~ February 2014 ~
“Images which don’t make sense, but seem to fit somehow”: an interview with Othniel Smith
This is the sixth in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse, a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” This interview with Othniel Smith shares a remixer’s perspective. Smith has made the following remixes: “Playing Duets with Heisenberg’s Ghost,” “Dirty Old Man,” “Florid Psychosis,” “Ethics of the Mothers” and “Mundane Dreams.”
1. Would you briefly describe the remix work you have done based on poems from The Poetry Storehouse?
OS: The films I’ve made, inspired by pieces from The Poetry Storehouse, have all been assembled from public domain material made available by The Prelinger Internet Archive and Flickr Commons. I am neither a poet nor a scholar of poetry; thus I fully concede that my interpretations may well be excessively literal. Nor am I a professional video editor, hence the clumsiness.
2. How is The Poetry Storehouse different from or similar to other resources you have used for your remix work?
OS: Most of the poetry films I made before discovering The Poetry Storehouse were based on readings of historic poems (by Shakespeare, Keats, Dickinson, Sandburg etc), taken from sources such as Librivox. Thus I seized on the opportunity to exercise my limited imagination on the work of living poets.
3. What specific elements do you look for when you browse offerings at The Storehouse (or, what is your advice to poets submitting to The Storehouse)?
OS: I’ve simply chosen poems which sparked something off in my mind — no logic involved.
I have no advice to offer to poets in terms of what work to submit, as long as they’re aware that their work may be subject to radical misinterpretation.
4. Talk about how the remixing process comes together for you. For example, does your inspiration start with a poem, or with specific footage for which you then seek a poem?
OS: Usually a phrase in the poem, or its tone as a whole, calls to mind an image from a film. For example, for Peg Duthie’s “Playing Duets With Heisenberg’s Ghost”, it was of a woman blissful and assured at her piano; for David Sullivan’s “Dirty Old Man” it was the innocent face of an adolescent Tuesday Weld. It’s then a matter of seeking out other images which make sense in conjunction with it. Or which don’t make sense, but seem to fit, somehow.
5. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
OS: No — it’s an excellent resource. It’s especially interesting to hear poets reading their own words. Hopefully you’ll be able to attract more quality work from all parts of the globe.
6. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience (or anything else)?
OS: I’m just pleased that the poets whose work I’ve tackled don’t seem to have been overly offended (or if they have, they’ve been very polite about it).
New at Moving Poems: related post links
I’m testing out a possibly permanent addition to the main site: related post links. These appear only on individual post pages, between the sharing icons and the comment form at the bottom of the post. Each link includes a still from the video, which darkens when you mouse over it. I’m hoping that this will be less of a distraction than an inducement to browse Moving Poems’ increasingly vast archives. The plugin I’m using (a new module for Jetpack, the Swiss army knife of WordPress plugins) seems to key in on videos for the same poet’s work, and to some extent by the same filmmaker. Beyond that it seems to use categories and the posts’ text to determine relatedness. Anyway, I’d appreciate feedback from regular users of the site: great addition or pointless distraction?
Self-Portrait as Beast by Frances Justine Post
I think the description on Vimeo kind of buries the lede for this one:
Video and animation by artist Cecelia Post. Cecelia (photographer and video artist) and Frances [Justine Post] (poet) are twins who have been collaborating since birth.
I love seeing collaborations like this. The sisters produced it as a trailer for Frances’s new book of poems, Beast (Augury Books, 2014). Here’s how they characterized the book at Vimeo:
In BEAST, Frances Justine Post explores the destruction and eventual reclaiming of the self following loss. Many of the poems make up a series of “Self-Portraits” that explore the psychological core of intimacy with its inherent devotion and betrayal, reward and punishment. In one, she is a wolf; in another, an equestrian and her horse; then a tornado, the dropped crumbs of a beloved, a pack of hounds, and finally a cannibal. The self changes form and species and switches from one voice to multiple voices. Each poem attempts to reinvent the self and alter it as a way of trying to understand what remains after devastation.
