Matt Mullins’ videopoems have been a mainstay of this site since 2011, when I ran across his first one, Highway Coda, so it was fascinating to hear how he originally got into videopoetry and what he’s discovered along the way. He prepared this talk for the virtual-only portion of REELPoetry 2025, which ran from March 31 to April 9.
Matt has made a visually interesting presentation with overlays of the videos under discussion, and speaks fluently off-the-cuff (or from hidden notes, perhaps) rather than reading a prepared speech. The result is a real gift for students and scholars in the field, but more than that, I hope, an inspiration to other poets and filmmakers interested in upping their game.
I write poetry, I write fiction, I write screensplays, I am as I mentioned a musician, so I have this kind of unique skill-set. I’ve done a lot of film studies, I apprecite visual imagery, I appreciate visual composition, I appreciate sonic composition, I appreciate linguistic composition, and so back then, in 2010 or so, when I first stumbled upon this artform of videopoetry, I just kind of felt like I had found my home.
Matt Mullinsmakes videopoems and writes poetry, fiction, screenplays, and music. His videopoems have been shown at exhibitions, galleries, and festivals throughout the world and include screenings at Visible Verse (Canada), Zebra (Germany), VideoBardo (Argentina), Liberated Words (England), Ó Bhéal (Ireland), The Body Electric (USA), CYCLOP (Ukraine), Co-Kisser (USA), The Filmpoem Festival (Scotland), Rabbit Heart (USA), The International Film Poetry Festival (Greece), REELPoetry (USA), Cadence (USA), Festival Fotogenia (Mexico) and at many other venues. His poetry and fiction have appeared in online and print literary journals such as the Mid American Review, Pleiades, Hunger Mountain, Descant, decomP, and Hobart. His collection of short stories, Three Ways of the Saw, was published by Atticus Books and named a finalist for Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year. He is the Mixed Media editor of the online journal Atticus Review and currently teaches at Ball State University where he is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing. You can find a number of his videopoems at: https://vimeo.com/mattmullins
