Posts By Dave Bonta
Le Chat / The Cat by Charles Baudelaire
A trilingual filmpoem (subtitles in English and German; voiceover in French) by German filmmaker Patrick Müller.
2014 Visible Verse Festival open for submissions
The leading videopoetry festival in North America, Visible Verse, takes place in Vancouver every fall. Heather Haley, the organizer, messaged me on Facebook to let me know that they are already open for submissions again. Here’s the call from their new website:
Call for Entries and Official Guidelines:
- VVF seeks videopoems and poetry films with a 12 minute maximum duration.
- Works will be judged by their innovation, cohesion and literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
- Please do not send documentaries as they are outside the featured genre.
- Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or-subtitled version is required. Videopoems may originate in any part of the world.
- Please submit by sending the url/link to your videopoem for previewing to VVF Artistic Director Heather Haley at: hshaley@ emspace.com along with a brief bio and contact information. If selected, you will receive notification and further instructions.
- There is no official application form nor entry fee.
2014 Visible Verse Festival will take place in October
Submission deadline: July 1, 2014
Two other international poetry film festivals are also currently open for submissions: the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin (deadline: 25 April) and The Body Electric Poetry Film Festival in Fort Collins, Colorado (deadline: 16 February).
If you organize, or simply know about, other poetry film festivals and contests, please contact me when they open for submissions so I can help spread the word.
Todd Boss’ “Arrivals and Departures,” The Poetry Storehouse, and “12 Moons” featured at Connotation Press
Erica Goss‘ monthly column on videopoetry at Connotation Press, The Third Form, focuses this month on “three video poetry projects … that demonstrate how talent, collaboration and the DIY spirit continue to expand this art form.”
Viewers will see poetry films projected on the gigantic backdrop of St. Paul’s Union Depot train station. Todd Boss, poet, co-founder of Motionpoems and public artist, has embarked on an ambitious project called Arrivals and Departures. The historic Union Depot, saved from demolition and now the focus of a $243 million project, will get the video poetry treatment from Todd and his crew beginning in early October.
[…]
The Poetry Storehouse is Nic S.’s latest venture. Well-known for her vocal interpretations of poetry and for her innovations in the world of video poetry and poetry publishing via the nanopress, Nic said that “the idea came about through a couple of conversations I had about poetry, collaboration and influences.” One of those conversations, with poet and rabbi Rachel Barenblat, got Nic thinking about a place where people could contribute their poetry with the specific agreement that it be used in another artwork. The result was The Poetry Storehouse. Launched in October 2013, it’s already well-stocked and ready for remixing possibilities.
[…]
Finally, I have had the honor to be part of a team that includes Kathy McTavish, Nic S., and Swoon (Marc Neys). 12 Moons is based on twelve poems I wrote, one for every month of the year, with vocals from Nic, music from Kathy, and video plus concept and editing from Swoon. One by one, the team members added their parts: Nic made haunting, poignant recordings of each poem, to which Kathy added the soul-stirring music of her cello. Marc took those building blocks and added his special magic: combing through the archives of public access, vintage film to choose just the right scenes, plus adding his own film, he created twelve videos that explore one person’s life, month-by-month. I blogged about this in several posts at Savvy Verse and Wit.
“Trying Something New”: a seasoned poet chronicles her first foray into videopoetry
The Chicago-based poet Donna Vorreyer, author of A House of Many Windows, chronicled her first foray into poetry film-making in four posts at her blog, which are well worth a perusal by anyone interested in the craft or theory of videopoetry. I was honored that she chose one of my own texts to work with, although that does mean I won’t be sharing it on the main site. At any rate, here are the links:
- Trying Something New, Part One
- Trying Something New, Part Two: Editing & Recording
- Trying Something New, Part Three: The Sounds and the Fury
- And…it’s finished.
Thanks, Donna! And welcome to the cult. :)
Rapprochement Crisis (If I say it was a dream, will you listen?) by Meg Tuite
Swoon’s first release of 2014 is a collaboration with the American poet and fiction writer Meg Tuite. In a recent blog post, he writes:
After “I’m sorry but I’ve witnessed what’s under your suburban bruises” it was clear for me I wanted to work with the words of Meg Tuite again .
