo for the full credit list.
Octopus Empire by Marilyn Nelson
James Dunlap animates art by Edwina White in a recent video from blogger Maria Popova’s wonderful Universe in Verse series, in collaboration with On Being, mixing science and poetry. Here’s how she sets this one up:
The octopus branched from our shared vertebrate lineage some 550 million years ago to evolve into one of this planet’s most alien intelligences, endowed with an astonishing distributed nervous system and capable of recognizing others, of forming social bonds, of navigating mazes. It is the Descartes of the oceans, learning how to live in its environment by trial and error — that is, by basic empiricism.
Meanwhile, in those 550 million years, we evolved into creatures that placed themselves at the center of the universe and atop the evolutionary ladder, only to find ourselves in an ecological furnace of our making and to reluctantly consider that we might not, after all, be the pinnacle of Earthly intelligence.
That is what Marilyn Nelson explores with great playfulness and poignancy in her poem “Octopus Empire,” originally published in the Academy of American Poets’ poem-a-day lifeline of a newsletter and now brought to life here, for this seventh installment in the animated Universe in Verse, in a reading by Sy Montgomery (author of the enchantment of a book that is The Soul of an Octopus) with life-filled art by Edwina White, set into motion by her collaborator James Dunlap, and set into soulfulness by Brooklyn-based cellist and composer Topu Lyo.
Click through to The Marginalian to read the rest (including the text of the poem). For more on Nelson, see her Poetry Foundation page.
The Opposites Game by Brendan Constantine (2)
A classroom erupts into a war of words as students grapple with a seemingly simple prompt: what is the opposite of a gun?
This animation of Brendan Constantine‘s poem by Anna Samo and Lisa LaBracio went viral, with more than 24,700 views on Vimeo and 364,814 views
on YouTube. It probably helps that it was a Vimeo staff pick. But it’s also
part of TED-Ed’s series, “There’s a Poem for That,” which features animated interpretations of poems both old and new that give language to some of life’s biggest feelings.
See the Vimeo description for the full credits and list of honors.
We previously shared Mike Gioia’s film adaptation of the same poem. I’m not sure which I prefer; both have their strengths.
Tattoo by Wallace Stevens
Belgian composer and artist Marc Neys (A.K.A. Swoon) is back making videopoems after a lengthy hiatus, with a new website for all his output. For a sense of just how prolific he used to be, and how central his lyrical, idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking has been to the development of contemporary poetry film, this recent adaptation of a Wallace Stevens poem appears to be the 159th video of his we’ve shared at Moving Poems. Here are the credits:
film, voice & music: Marc Neys
Footage: Jan Eerala
translation: Peter Nijmeijer
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