How can I submit my video to Moving Poems?

You can’t. You’re welcome to send me links to your own videos (or other peoples’!) through the Contact form, but don’t expect a formal acceptance or rejection (or indeed any reply at all most of the time). I’m not trying to be an asshole here; I’m simply trying to limit the time I put into this unpaid labor of love, and correspondence is very time-consuming. Also, Moving Poems is just a video blog. Technically, videos are published when you upload them to Vimeo, YouTube, etc. and make them public. You can submit to various contests and festivals, as well as to some online literary magazines, but Moving Poems is all about bringing attention to already published work.

Could you please tell me what you think of my poetry video?

No, for two reasons: It’s time consuming (see above), and I’m really not very good at offering constructive criticism. Please consider joining online support groups for beginning filmmakers or remix artists.

How can I get my poems made into films or animations?

The most rewarding way is to learn filmmaking yourself. Barring that, I recommend finding a filmmaker or video remix artist to collaborate with: rather than simply adapting a previously existing text, think of the film or video as a new, hybrid creation—a filmpoem or videopoem. Images and text can evolve together. You’ll probably gain a whole new perspective on the writing process, and have almost more fun than is sane or healthy. You can also simply pay a production studio to make a video of your work, but even then, it’s a good idea to work as closely with the director as possible.

Will you make a video of my poem?

Probably not, but I’m really not that good anyway. You can undoubtedly learn to make videos better than mine in a month or two.

Why isn’t there a video at [name of post]?

Probably because whoever uploaded it to YouTube or Vimeo either took the video down, made it private, restricted it from embedding, or deleted their account all together. The older the post, the more likely this is to have occurred.

Why don’t you take down posts where the videos have gone missing?

Because I think that on balance the frustration that this doubtless causes many visitors is outweighed by the value to students and scholars of maintaining a record of what was made by whom and when.

What’s up with all the missing images in the News and Views section?

We got hacked in 2024, and I failed to correctly save images before wiping the site and starting afresh at a new webhost.

How can I get a news note or film review into Moving Poems Magazine?

Please use the Contact form.

Can you help me find [name of poet or name of filmmaker]?

It doesn’t hurt to ask, but most of the time I can’t, because my style is to share publicly available videos without contacting their makers.

Why did you post my video without asking my permission?

Because you uploaded it to a video hosting site and made it both public and shareable. And if you want your video to be seen, surely you are OK with its being shared as widely as possible? That’s the reigning assumption, at any rate. It is, admittedly, at odds with the scarcity mentality in effect at most literary magazines, where the idea is to lock content up so it can only be viewed in their print journal or on their website.

Does anyone ever actually read FAQ pages?

I don’t know. I always read them, but maybe I’m weird. They’re such a retro thing, dating back to when “Internet” was still capitalized and “Web site” was commonly written as two words, that I think they’re just about due for a revival.

—Dave Bonta, editor