Posts Tagged: The Poetry Storehouse

You as tunnel by Rose Hunter

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https://vimeo.com/92389734

Another stunning Poetry Storehouse remix by Nic S., this time using a text by Rose Hunter. Nic posted some process notes to her blog:

‘You as tunnel’ a poem from The Poetry Storehouse by Rose Hunter, turned out to be the third remix of an accidental triptych I completed on abusive situations (the first was brother carried the poppies by Theresa Senato Edwards, and the second, Secrets by Ruth Foley.)

It took me more than one reading for this poem too to get at the narrative. After a poem on sexual abuse and one that referenced emotional abuse, I read this one as dealing with domestic violence. The language approach is clipped, condensed and stream-of-consciousness, but the overall impact for me was just as disturbing as the two previous ones.

For the remix, I returned to one of my favorite kinds of imagery – space imagery. I found a series of lovely clips of Jupiter and its moons at Video Blocks, and it didn’t take me long to put my own spin on the story. I re-imagined Jupiter as the brutish abuser around which all pivots, the victim as one of its moons caught in helpless orbit, and the second moon as their dark mutual secret, orbiting with them in silent complicity. With that as the ‘meta’ context, the mannequin clip represented the victim of violence at ground level for me – I saw the mannequin itself as representative of deadening of feeling needed for survival, the sunglasses as having connotations of hiding bruising and of obscuring vision, the headphones as attempt to escape into a different (aural) reality, and the broader head-shaking trajectory of the clip reflecting denial.

The soundtrack was easily picked here – something big and space-y yet with some sense of emotional alarm and general tension, which I found via Eric Hopton at Freesound.

Do read the rest. And if you’re a filmmaker or video remixer, don’t forget to visit The Poetry Storehouse whenever you’re looking for ideas for new projects. There are still many terrific poems there without video accompaniment, most with an audio version (sometimes two audio versions).

At Ruby’s diner by Sherry O’Keefe

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https://vimeo.com/92974203

Montana-based poet Sherry O’Keefe has long been one of my favorite bloggers, so I was chuffed to see this video adaptation by Nic S. of one of O’Keefe’s poems in The Poetry Storehouse. She used landscape imagery and a soundtrack from a freesound.org user (Eric Hopton) to very good effect, I thought.

Bees in the Eaves by Bill Yarrow

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Bill Yarrow’s poem “Bees in the Eaves” has had many lives. It originally appeared in Mad Hatters’ Review along with audio of the author’s reading, was reprinted in his collection Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012), and was reprinted again at The Poetry Storehouse, where it garnered a reading by Nic S. and this video remix by Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon. Coming back full-circle to the mad hatters, perhaps, the video uses footage from the 1940 documentary Symptoms Of Schizophrenia, via the Prelinger Archives. Marc notes:

There was a track ‘Tsukuru Swims‘ I had just finished that was right for Nic S.’s reading of the poem.
It took a bit of re-editing but the combination worked beautifully […]

The lines ‘There’s a remedy for everything. And a remedy for every remedy.’ made me think of a short and uncomfortable docu I saw on Prelinger last year.

I took out the footage I thought was disturbing and confronting and edited it to the rhythm and the noises in the soundtrack. I layered the result with moving lights, shot from a train, to give it an extra edge and some depth.

Read the rest.

Bill Yarrow spoke of his experience with Poetry Storehouse remixes in an interview at the Moving Poems forum back in March (prior to the release of this video).

Boy in a field by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick

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https://vimeo.com/90072086

I could watch this again and again. Nic S. makes great use of artwork by Michael Vincent Manalo in this kinestatic video remix of a poem from The Poetry Storehouse by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick.

In The Garden by Steve Klepetar

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Marilyn Monroe meets a poem by Steve Klepetar in this simple but effective Poetry Storehouse remix by Othniel Smith. According to the Vimeo description, the Marilyn Monroe footage is from Home Town Story (Arthur Pierson, 1951), via the Prelinger Archives.

Secrets by Ruth Foley

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https://vimeo.com/92025859

Another of Nic S.’s innovative video remixes for a poem from The Poetry Storehouse, this time by the Massachusetts-based poet and editor Ruth Foley. Sebastian blogged some process notes; here are a couple of snippets:

The language of Secrets was slow and rather sensuous, and when I first read it, I took it as the description of a gradual process of discovery, an uncovering, a blooming of sorts. It was only on the second and subsequent reads that I took in the extent to which it was actually a slow process of flaying, and of destruction. Then it struck me as really incredibly violent, and all the more so for being presented in so meditative and lush a fashion.

