Digging by Seamus Heaney

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Poem by Seamus Heaney

Video from the BBC, according to the YouTube poster:

A montage of archive clips of Seamus Heaney “Digging”. From BBC NI’s “Seamus Heaney: A life in Pictures” broadcast 15/04/09.

At the Crossroads by David Bengtson

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Poem by David Bengtson

Video by Media Mike Hazard (The Center for International Education) with a class of students at Long Prairie-Grey Eagle High School

Accordion: Juergen Brunkhorst

Carpe Noctem by Ana Muñoz

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Poem by Ana Muñoz

Video by sonolopez

Tomorrow by Abbas Saffari

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Poem by Abbas Saffari

Translation and video by Niloufar Talebi for The Translation Project DVD, Midnight Approaches

Last year at the Orange County Poetry Festival, Talebi discussed the translation process using this poem as an example.

Aaj Bazar Mein by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

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Poem and recitation by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Video by umer05, whose description is worth quoting in full:

Faiz Ahmed Faiz is amongst the most famous poets of last century. Faiz, who was hounoured by Lenin Peace Prize in 1963, was seldom subjected to arrests by the right-wing pro-imperialist military regimes of Pakistan. Once, during the dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq, he was arrested and taken to the police station in front of the public. In this context, he wrote ‘Aaj Bazar mein’.

The video starts with a ‘mushairah’ (public recitation), where Faiz presents the poem, and describes its context. Then the video, with the melodious voice of Nayyara Noor in the background singing the verses of Faiz, shows the sufi culture of Pakistan, which was suppressed by the religious fundamentalist government of Zia-ul-Haq. Then, there are some clips of public floggings and public hangings of political dissidents, which were employed to ingrain terror in the people of Pakistan. Public floggings were a norm during Zia’s time. The video, then, takes us on a trip to a well-known red-light area of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. This red-light area is in the neighbourhood of a very famous mosque, a contradiction unresolved.

Úr órum Tobba (From the Madness of Tobbi) by Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

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Poem and reading by Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

This is a sound-poem in homage to a 17th-century Icelandic nonsense poet called Æri-Tobbi, or Crazy Tobbi, whose poetry is discussed at length in a fascinating essay archived at Norðdahl’s blog: “Mind the Sound” (hat-tip: Poetry News).

The categorical difference between sound-poetry and instrumental-music (including sound-poetry’s cousin, scat-singing) is that the listener inevitably interprets what he or she hears as ‘language’ – not only is it the framework that the work is presented within, but it’s also inherent to much of the actual work, that it actually ‘resembles’ language. […]

In early 2008 I wrote the poem ‘Úr órum Tobba’, (trans. From the madness of Tobbi) a six-to-seven minute long sound-poem carved from Æri-Tobbi’s zaum. The poem was first performed at the Scream Poetry Festival in Toronto, at the Lexiconjury Revival Night, and has in fact not been performed since (although published on CD, along with more of my sound-poems).

‘Úr órum Tobba’ is at once a found poem and sound poem, collaged and cut-up lines of zaum taken from the quatrains, tercets and couplets of Æri-Tobbi – the first of the thirteen stanzas is written thus:

Axar sax og lævarar lax
Axar sax og lævarar lax
Hoppara boppara hoppara boppara
stagara jagara stagara jagara
Neglings steglings veglings steglings
Skögula gögula ögula skögula
hræfra flotið humra skotið
Axar sax og lævarar lax

Each stanza has eight lines, and all are intersected with two of Æri-Tobbi’s most famous zaum-lines:

Agara gagara agara gagara
vambara þambara vambara þambara

Poem for the Rivers Project by Tom Konyves

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Poem by Tom Konyves

Video by Alex Konyves

In a comment at the YouTube posting, Tom gives the background for the poem.

In the summer of 2003, my 18-year-old son Alexander was working for a “Rivers” project at the Surrey Art Gallery — he kept pestering me to submit a poem. I wrote a 13-line poem which we posited over Alex’s abstract water-related images, all sustained by the drone of an unrelenting Didjeridu. The poetic narrative is resolved by a verbo-visual pun on the underside of the Alex Fraser Bridge.

El lenguaje de las hormigas (The Language of Ants) by Fernando Sarría

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Poem by Fernando Sarría

Video by sonolopez (Javier López Clemente)

El lenguaje de las hormigas es húmedo, constante,
ligero pero lleno de matices y sabores.
Nada se determina de antemano,
reconocen las sendas claras y oscuras de la tierra,
de un cuerpo sonrosado y de un anhelo.
Su murmullo es la marca de su saliva,
la piel siempre deseándolas
y aunque cierren los oídos, las ventanas,
las puertas de la cama,
ellas, pacientes, sabrán esperar.

The Language by Robert Creeley

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Animation by Chad Edwards of a poem by Robert Creeley.

I Don’t Fix a Word by Donna Kuhn

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Experimental video poem by Donna Kuhn — “an exploration of grief, a tribute to a friend who is gone.”