Last summer we started another collaboration.
Soundscapes by my hand were sent to her, words came flying back to me.
Back and forth…Words got picked out, recordings were made.
[…]
The [sound]track not only give me a title, it also steered me in the right direction for the images. I didn’t want a ‘storyline’ or a strong narrative. They would stand in the way of the words.
On the other hand I wanted strong emotions, truthful. The whole thing needed a dreamlike feeling of alienation to. I decided on a combination of two different sources;
‘Ménilmontant’ (Markus David Sussmanovitch Kaplan, 1926) and ‘Max Fait de la Photo’ (Lucien Nonguet, 1913)
I added colour and some layers of light.
Read the rest. The video also appears along with the full text and a bio of the poet at Atticus Review.
How to Meditate by Jack Kerouac
Maia Porcaro writes,
This is a short piece shot on 8mm film. It explores the different aspects of meditation and finally finding yourself in such a surreal state. The poem is “How to Meditate” by Jack Kerouac, read by yours truly.
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
Roethke’s great poem is accompanied by found footage of aquatic organisms, which works surprisingly well. Video maker Paula Schneck writes,
“The Waking,” by Theodore Roethke is a poem about the unknowable, life, death, sleep and waking in the form of a villanelle. One of the most unknowable environments in the world is the ocean, especially the deepest parts with the heaviest pressure. Villanelles have a unique rhyme scheme, which is portrayed in jarring cuts between the clips of underwater life.
Brava!
Alice by Lydia Towsey
An interesting performance poem video “Created as a collection of spoken word pieces involving projecting images onto the artist,” according to the Leicester-based filmmaker, Keith Allott. For more about Lydia Towsey, see her website.
Steve Ronnie and Liam Owen: a conversation about poetry and animation
Poet Steve Ronnie and animator Liam Owen discuss their collaboration on the animated poem Four Years From Now, Walking With My Daughter (which we featured back in September) in a new post at the U.K. website The Writing Platform. Here’s how it begins:
SR: So Liam, you’re not a big reader of poetry. What made you think about making an animation from my poem?
LO: That is certainly true, I am in fact not a great reader of anything. I struggle with words but have a love affair with imagery.
When I heard your poem I could automatically visualise each line, each moment, I was walking in the same place. This is not common with me but your poem inspired me, and as soon as you had finished reading it I knew I HAD to make it into a animation, I had to bring it to life.
Growing up together in the same wonderful place and meeting your beautiful first baby daughter who inspired you to write the poem in the first place of course helped.
City Center by Evelyn Lau
https://vimeo.com/81470882
This section from a film called Take Me Home is a terrific meditation on gentrification and sense of place by Jenn Strom and Sherri Rogers, who says in the description at Vimeo:
In August, I collaborated with director Jenn Strom to paint a dreamy sequence for her short film, illustrating a poem called “City Center” by BC’s poet laureate, Evelyn Lau.
What does home mean to you? For each person, it’s different and so personal – in the backyard, on stage, in Tofino, in the kitchen, or wherever family is. In Take Me Home, Knowledge Network profiles 36 British Columbians on what “home” means to them today.
See more at knowledge.ca/program/take-me-home
For more on Evelyn Lau, see the Wikipedia.
(This is Moving Poems’ last post until after the New Year. Happy Holidays and safe journeys to all.)
Byland by Sophie Cooke
Fluid Eye Productions collaborated with author Sophie Cooke to make this poetry film, which was commissioned by Natural Scotland on Screen:
As well as looking back at past film and television, the Natural Scotland on Screen project also wanted to create something new as a lasting legacy beyond the 2013 Year of Natural Scotland.
Scottish poet and novelist Sophie Cooke was commissioned to write an original poem inspired by film from the Scottish Screen Archive and the themes of the Year of Natural Scotland. Sophie watched many hours of footage, then helped select the final clips that would be edited together in this single short film.
The result was Byland. Sophie hopes the poem – and accompanying film – will help to tell the story of our changing relationship with nature.
