Posts Tagged: Bloodaxe Books
In the Air by Kate Sweeney
A unique poetry film: a hand-drawn animation of poets’ hands from interview snippets that can also be seen as a remix videopoem. Kate Sweeney explains in the Vimeo description:
Created from short elliptical sequences taken from archived interviews with four Bloodaxe poets. I wanted to isolate the gestures used when explaining the poetic, the abstract thoughts they couldn’t express in words alone. Gesture is communication that is also a kind of drawing in the air.
C.K Williams, in his interview with Ahren Warner, muses that “In a sense the final version of any work of art pretends to be an improvisation; even a painting. First the painter puts down the ground on the canvas or the wood then he puts down another layer of something then he begins to put the blocks in and then the last layer, little brush strokes, that look like improvisation”. The archive offers a window through to all those described layers. It tracks the process of producing a poem, a book and in a way, a poet. Inspired by my research in the archive, the animation includes the smudges, rips, mistakes and corrections, of the paper it was drawn on, revealing and incorporating the process into the final version.
Proof: a poetic glimpse into the archives of Bloodaxe Books
A poetry film/documentary hybrid. The filmmaker, Kate Sweeney, describes it in the Vimeo description as
A poetic glimpse into the archives of the North East [UK] poetry publisher Bloodaxe Books, the contents of which were recently purchased by Newcastle University.
The film was made by artist Kate Sweeney in collaboration with poets Tara Bergin and Anna Woodford in spring 2013
Anna Woodford and Tara Bergin both held residencies at the archive. Bergin talks about her fondness for archives in a video introduction to the film. The same site (CAMPUS social network) gives a fuller explanation of how Proof came to be:
In 2013, Newcastle University acquired the archive of Bloodaxe Books, one of the most important
contemporary poetry publishers in the world. Two poets and recent PhD graduates, Anna Woodford and Tara Bergin, were asked to take a look into the as yet un-catalogued boxes to gain an initial sense of the archive’s scope and potential. To document their findings, they teamed up with artist Kate Sweeney to make a short ‘poem-film.’ They called it ‘Proof’.“It was very strange and very interesting,” Bergin says.
The film includes guest appearances by Bloodaxe authors Gillian Allnutt, Simon Armitage, John Hegley and Anne Stevenson.
Tomas Tranströmer
This new film from Bloodaxe Books, one of Tranströmer’s English-language publishers, incorporates footage of the Nobel Prize announcement and the Tranströmers’ reaction, as well as footage of Tranströmer playing the piano which Pamela Robertson-Pearce had just shot in August. Robin Fulton’s translations appear as subtitles for the Swedish-language readings, which include “The Nightingale in Badelunda,” “Allegro,” “From the Thaw on 1966,” “The Half-Finished Heaven,” “April and Silence,” “From March 1979,” and “Tracks.” This is of course something that the film/video medium is particularly well suited for: it’s wonderful to hear the poet reading in Swedish and know (more or less) what he is saying.
Do read the extensive notes on the Vimeo page. The detail that “Swedish composers have written several left-hand piano pieces especially for him to play” speaks volumes about his status in his homeland. (Hat-tip: Teju Cole on Twitter)
Three poems (Flute Boy, Marriage of Opposites and Half-caste) by John Agard
John Agard is joined on stage by the flautist Keith Waithe, a fellow Guyanan, in an extract from a film by Pamela Robertson-Pearce called John Agard Live!, which was included as a DVD along with Agard’s 2009 collection Alternative Anthem, from Bloodaxe Books. (There’s also video of Agard reading the title poem.)
Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower by Taha Muhammad Ali
Filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce for the DVD anthology from Bloodaxe Books, In Person: 30 Poets, edited by Neil Astley. I was especially impressed by the way Ali’s translator, Peter Cole (So What: New and Selected Poems 1971-2005), translates something of his reading style into English in the second half of the video.
For a few more online poems by Taha Muhammad Ali in English, see his page at Poetry International Web.
Poems from the Iraq War by Brian Turner
This video includes six poems: “Here, Bullet,” “Hwy 1,” ”Eulogy,” “16 Iraqi Policemen,” “The Inventory from a Year Sleeping with Bullets” and “At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center,” taken from Brian Turner’s two books, Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise.
If I don’t post more poetry reading videos here, it’s because such videos are often poor quality (dark, out-of-focus, too quiet, etc.) and many poets don’t really know how to read their work. This video demonstrates how to do it right. In fact, the poems are so intense and so well read, I find I really don’t mind the utter minimalism of a single-camera close-up on the reader’s face. Neil Astley shot the video for Turner’s British publisher, Bloodaxe Books.
Brian Turner doesn’t appear to have a website, but here’s his Wikipedia page.
Don’t miss a post
Latest from the magazine
- Call for work: Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2020
- Ground-breaking documentary about videopoetry now at Vimeo On Demand
- Call for Entries: Atticus Review’s 2nd Annual Videopoem Contest
- Film festival news: Art Visuals & Poetry program; calls for work from Carmethan Bay, At the Fringe
- Poetry film festival news round-up