Posts By Dave Bonta
Contemplating Hell by Bertolt Brecht
Brecht’s poem assembled and disassembled line by line in a hypnotic videopoem by the UK-based Polish video artist Maciej Piatek and F_F_P, with music by Karol Wyszynski. In the description at Vimeo, he notes:
In the world of coming from and going to nowhere, we are living in bi-polar reality in which the gap between what’s right and what’s wrong between hell & heaven is getting bigger, thus our life becomes more uncertain. These blended ideas & images are creating chaos and making us lonely. The only solution is to stop and contemplate, contemplate heaven or go to hell.
The movie had its official premiere at Bates Mill, Huddersfield as a part of the multi-arts event ,,Hope,,
(found via London Poetry Systems)
The Black Delph Bride by Liz Berry
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 last week’s post of Lifted for more details. Jo Bell says of this one,
Liz Berry’s film is a darker narrative, shot on location as all of these films were, at the Black Delph in the Black Country. Harking back to the canal ballads of the Victorian time, this has a Dickensian tragedy about it.
For more about Liz Berry, visit her website. Her dramatic reading is set off brilliantly by Luca Nasciuti‘s soundtrack.
Kiss the Cobra by Michael Annis
A Swoon (Marc Neys) film for a text by U.S. poet Michael Annis, translated into Spanish with the help of Gabriela Perez and recited by Sitara Monica Perez, with music by Sonologyst. I am deeply impressed by Swoon’s choice of imagery to accompany the sexual, conjugal language of the poem. The whole story of how this videopoem came to be made is interesting, but I’ll just quote the latter part of Swoon’s blog post about it:
Michael then gave me ‘Kiss the Cobra’, in his own words:
“It’s a passionate piece written from the perspective of a woman’s desires. It’s not overtly sentimental; rather, bold and lusty with unbridled passions.”
The poem was recorded in Spanish. I loved the sound and the melody of the Spanish version and I immediately got an idea for the images.
Sonologyst, again, delivered a fantastic soundtrack to curl around the reading of Sitara Monica Perez.The images I used and edited came from an Russian ASMR-Artist called Air Light.
I took a few samples of her scratching and tapping with bright red nails and started working with that.
The video ended up like an abstract cascade of colour and movement, giving the voice and the words enough room to crawl in and out of the piece. Something to stare at…
The video premiered at ‘1.000 poets for change’ in Denver (28/09/2013)
When We Two Parted by Lord Byron
Othniel Smith specializes in poetry mashups with images from the Prelinger Archives. He made this one with “Images from ‘Just The Two Of Us’, aka ‘The Dark Side Of Tomorrow’ directed by Barbara Peeters and Jack Deerson (1970).” The reading is by Kristin Hughes from LibriVox.
The Fortune Teller by Robert Krut
Another videopoem by Nick Paonessa of lowercase productions in support of Robert Krut‘s new collection This is the Ocean.
My Time by Jade Anouka
Another video by Sabrina Grant (with assistance from Anneka Henry) starring actor-poet Jade Anouka. Grant also interviewed Anouka on the set of “My Time.” I particularly like what Anouka says about trusting the director to bring her own vision to the project:
Live poetry readings on the web: the Transatlantic Poetry Community
The Transatlantic Poetry Community on Google+ is doing something which, as far as I know, has never been done before on such a large scale (and with such major poets): delivering regular, live readings of poetry over the web. It uses “Hangouts on Air,” which are basically souped-up Google Hangouts saved instantly to YouTube, where past readings are archived. Each show so far has paired a poet from the U.S. with a poet from the U.K., each reading for 20 minutes to half an hour, followed by a joint Q&A in response to questions submitted on the Google page or on Facebook. Here are Michelle Bitting and Andrew Phillip; Jane Hirshfield and George Szirtes; and Marvin Bell and Esther Morgan.
The next reading is on Sunday, October 13, and features a half-dozen British poets: Katy Evans-Bush, Isabel Galleymore, Chris McCabe, Andrew Philip again, Paul Stephenson, and Claire Trévien. It’s part one of a two-part series in cooperation with Silk Road Review, which will conclude on Saturday, October 19.
I commend the organizer, Robert Peake, for what must be a tremendous amount of work, drawing on his expertise as a tech consultant as well as an American expatriate poet living outside of London. A page on his website is actually the best, most uncluttered place to bookmark for news and videos of the readings. It includes a stats counter for total views on the videos: 887 views in 43 countries as of October 4. His latest post on that page is a manifesto which outlines an ambitious program for expansion and partnering.
