Posts By Dave Bonta
Playing Duets with Heisenberg’s Ghost by Peg Duthie
Othniel Smith used images from the Internet Archive featuring Martha Davis to accompany a reading (by Nic S.) from The Poetry Storehouse, where the author, Peg Duthie, has five poems. Sebastian herself had also earlier made a video remix of the same poem, and it’s interesting to compare her approach with Smith’s:
https://vimeo.com/77778283
According to a note at the site, the poem appears in a collection called From Measured Extravagance (Upper Rubber Boot, 2012), and was first published in The 3rd Annual SFPA Poetry Contest in 2008: Energy (Spec House of Poetry). So it’s definitely been getting around!
Stopping by Dick Jones
A video by Nic S. for a poem and author recording at The Poetry Storehouse, one of three there by the British poet, blogger and musician Dick Jones.
Today is your advocate by Peter Ciccariello
I’m featuring videos based on poems in The Poetry Storehouse this week. Artist and poet Peter Ciccariello has three texts on the site. This one was read by Nic S. and made into a film by Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon. Marc shared some process notes at his blog.
This soundtrack/reading led me to images I shot over a year ago. Footage of someone looking back, remembering the past, someone watching life gliding by her… Just a few long shots (in and out of focus), nothing else…just the gaze.
Underground by Emer Martin
https://vimeo.com/76805308
Like Judith Dekker’s lark, this is a videopoem made from a passage of poetic prose: in this case, the unpublished novel The Affection of a Hag by Irish writer Emer Martin. Daragh McCarthy is the producer, editor, composer and reader, with filming by Richard Donnelly (see Vimeo for the complete credits). McCarthy writes,
I came across the work of Emer Martin in a copy of Stinging Fly magazine that a friend left in my flat on a winter evening in 2011.
Leafing through the contents I was struck by the title “going underground” in the novel extracts section, as I had made a film about the Dublin punk rock scene “The Stars Are Underground”.
Reading the character’s monologue in my kitchen I realised I was speaking it out loud, caught up in the rhythm. The words felt like an anger cheat sheet and history lesson and I immediately knew I wanted to put it to music.
The words seemed to encapsulate what myself and many of my contemporaries have been trying to express in terms of our place within history at this time and how we might begin to create a route forward.
While initially they suggested a full throttle approach, in the end a considered and deliberate reading was more appropriate.
I had been planning to combine my love of both film and music and felt that this piece was where I should start.
I wanted the visuals to be abstract for the most part, suggestive of the natural world and an internal world in equal measure.
I wanted the music to be a combination of midi, analogue and the human voice. I have been exploring Shape Note singing for some time and felt it’s raw human power would suit the sense of a people’s emotional response to their situation perfectly.
The Whole Place is Dark by Nick Sturm
Video by DJ Berndt for a poem by Nick Sturm that originally appeared in Ink Node. (Hat-tip: “The dA-Zed guide to Alt Lit.”)
Grand Union Bridge by Ian Duhig
Another of Alastair Cook‘s filmpoems for the Poetry Society in partnership with the Canal and River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate 2013 project. See my post of Lifted for more details. Jo Bell writes,
Ian Duhig’s poetry combines a deep learning with a lively wit, and a strong sense of Irish heritage as well as a need to honour the workers of a former age. His poem, Grand Union Canal, takes us to Paddington Basin in London.
Ian Duhig reads his text in the soundtrack, which was composed by Luca Nasciuti.
Doing videopoetry live, karaoke-style
I have an essay up at Voice Alpha, a group blog about reading poetry alive for an audience, on the unique challenges and rewards of doing a live reading accompanied by “karaoke” versions of videopoems — videopoems from which the poem has been stripped. I began by discussing a terrific example of this kind of performance which I’d been lucky enough to see this summer at the Filmpoem Festival in Dunbar, Scotland — the inspiration for my own first venture into videopoem karaoke this past Wednesday. Here’s part of what I concluded:
There was simply no question that I’d have to practice my ass off for a couple of days in advance, reading the poems over and over while the videos played in a VLC playlist on my laptop. With regular poetry readings, practice might seem optional (at least to poets who don’t read this site), but with audiovisual accompaniment, you have to come in on cue or the whole thing flops. I had assumed the screen would be behind me and prepared accordingly, but with it situated to my right, I didn’t have to glance exclusively at my laptop for visual cues.
Complete memorization of the poems would not have been a bad thing, much as I resist internalizing my own words to that degree. I wouldn’t have had to fumble with a book and set list, and possibly could’ve engaged more with the audience. However, with the audience focused on the screen, what really mattered was my vocal delivery, not eye contact. And with the accompanying music being generally melodic and at points down-right funky, it took off the pressure to give an absolutely flawless reading. So in a way, this approach offers a bit of a crutch to those of us (95% of poets?) who are not highly skilled performers.
There’s nothing like a live reading to improve one’s delivery, though. I had been afraid that the necessity to sync up my reading with prerecorded music and images might make for kind of a mechanical delivery, but I don’t think that happened. In fact, for some of the poems in the set, I found myself reading in a more intense, impassioned style than I used when I’d recorded myself alone in a quiet bedroom for the online versions of the videopoems. And since I had to pay close attention to the music for many of my cues, I think this approach actually improved my over-all sense of timing and rhythm.
I’d love to hear impressions from other poets who have given audio-visually enhanced readings. I know of quite a few.
shadow moment by Randy Adams
https://vimeo.com/78441978
A video by Nic S., using a text from The Poetry Storehouse by Canadian media artist Randy Adams.
New poets’ works continue to appear at the Storehouse every week. (There are two more poems by Randy Adams alone.) I really hope it catches on among poetry filmmakers — I’m a big believer in the open-content philosophy behind the site. If you make a film based on something there, be sure to let me know about it. And if you teach film, or know someone who does, be sure to mention The Poetry Storehouse as a place where students can get ideas for good, short films.
“I like a look of agony…” by Emily Dickinson
Othniel Smith repurposes public-domain imagery from the Internet Archive to accompany Dickinson’s text, which was written in 1862, during the American Civil War.
CYCLOP International Videopoetry Festival in Kiev
The 3rd annual CYCLOP International Videopoetry Festival is coming up on November 16 and 17 in Kiev, Ukraine. For a description in English, see this very informative slideshow. They have a number of partners and media sponsors; it looks like a pretty major event. The focus is on contemporary Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian authors, and they hold a competition “to draw attention to Videopoetry as a phenomenon and a separate art form.” Last year they also showed selections from the Argentine videopoetry festival VideoBardo, the German ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, and Brooklyn’s International Literary Film Festival.
Here’s the 1st Place and People’s Choice Award winner from 2012, “1 + 1 = 1,” directed by Kalinichenko Xenia using a text by Mary Teymurazyan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh1XU1bwKEk#t=122
Scroll down the CYCLOP webpage for many more videos.