[…]

For the soundtrack, I used a track appropriately titled ‘A rotten fairytale’ by a Soundcloud member called Mustafank, whose work I had run across in a video elsewhere (wish I could remember where now). It starts with a toy piano solo and moves into an electric guitar solo, with a faux-innocent sinister feel that really makes you think Hansel & Gretel, sweet gingerbread house & related bad things.

Read the rest.

Ruth Foley doesn’t seem to have a website (though she is all over the Google), but she does keep an amusing blog called Five Things.

Counting by Steve Klepetar

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Steve Klepetar’s poem from The Poetry Storehouse gets the Swoon treatment. Marc Neys writes,

I wanted a more experimental (frantic even) sequence of images for this one. I constructed a soundtrack around Steve’s reading. Re-edited sounds I created before, a sample from I.M. Rawes, taken from London Sound Survey, and new addings of heavily treated recordings (a boiler room) […]

I found the perfect images and atmosphere in one of the hundreds of excerpts out of “The International Institute for the Conservation, Archiving and Distribution of Other People’s Memories” on IICADOM.

A weird combination of naive stop motion (with clay, hands and beans) with some alienated dancing and dark faces in between… A strange string of associations, perfect for what I had in mind.

Steve Klepetar’s home page has some links to his poetry collections (scroll down). And of course check out the rest of his stuff at The Poetry Storehouse.

Items of Value to a Dying Man by Kristin LaTour

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https://vimeo.com/90582292

This Poetry Storehouse remix by Nic S. deploys still images by artist Peter Gric and a soundscape by Jarred Gibb for a strangely compelling and disturbing accompaniment to Kristin LaTour’s poem.

The astounding reception of this kinestatic video might offer some lessons for those interested in videopoetry as a way to reach new and larger audiences. In a post on her personal blog, Sebastian pondered “What happens when a poetry video gets 3,000 plays in 5 days?” I encourage everyone to click through and read the whole post, which is much more angst-ridden than boastful (we poets do not always handle success well). I particularly liked this part:

A poem has no life outside its interaction with people. When they are not being interacted with, poems lie dead in the dark, where they are purposeless, and meaningless.

The role of the curator, remixer or publisher of poetry is to maximize the number of interactions each poem has with people. In the hands of the successful curator/publisher, the poem lives in interaction repeatedly and reaches a higher level of its interaction potential than poems in the custody of less successful handlers.

That’s the role of the curator/publisher in the scheme of things poetry. But it doesn’t have to be their motivation. This is where I got confused. If things go well, more people will interact with poems as a result of my remixing and curating. If things don’t, they won’t. But that’s not why I do what I do. I do what I do because I like voicing poems, I like exploring the technology of putting poems online in different ways, I like the challenge of combining poetry and digital imagery in video, and experimenting with sound.

Brother carried the poppies by Theresa Senato Edwards

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https://vimeo.com/91031891

A Nic S. remix of a poem in the Poetry Storehouse by Theresa Senato Edwards. Sebastian re-purposed some stock footage to gorgeous and disturbing effect, and the music she chose really carries the film. Here are her process notes:

For this haunting poem on abuse by Theresa Senato Edwards, I used both film and still image elements – first time I have combined the two.

For the backdrop of the bleak disastrous relationship, I used darkened stock footage of what was originally a relatively cheerful sunshiney scene of an abandoned house in a field. Once darkened, it looked lonely and empty – a context in which forbidden activity could easily take place unchecked. To begin, end and punctuate the piece, I slowed down and darkened stock footage of a summer lightning storm to represent the abuser.

For the victim, I used a stock still image from StockVault which suggested muffling and suffocation to me. I used the image as a fade-in at three different places in the film, each time adding a different Ken Burns effect to it – panning away, towards, across. The hollow ‘alien drone’ soundtrack was by Speedenza, one of my freesound.org favorites.

Many thanks once more to Theresa for sharing this powerful piece at the Poetry Storehouse.

Sebastian’s chronicle of her education as a videopoem-maker is really turning into a valuable resource for others who want to learn the craft. I advise either following her blog on WordPress.com, as I do, or else subscribing to the Videopoems category link in an RSS feed reader.

Tuba Player by Robert Wood

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A Robert Wood poem and Nic S. reading from The Poetry Storehouse were remixed with footage from the Prelinger Archives in this videopoem by Dustin Luke Nelson (whose poetry is also included at the Storehouse). The poem originally appeared in Rose and Thorn Journal.