Four poems from a 2012 collection called Eastern Time (Източно време/Iztochno vreme) by Bulgarian poet Десислава Неделчева/Dessislava Nedelcheva, about whom I can glean nothing in the Anglophone web. But I love this film by Vladimir Mihaylov, AKA poe3. According to Google Translate, ‘The video was realized with the support of the National Fund “Culture” 2020.’ Glad to hear that the government of Bulgaria has money for poetry film! Mihaylov’s entire playlist of subtitled videopoetry is worth a watch.
Drumshanbo Written Word Weekend is looking for poetry films. Drumshanbo in County Leitrim, Ireland, hosts an annual literary festival bringing together some of Ireland’s finest writers and poets to celebrate the written word. Part of this festival is an annual Poetry Film Competition open to filmmakers and poets from everywhere. The shortlisted films are screened as part of the festivals opening ceremony, and is curated by Colm Scully.
The event offers a first prize of €400
Apply via Filmfreeway at the following link (€5 per submission) https://filmfreeway.com/DrumshanboWrittenWordPoetryFilmCompetition
or apply for free direct by sending a high resolution download link to writtenwordpoemfilm@gmail.com by Saturday 1st July with the following information on an attached Word document.
Films should be no longer than 6 minutes, and have been made since Jan 2021. Maximum two films per competitor. All languages welcome but films not in English or Irish require English subtitles or captions. Responsibility for copyright and third party authorisations lies with the creator. Please do not submit films that were previously entered.
The Torrid Zone is a strong and beautiful video, the first one up in my Vimeo feed today.
The poem is by Tania Haberland. It can be read on the page below the video at Vimeo. Her voicing of it is marvelous: slow in rhythm, minimal, richly-toned, and affecting. From a bio for her:
…a tri-national poet (German-South African-Mauritian)… born in Africa, raised in Arabia and matured in Europe. She publishes, performs and exhibits her poetry and multi-media collaborations across the globe.
The abstract moving images and the soundtrack are credited to Poetics of Reverie. This is French artist Carine Iriarte and her collaborators in various media. She describes this project in her bio:
…a collaborative artistic project mixing poetry, electro music, painting, short films, movement and nature…
Festival Cinemistica describes its philosophy as:
… dedicated to transcendental cinema, at its several meanings, including philosophic, psychological, scientific, anthropological, spiritual and poetic cinema. Because transcendence in the man and the world, might be eventually ineffable and, on this, cinematographic art has certain advantages, and a huge responsibility.
The 2023 festival has several categories: Cinemistic, in which poetry film would be included, and indeed, ‘all cinematographic possibilities are welcome’; 2023 Mirrors of Love – for which the overarching theme to respond to is Refuge; and a category for films for children.
The Cinemistica Festival has been running for 9 years, and takes place in the beautiful Spanish city of Grenada in November. Entries are open on FilmFreeway until 15th July 2023.
A video animated and edited by Jamie Macdonald AKA Airship23 for the Financial Times:
FT Weekend Festival 2021 commissioned Inua Ellams to write a response to Keats’s classic work ‘To Autumn’ marking his 200th anniversary. The animated poem ‘To John’ exposes the impact of humans on nature over those 200 years.
Financial Times website
For more on Ellams, who’s something of a Renaissance man, do visit his website. He teamed up with Macdonald back in 2020 for the trailer for his book The Actual/Fuck.
Hat-tip to poet Josephine Corcoran for blogging the link.
Janet Lees is a poet and film-maker with a distinctive voice.
Her images are often black and white, with soft shades of grey, or tinged with the subtlest of colours. Her poetry is minimal in style, carrying quiet emotion. In counterpoint, the soundtracks are often lush in feeling. So it is in her latest film, Seven things I know.
The atmospheric music is by alt-pop duo Narrow Skies, Anita and Ben Tatlow. The song’s lyrics weave with those of the poem, which is given as text on screen. Anita Tatlow sings in an abstract way that is more musical than verbal, and so the song does not detract, but instead adds fine strands of meaning to Janet Lees’ poem.
The poem is whimsical while uncovering depth. A few of the seven things of the title:
the cadbury’s flake jingle
…
the magpie’s rough music
…
that eric morecambe
was not my uncle
Both poem and song lyrics are printed on the page with the video. This is a film in a single shot and slow motion rhythm, with breathing space for each of its elements.
More of Janet Lees’ films are to be found on her Moving Poems author page.
The 6th Annual Cadence Video Poetry Festival will take place as a hybrid event with screenings in Seattle, and online. There are multiple events in the programme and you can choose between single event tickets or festival passes. The in-person events will be between 27-30 April, while the online programmes will be available for a week longer until 7th May.
There are five intriguing sounding programmes in the festival, including The Edge of Here, The Great Entanglement, and the fantastic title of A Tune to Contain All Your Revolt, as well as a satellite in-person film programme at the Frye Art Museum.
There are also three, live, collaborative workshops with a mixture of in-person, hybrid, and online events.
See the Northwest Film Forum website for more details and a full programme.
Vancouver-based poet and poetry filmmaker Fiona Tinwei Lam collaborated with animation students Lara Renaud and Quinn Kelly back in February on this videopoem “about revision, redaction, and renewal.” Lam told me in an email that
It originated in a published shaped or visual poem on the page about the editing and revising process. I quickly created and brainstormed a text block from which the poem would be carved out on screen.
But I realized there were other poems within the poem while utilizing further compression and fragmentation. Then I noticed there were a few interesting phrases in the discarded text from the text block I’d created for the initial poem, that could form the basis of a new poem about reclamation. So these “cut out” phrases could return on screen in a new way.
She added that she thought it could form the basis of a fun lesson plan for schools and community writing workshops, and I agree. One of the great things about erasure poetry is the way it reminds us that no creation is truly ex nihilo; there’s always an element of discovery. And often with such serendipity comes joy, flowering of its own accord, as the animation suggests. A wonderful start to Poetry Month. (And imagine my surprise just now, bringing up the Canadian National Poetry Month page, to find that this year’s theme is in fact joy!)