This Long Winter by Kristin LaTour
https://vimeo.com/86794324
Another simple-but-effective Nic S. video remix of a poem from The Poetry Storehouse, this time by Kristin LaTour. Nic posted some process notes at her blog. Especially interesting are her comments on blending multiple voices, and how she collaborated with the other reader, Jonathon Lu, for the voiceover heard here.
Like poem-making, videopoetry-making is a binding/weaving process, a deliberate or serendipitous blending of disparate things (words, images, sound) that were not linked before. Since voice is for me a hugely prominent element of the process, I continue to look for ways to create voice duets, voice dialogues, voice mosaics.
Happy Fifth Birthday to Moving Poems!
Five years ago today, I posted the first video to Moving Poems — a clay-on-glass animation by Lynn Tomlinson of Emily Dickinson’s “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” — and the site was born. The brash site description, “The best poetry videos on the web,” was meant largely as a joke on self-serious websites obsessed with search-engine optimization. As best as I can recall, I anticipated spending a month or two posting all the cool poetry videos I was aware of, and letting it go at that. I really just wanted to get them all in one place, largely for my own convenience. Ha!
So here we are. I don’t have the stomach for a long, boastful list of accomplishments, because I am painfully aware of all the things I’ve done wrong or could be doing better. I will say that to the extent that this site has helped expand filmmakers’ and poets’ horizons and led them to create new multimedia works, to network more effectively, and even to create new videopoetry/filmpoetry/cinepoetry-related events that might not have happened otherwise, I am enormously gratified. I continue to be astonished by the breadth and quality of poetry videos that all you filmmakers, video artists, film students and remix geniuses are uploading to the web every day. Since the main site consists entirely of embedded media, it is literally the case, and not the usual bollocks you hear in these kinds of statements, that I couldn’t have done any of this without you. So thanks for sharing your work with the world, and please keep it coming.
Will “House of Cards” save poetry videos on the web?
The lion’s share of online poetry videos (in English, at any rate) are uploaded in the U.S. and, if Moving Poems’ site stats are any indication, their largest audience is also in the U.S. That’s to be expected, I suppose. But there’s a big problem: our internet infrastructure is terrible, among the worst in the developed world. It’s slow, it’s hideously expensive, and a significant portion of the rural population is still on dial-up. I personally have a slow DSL connection via Verizon, one of a handful of enormous, nearly monopolistic providers. Verizon, however, seems to have given up earlier plans to build out its fiber optic network in favor of concentrating on its mobile network, which needless to say is not a viable option for the regular consumption of video for anyone who isn’t pulling a six-figure salary. And the two biggest cable providers, Comcast and Time Warner, recently announced plans for a merger, further reducing competition and thus any fucking incentive whatsoever to improve U.S. internet service.
Against this background came last month’s decision by a federal appeals court to strike down parts of the Federal Communications Commission’s admittedly Byzantine “net neutrality” rules cobbled together in 2010. This means that ISPs could start throttling the bandwidth from any website they choose, for any reason — and what uses more bandwidth than streaming video? It doesn’t help if an ISP is also a significant content provider such as Time Warner and doesn’t fancy the competition. YouTube’s owner Google could easily afford to reach agreements with ISPs. But could Vimeo, and the welter of smaller video hosting companies? What about start-ups bringing us the Next Big Thing in online video?
And sure enough: within weeks, charges were flying that Verizon was deliberately slowing down Netflix. With the second season of the über-popular American version of House of Cards, a web-only Netflix original, released this month, the politicians in D.C. might actually be paying attention, because the show is all about corrupt congressmen — and as we all know, politicians are a supremely self-regarding lot. Susan Crawford, author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the Gilded Age, said in an excellent interview on NPR’s Fresh Air that many if not most congressional representatives will admit in private that net neutrality is important, but may be afraid to say so publicly because of the power of the telecom industry. So let’s hope they and their aides are big House of Cards fans… and that their constituents keep up the pressure.
But the main action on net neutrality rules shifted from stop-gap measures in Congress back to the Federal Communications Commission this week, as FCC chair Tom Wheeler issued a statement recommending that the commission write new rules that the courts might find acceptable. Predictably, a telecom industry tool in the House of Representatives immediately proposed legislation that would block the FCC from doing this.
