Posts By Dave Bonta
Tattoo by Wallace Stevens
Belgian composer and artist Marc Neys (A.K.A. Swoon) is back making videopoems after a lengthy hiatus, with a new website for all his output. For a sense of just how prolific he used to be, and how central his lyrical, idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking has been to the development of contemporary poetry film, this recent adaptation of a Wallace Stevens poem appears to be the 159th video of his we’ve shared at Moving Poems. Here are the credits:
film, voice & music: Marc Neys
Footage: Jan Eerala
translation: Peter Nijmeijer
Ramblings by Gabriel Rosenstock
Irish poet Gabriel Rosenstock has been collaborating with filmmakers for years, often on adaptations of his Gaelic haiku. This film finds him working with Kashmiri artist Masood Hussain on a brief anthology of four free-verse videopoems, “The Poet as Untouchable,” “Broken Bangle,” “The Dismantling of the Taj Mahal” and “White Flags.”
Ramblings is a suite of short video-poems by bilingual poet Gabriel Rosenstock (Ireland), an Indophile who has been dazzled by his contact with the literary and spiritual legacy of India, her people and landscapes, but is not blind to the darker side of India, such as the caste system, Hindutva, the violence and injustices, and so on. In previous short films with his artistic collaborator, artist and auteur Masood Hussain with whom he created the book Walk with Gandhi, he has focussed on the shabby treatment of dissident poet Varavara Rao. Ramblings ends with an anarchist poem which contains a key to universal peace.
The Clapping Tree by Matt Dennison
Australian filmmaker Jutta Pryor‘s atmospheric, pitch-perfect response to a text by American poet Matt Dennison, with whom she regularly collaborates. Actress Rebecca Page serves as a stand-in for the female narrator of the poem—presented as text-on-screen up until the final, spoken line. Click through to Vimeo for the full text. Here’s the description:
The Clapping Tree is a poetry film tribute to mark International Women’s Day, celebrating the strength, vulnerability and spirit of a woman surviving the rigors of life in a remote, male dominated, pioneering settlement. A film collaboration between poet Matt Dennison (Columbus, Mississippi, US), sound artist Mario Lino Stancati (Italy) and filmmaker Jutta Pryor (Melbourne, Australia). Filmed at the Tyrconnell Historic Goldmine in outback north Queensland, where several original buildings and machines remain testament to a goldrush that took place 120 years ago.
Dennison has also made films with Marc Neys (aka Swoon), Marie Craven, and Michael Dickes. We’ve shared a few of them here.
I’ve noticed that current academic discourse in the U.S. has cooled toward prosopopoeia, in reaction to all-too-common instances of poets from traditional oppressor groups presuming to speak in the voices of the oppressed without a whole lot of awareness or cultural sensitivity. But I think it’s an over-reaction to completely proscribe this kind of writing, because even when the imaginative effort falls short it’s still essential for everyone to try to put themselves in others’ shoes, or why live in a society at all? I don’t want to speak for Matt, whom I don’t know, but speaking for myself as a cis-het white male who has written a lot of poems in the voices of women over the years, and has also been known to write from the point-of-view of trees: the openness and vulnerability involved is perhaps an end in itself. To then entrust one’s words to others—women artists, in this case—represents a logical next step toward some kind of genuine synthesis of compassion and understanding. The potential rewards of such an imaginative project may be gauged by the high aesthetic and emotional quality of this film. If the ending doesn’t make you mutter “Holy shit!” I don’t know what to tell you.
Keeping Up with the Huidobros by Lina Ramona Vitkauskas
I fear we have not been keeping up with the always-original videopoetry of Lina Ramona Vitkauskas. This one from last year has a pretty intriguing origin story:
It began with Chilean poet, Vincente Huidobro. The opening / preface of his poetic masterpiece, Altazor, launches into a metaphysical cascade of imagery. This was exciting to a young poet like me—at age 29 with some Spanish knowledge and seeking a manifesto to climb (the name “altazor” is a combination of the noun “altura” / “altitude” and the adjective “azorado” / “bewildered” or “taken aback”).
I’d been experimenting with layered or looking-glass ekphrasis (a term that I’ve coined for this process). As I create cinepoems, a visual language in of itself, I found this poem in particular to be different: it was fueled by a homophonic translation (three languages fused: English, Spanish, and the visual). From this, a separate Lithuanian poem sprung, inspired by the overlapped sounds of street noise, a looped harpsichord, and selected juxtapositions of the poet’s translated phrases and/or words. Now four languages.
Note: It was also a synchronous discovery to find that the first issue of Huidobro’s international art magazine, Creación, featured Lithuanian-born, Cubist sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz.
Click through for an English translation of the Lithuanian poem as well as the full text of the homophonic translation included as voiceover.
New Moving Poems contributor: Jane Glennie
A big welcome to Jane Glennie who has joined us at Moving Poems. Jane is currently working on the magazine part of the site, especially sharing info on festivals, contests, and other opportunities for videopoets and poetry filmmakers. With her help, we hope to get back to covering the international poetry film scene at least as well as we did before the pandemic, if not better.
