Poet: Mary Jo Balistreri

For Zachary by Mary Jo Balistreri

Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

A black-and-white film by Marc Neys AKA Swoon for a poem by Mary Jo Balistreri in The Poetry Storehouse. Marc posted some process notes to his blog:

A very beautiful poem. Heartfelt.
Nic S. did a poignant reading that led to this track;

[listen on SoundCloud]

The visuals for this one are a combination of footage I shot during a hiking weekend last december (moody shots of trees, reflections, shadows…) alternated with the repetition of a boy falling (carefully edited out from a very lively action video by Justin Kauffman (under the Attribution license CC BY 3.0)

I think the ‘endless’ falling of the boy works well with the rest of the footage. Creating the right atmosphere for the poem and the soundtrack. There’s some comfort in this one I think.

A reminder, for any poets who might be reading this: the deadline for submissions to The Poetry Storehouse is coming up on February 28. After that it will transition to archive mode, adding new remixes (including videos) only up through September.