Comcast, meanwhile, announced that it had reached some sort of agreement with Netflix, as tens of thousands of people registered their discontent with the proposed Comcast-Time Warner merger via online petition sites, emails to the FCC, etc. Comcast are desperate to portray themselves as reasonable players — and Netflix is surely eager to hedge their bets in case net neutrality isn’t restored. Or as GigaOm writer Stacey Higginbotham put it:
There are two ways of interpreting this news. The first is that Netflix, worried about the threat of the FCC dismantling network neutrality and allowing ISPs to start charging content providers for delivering their traffic, decided to make a deal early when it could get lower prices. The second is the opposite; that Comcast, trying to appear benevolent as it seeks to create the largest broadband provider in the country via a merger with Time Warner Cable, peered with Netflix to avoid regulators asking tough questions.
Let’s take the optimistic scenario and assume that the FCC approves new net neutrality rules, the courts uphold them, and Congress doesn’t fuck with them. We’re still left with craptastic internet in the country that invented it. According to Susan Crawford, it may be years before that will change, and it will probably happen city by city and region by region in a piecemeal fashion. But at least net neutrality would provide a level playing field for new innovators — and allow me to continue surfing Vimeo and YouTube for new poetry videos on my 1.5 mps “broadband” connection from Verizon.
“The collaborative process is enriching for everyone involved”: an interview with Marc Neys
This is the fifth in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse, a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” This interview with filmmaker Marc Neys (A.K.A. Swoon) shares a remixer’s perspective.
1. Would you briefly describe the remix work you have done based on poems from The Poetry Storehouse?
MN: If I recall correctly, both “Telegram” and “Today is your advocate” were your typical “Swoon approach”: first creating a track, getting ideas for images—”Hey, that one might fit perfectly!”— while doing so. If the track is good and the basic idea and feel of the chosen footage (originally intended for other projects in both cases) fits, they create themselves, really. I follow my gut and the flow of the poem/reading/sound to put the images right.
“Sweet Tea” was another story. I made a video (making use of an old experiment from way back) first, but it didn’t do the job. The track was right on from the beginning, but the video? It took a completely different approach—working and experimenting with photos—to make something I thought worked well.
2. How is The Poetry Storehouse different from or similar to other resources you have used for your remix work?
MN: It’s the same in the sense that there are poems (some of them I like, others not to my taste) and there are often fine readings. But it’s much easier in the sense that I don’t have to go through the whole process of finding and getting in contact with the original creators. Though sometimes I do miss that contact. Often a similar contact forms after the video is released, so that’s a good thing.
It’s a fine place to go to once in a while to check what’s new and see if anything “clicks.” I remember doing the same with the Qarrtsiluni issues…but there I had to ask the poet if it was OK to use their work for a video.
3. What specific elements do you look for when you browse offerings at The Storehouse (or, what is your advice to poets submitting to The Storehouse)?
MN: I’m very much a browser. Are there titles that jump out, certain lines that hit me? If that’s the case, I go looking and listening for a reading. I like my poetry audible, so I suggest much more “good” readings, recordings and voices! I know that not every poet is a reader, but getting their poems read out by someone else with a good voice, someone with a great (or even new) interpretation…and if they like their own reading, record them and send that together with the texts.
To me, that’s the whole idea: poetry is great, but should not exist solely in the form of words on paper. It might expand their view of their own work if poets and writers would read their works out loud more often, or get others to read and record their words.
4. Talk about how the remixing process comes together for you. For example, does your inspiration start with a poem, or with specific footage for which you then seek a poem?
MN: Both. Sometimes it’s a word, a phrase, a whole poem that makes me create a soundscape that then leads me to imagery, sometimes I have a track and images that “need” a poem…anything goes. I go with the inspiration of the moment. Take my pot of coffee, open up the computer and see where what leads me. That said, I put a lot of time into my soundscapes, and I believe they are the mortar between the bricks of words and images.
5. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
MN: Not that I can think of right now. Well, maybe invite more “voices”—actors, poetry lovers, people with recording equipment who want to give it a try, radio people with a love for poetry—to record the poems and /or get the poets to do so themselves also…
6. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience (or anything else)?
MN: I still think it’s a great idea, and realized in a good-looking and easy-to-use site. Let it grow. Hopefully, more and more creative people will find their way to the Storehouse, and not only poets with their poems (though, without them, of course, no Storehouse :-)). Being not the greatest writer myself, I love the fact that we can create new things with these existing poems. It opens up the way I look at words, and perhaps makes the writers look differently at images and at their own writing. And in the end, the collaborative process of creating these videopoems, with and on top of creations by others, is enriching for everyone involved.
The Fucking Titanic by Dave Lordan
Irish poet Dave Lordan’s stirring recitation is backed up by music from Sunn O))) and an inspired cut-up of a movie about the Titanic, A Night to Remember (1958). Though I post a lot of videos that remix old film footage here at Moving Poems, I thought it was pretty unusual to make such a lengthy poetry film all from a single source—and one on the same subject as the poem. So I asked the video editor, Eamonn Crudden, to comment. Here’s what he wrote.
I made the video for “The Fucking Titanic”in about 20 hours over two days. Dave knew that his book of prose experiments—First Book of Frags—was about to come out and asked me to get involved in making a video for one of the pieces.
He left the choice of piece up to me and I picked the Titanic one because, reading it online months earlier, I had been struck by the ‘voice’ of the poem—a proletarian female voice cursing her fellow passengers on the Titanic, and the world generally, from beyond a watery grave. I imagined her voice condemning those on the upper levels of the ship, to reliving the disaster over and over for all eternity.
That thought was the hard work in the process of making something for Dave! The rest was really just a mechanical process. I knew that with any dramatized reconstruction I could get my hands on I could capture that thought. It would be as simple as putting the ‘voice’ in the piece over footage of the disaster in progress.
I have made a number of quite experimental films in the last few years—constructing new stories using original monologues (of my own usually) and combining these with edits of my own footage and footage drawn from films that come to hand. Dave knew about my approach so I guessed, without ever directly asking him, that he’d be OK with a piece made through appropriation.
He made a rapid voice recording at my request and e-mailed it to me. I decided to work by having a look at A Night To Remember—an old black and white film about the Titanic. I downloaded and started to watch a just-OK rip of it ‘in’ Final Cut Pro. As I viewed it, sometimes at double and triple speed, I started to strip out all of the dialogue scenes, keeping the unfolding action sequences, and started to make a sub-selection of resonant images that would suit being looped. I knew the moment I first tried looping some of those more resonant shots over the reading and the soundtrack by Sunn O)) that I had a crescendo to build up to. I then started into editing a fast summary of what was left of the film when the dialogue was removed and immediately knew that the almost ‘nouvelle vague’ feel that resulted, combined with a crescendo based on loops, would work as an approach for the whole piece.
I don’t feel bad or guilty about this kind of appropriation at all. It is not as if I or Dave will profit from the venture. I think the quite compelling nature of the result justifies the approach. I am primarily an editor and editing to me is a creative activity. The creative part of my work on it was a simple choice of music and of an existing text to rifle for imagery. Maybe it is useful to compare this approach to VJing? I don’t think there is ‘originality’ in the video—but as a little machine to heighten the intensity of Dave’s piece I think it works. That’s enough for me. I heartily recommend this cheap and dirty approach to others who want to give their poetry and writing a visual element.
To order a copy of First Book of Frags, see the Wurm Press website.
Daffodils by William Wordsworth
Judging from YouTube, Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” must be one of the most popular poems to make into a video, but none of the versions I’ve seen quite made the cut — until now. Polly Zwolinski is a linguistics student at Kings College, London, planning to write her thesis on film poetry, and if this video is any indication, she really grasps what makes a good filmpoem work. Not only is the juxtaposition of film and text images nicely oblique and suggestive, but by transposing such a quintessentially pastoral poem to the urban sphere, Zwolinski has a good chance of expanding its audience.