Jane Glennie’s poetry films have screened at festivals across the world. Her work has a layered visual aesthetic that is abstract, painterly and floods the imagination. Here’s her current artist’s statement. Her films have been featured on shondaland.com and have received distinctions and awards internationally.
Jane studied Typography & Graphic Communication at Reading University before completing an MA in Art & Space at Kingston School of Art. With over 25 years experience as a freelance designer, she founded Peculiarity Press to collaborate on books with art and words. We are thrilled to have her on board.
June 2020 by Shabnam Piryaei
An author-made videopoem by the accomplished U.S. poet and filmmaker Shabnam Piryaei, whose work we’ve featured here in the past, but have gotten a bit behind on — see the mediapoems page on her website for more examples. She evidently prefers to let the films speak for themselves, presenting only credits. Here’s the description for June 2020:
filming:
Taymoor Akinmusire
Shabnam Piryaeipoem:
Shabnam Piryaeivoiceover:
Taymoor Akinmusire
I love the fact that she collaborated with a child on the filming. Such a hope-inspiring, life-affirming piece! And as a typical, language-obsessed poet I couldn’t help but be struck by Piryaei’s choice of someone to whom reading is new for the voiceover, and how for a videopoem that can help satisfy Pound’s famous directive, make it new.
Üç Selvi / Three Cypresses by Nâzım Hikmet
An animation by artist Zeynep Sıla Demircioğlu for a piece by Turkey’s greatest 20th-century poet, Nâzım Hikmet. The bleakness of the content is counter-balanced by the richness of the recitation by Geneo Erkal—all those lovely Turkish consonants. As a tree-lover there’s no way I couldn’t post this as soon as I saw it. Here’s Demircioğlu’s statement, on Vimeo and her website:
Communist poet and writer Nâzım Hikmet Ran’s poem “Üç Selvi” is about three cypress trees. In his metaphoric narrative, at first, trees live in harmony with nature. After their destruction joy of life is gone and the world is deprived of the sound of cypress leaves. Although Hikmet wrote this mournful poem in 1933, readers can find different meanings and enemies when they look at the dark side of Turkish collective memory.
What I fear most is becoming “a poet” by Katerina Gogou
This took the top honors in the 9th Ó Bhéal poetry film competition last fall, and I can see why. It’s a masterclass in bringing still images to life—and they’re powerful images, too: flaming trumpets facing off; an empty chair birthing clouds or smoke juxtaposed with the text “I fear that i might learn to use meter and rhythm / and thus I will be trapped within them”; clouds circling overhead as the words “they see to us being ashamed for not working” appear. Filmmaker Janet Lees‘ deep images are usually in service to her own texts, but this was a commissioned film, as the Vimeo description makes clear:
Filmmaker: Janet Lees
Poet: Katerina Gogou
Translator: G Chalkiadakis
Composer/musician: Tromlhie
Produced by +the Institute for Experimenal Arts and commissioned by the art platform filmpoetry.org, as part of the Digital Culture Programme, Ministry of Culture / Greece.Katerina Gogou (1949-1993) was Greece’s greatest modern anarchist poetess. Her poems have become synonymous with the radical culture of Greece and with Exarcheia, the Athens neighbourhood known as the anarchist quarter. Born into the Nazi occupation of Greece, she lived through the years of far right military junta oppression and the country’s resurgent anarchist movement in the 1980s. An activist herself, she became a prophet of the movement and her poems anthems for it. She died of an overdose on 3 October 1993.
The judges’ comments may be read in the announcement post on +the Institute for Experimental Arts website:
There were so many beautiful filmpoems entered into the competition, I loved watching every single one of them, and appreciated all of the work, imagination and innovation that went into making them. In the end, the piece called What I fear most is becoming a poet stood out as a stunning example of filmpoetry as a unique art form. Janet Lees has created a powerful visual rendering of Katerina Gogou’s poem. I was both floored and inspired by it. Comhghairdeas ó chroí!
Paula Kehoe
What I fear most is becoming “a poet” is such an evocative and moving piece. Katerina Gogou’s poem, enormous in itself which speaks so intimately about the poet’s world of peril and uncertainty, met with this filigreed balance of soft pianissimo and perfectly-paced typography, the haunting, completely captivating visuals, the almost hesitant text (in places), and the very absence of voice bringing us so much closer to the poet’s inner sanctum… all just fantastically done. A highly worthy winner.
Paul Casey
From the same source, here’s Janet’s director’s note:
For me this poem resounds with the psychological distress Katerina experienced as a result of experiencing and bearing witness to collective trauma. Despair and loneliness hover over every line, but there is also a core of steel in the shape of her unwavering conviction and commitment to the cause and to her people. To bring this great poem to life as a poetry film, I drew on my own urban images and footage. In animating the stills, I used the recurring motif of fire and smoke to indicate rebellion and oppression/passion and despair. I worked with the composer/musician Tromlhie to bring out the poem’s emotional journey in musical form and to complement the poem’s slow build – layer upon layer of the fear of ‘becoming “a poet”’.
The northern Ireland-based CAP Monthly interviewed Janet after her win about how she came to poetry film and how she looks at it. It’s well worth a read.
