January Gill O’Neil
January just posted her video poem to Facebook, and I thought everyone might like to see it here. It’s from Underlife, her first book of poetry.
January just posted her video poem to Facebook, and I thought everyone might like to see it here. It’s from Underlife, her first book of poetry.
Very nice work. A few of the transitions from the inside to outside location seem a little forced (though I’m not enough of a filmmaker to suggest how they might be improved), but I loved the cooking-show set-up. Literal interpretations of text into film don’t always work for me, but this does.
I think the literal interpretation works because the poem as a whole is open as a metaphor without an obvious referent. I think if the video had attempted to show a referent in a literal way it would close the possible interpretations down. If there is not metaphor, then the video doesn’t linger on the visuals in a meditative way that makes the words superfluous. I think this is a terrific approach.