One does of course need a fairly good broadband connection to watch the readings live; I haven’t been able to watch it here in rural Pennsylvania, though I did enjoy the first two shows this summer when I was in London. Peake is a very good live host, and I’ve also been impressed by how politely but firmly he’s dealt with the narcissists on the Google community page who only want to post their own (inevitably terrible) poems. The show has had a few technical difficulties: an abrupt cut-off a few minutes from the end of the first show, and a muffled reading from Marvin Bell which required a make-up (non-live) reading video. Obviously for Hangouts on Air to work, care needs to be taken that participants have good cameras and microphones. But beyond the technical limitations are the inherent problems of reading poetry to an unseen, unheard audience. When I met Andrew Philip at the Filmpoem Festival in early August, I asked him how he’d handled that. He said something like, “It was strange at first, but I got used to it after a while.” I find I don’t enjoy the readings as much as I enjoy videos of readings before live audiences because I miss that feedback from the audience. Perhaps as the audience for Transatlantic Poetry builds, live reactions via Google, Facebook and Twitter can be given more prominence — integrated into a combined stream, perhaps, right beside or beneath the embedded video on Peake’s website? Barring that, I guess I’d prefer shorter readings and more time devoted to conversation between the poets and with the host. Another thing that seems slightly odd to me is the lack of any mention of Canada so far.
But enough of my obnoxious criticisms! Join the community and spread the word. I’ll conclude with a quote from the end of Peake’s manifesto:
What Transatlantic Poetry on Air ultimately represents is something greater than the sum of its parts. It is a manifestation of the growing trend of communication technology breaking down geographic barriers for poets and poetry-lovers to connect. Furthermore, the approach is economical, environmentally friendly, and accessible for those with restricted mobility.
In addition to the technological paradigm shift, enabling us to engage poets and their audiences in new ways, there is great interest overall for poets and poetry-lovers to connect globally. Poets on one side of the Atlantic recognise that they have much to gain from exposure to their counterparts across the sea. Transatlantic Poetry on Air therefore lies at the intersection between what poets and poetry-lovers increasingly want, and what is increasingly possible.
Transatlantic Poetry on Air aims to produce enjoyable, high-quality experiences throughout the lifecycle of each event for everyone involved. It aims also to be guided by its stated purpose and principles to evolve and expand over time, making it a fulcrum for the upliftment of global poetry in the twenty-first century.
Lifted by Jo Bell
A recent filmpoem by Alastair Cook, featuring the words and voice of the U.K. Canal Laureate Jo Bell. On my two-month visit to the U.K. this summer, I was charmed by the whole canal scene. We ran into canals almost everywhere we went, and the Grand Union Canal was a great place to go walking near where I was staying in London. Most fascinating of all were the locks, and this filmpoem really captures their essence, I think.
This is one of four filmpoems that Alastair Cook produced for the Poetry Society in partnership with the Canal & River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate 2013 project, all screened at London’s Southbank Centre on National Poetry Day (October 3), which this year had the theme of Water. I’ll probably post the others in due time, but if you’re impatient, all four are featured in a post at Jo Bell’s site Waterlines: Canal and River Poetry. She says, in part:
My poem, Lifted, is about canal locks in general but specifically about Lock 30 of the Trent & Mersey, near Roger Fuller’s boatyard in Stone, Staffordshire. This stretch of water is very familiar to me, and to anyone who travels that great arterial east-west waterway through the English Midlands. This footage was shot on my own boat by Alastair, who proved to be not only an artist but a keen and capable crew member.
The Perseids by Lucy English
While most of what I categorize as videopoetry here comes about as the result of a filmmaker (who may also be the poet) making a video version of a preexisting text, in this case, filmmaker/musician Swoon (Marc Neys) sent British poet Lucy English a couple of musical prompts and asked her to write a poem in response. The music she chose then became the soundtrack for a videopoem using her reading and some found footage. Swoon blogged about the process, quoting English at length:
Rather than Marc supplying images to an existing poem or me creating a poem in response to images. Marc suggested that I choose a sound track from a few he had chosen. The one I liked sounded mysterious. The tension also built up as the track progressed. I didn’t force the image but what I saw in my mind was a starry sky. I decided to follow my emotional response. The feeling the track created in me was one of wistfulness and sadness.
The previous weekend I had watched the Persieds meteor shower, from a hotel room in Stratford on Avon. This experience, so different from a youthful experience of being outside on a summer’s evening, blended with the soundtrack. What I wanted to write about was how difficult it is to be spontaneous, and indeed naively optimistic, when we are older.
When I was younger I didn’t seem to worry about logistics, such as how was I going to get to a place, or how was I going to get back, I just went somewhere. I also had a baby in my early twenties and I used to take him with me as well.
So the poems is wistful. It is about wanting to feel that carelessness and optimism. It’s about being young and what gets lost when you get older.
I sent the poem to Marc and let him have free range about the images to choose. I liked what he selected. He didn’t focus on the night sky and the meteor shower but instead he used images of children playing in the summer. The repeated sections of film, were to me, like the repetition of memory itself. The summer day and the summer night become blended and the colour changes from yellow to dark blue. His first version was more about the day time and less about the night and I suggested that the final merge into the starry night/ specks of dust could be longer. He agreed with this and now the film ends with this longer sequence.
I find the final result moving. There is a strange tension between the words of the poem and the flickering images. The sound track offers a level of emotional depth to the wistfulness of the poem. This is my first poetry film collaboration and I have found the process inspiring. More!!!
