Posts By Dave Bonta

Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.

Postcard From Persephone by Luisa A. Igloria

http://vimeo.com/43880844

The reading isn’t perfect, but the imaginative shot selection more than makes up for that, I think. And while most student videopoems come out of film classes, this was unusual in that it was made for a literature class, according to the brief description at Vimeo.

For more on the poet, see her website.

Four Steps Removed: Taxidermy – poems by Jenny Donnison, Angelina Ayers, Noel Williams and Helen Cadbury

A series of poems by four UK poets that were all prompted by the same exhibition, “12 Heads and the Reynard Diary,” by artist Susannah Gent, at Bank Street Arts, Sheffield. The poems are:

“Taxidermy” – Jenny Donnison
“Taxidermy I, II, III” – Angelina Ayers
“Notes on Taxidermy – A Poem Found in Susannah Gent” – Noel Williams
“Young Red and the Urban Fox” – Helen Cadbury
“Teumessian Fox” – Jenny Donnison

Mark Gittins recorded the poets and made a video, but passed it on to the composer, Lyndon Scarfe, without the recordings, which were only combined with his sountrack at the very end — an interesting process.

Jonah by Robert Peake

Alastair Cook‘s 20th filmpoem uses a text and reading by Robert Peake. The film is due to premiere at the Felix Poetry Festival in Antwerp on June 15.

The poem’s back-story is fascinating. Let me quote from the first couple of paragraphs from Alastair’s description on Vimeo:

[P]rior to London, Robert lived in a small town full of artists in the foothills of the Santa Barbara mountains called Ojai (a Chumash Indian name meaning either “moon” or “nest”). He lived next to the directors of the local theatre company on one side, and a metal sculptor called Mark Benkert and his wife Marcia on the other. One morning just before dawn, a 400-pound black bear wandered through the theatre directors’ yard and out onto Robert’s street. He then climbed into a tree and became stuck.

Robert takes up the story: “he drew us all out, awed us with his presence, and brought us together as neighbours. Sadly, because it was also the first day of bear hunting season, he was shot out of the tree that night and killed by the wildlife “authorities.” Benkert swung into action, welding and cutting all night to produce a half-ton metal outline of a bear in rusted iron sheeting. Early the next morning, a capable rock climber, he hauled himself and the statue up the tree and placed it there–his bulletproof metal bear defying all. As far as I know, it is still in the tree. Mark and I became closer, and finally discovered that we held in common losing a son: my James in infancy, his Jonah gone at thirty-two from drugs and mental illness leading to suicide. The town commissioned Mark to create a bigger second statue to be displayed prominently.”

It Noarderland / The Northern Land by Durk van der Ploeg

Richard van der Laan‘s “visual arrangement of Frisian poetry on moving canvas.” The reading is by Siem de Vlas, a Frisian landscape architect who also appears in the film, “working in his studio and visiting the grave of the famous dutch landscape architect Lucas Pieters Roodbaard (1782 – 1851),” as the description on Vimeo puts it. Here’s the original text of Durk van der Ploeg’s poem. As someone of (distant) Frisian ancestry, I was happy to find this videopoem.

Color of Home by Meena Alexander

http://vimeo.com/43268894

With spoken word videos, sometimes setting is everything. Ram Devineni filmed Alexander on the Highline in New York City for a Meena Alexander feature in Issue 3 of Ratapallax magazine. For more on the poet, visit her website.

Ecclesiastes 11:1 by Richard Wilbur

Faith Eskola created this month’s Motionpoem for a poem by America’s preeminent contemporary formalist poet. See Motionpoems for the text and some process notes by Eskola in the comments.

Kot w pustym mieszkaniu / Cat in an Empty Apartment by Wisława Szymborska

Another selection from the performance “Nothing Twice” (Live Performers Meeting, Rome, May 2012) directed by Agnieszka “Bronka” Bronowska. The translation is credited to Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh and the performers are Joanna Łacheta and Lulu Lucyfer.

Disintegration Nation by Howie Good

A “mash-up-videopoem” by the indefatigable Swoon Bildos, focusing on “truth and fiction in the US…TV and violence…reality and fear.” The poem is from Howie Good’s Dreaming in Red. The video uses footage from Kansas City Confidential by Phil Karlson (1952) as well as CCTV from the security tapes of the fatal police beating of Kelly Thomas.

Whore in the Eddy by Heather Haley

A new videopoem by Heather Haley, and her first produced in full collaboration with her son, Lucas Raycevick, as editor. Here’s the description at Vimeo:

Fierce, full of stiletto irony, verve–yet rife with sensitivity–“Whore In The Eddy’ explores a winding road of twisted fates. “There but for the grace of God go I.” Two women, one forsaken, the other spared. Two tales told though images of a lush, denuded forest littered with fallen giants, cut short like the lives of so many women.

Heather also blogged about the making of the film in some detail. An excerpt:

I tried to find found footage but matching it with ours didn’t work as my 17-year old son/editor pointed out. He’s been helping me on videopoems since age eight, but this is our first real collaboration, a challenge in and of itself but mostly highly gratifying. He kicks my butt! Will not allow shots that are too shaky or out of focus. So funny. I said, hey, I’m not trying to be Steven Spielberg. I will make choices you wouldn’t. We argue for a bit and he wins. ‘Cause he’s right. We have standards. That’s my boy. He amazes me; taught himself to edit video at age ten, began producing machinimas and has had his own YouTube channel since. He’s got a lovely podcasting set-up going too which he allows me to use sometimes. We’ve developed a system in the house so he remains undisturbed while recording. He places a funky beaded necklace—a souvenir of Hawaii—on the door handle. I’m so lucky, he’s a great kid and he works cheap; the third major challenge, a zero budget. (I’ve spent fifty bucks on a dress and seven bucks on flowers.) We barter. I copy edit his fan fiction in return for video editing services.

The Trees by Philip Larkin

Animation by Amy Swapp and Fiona Hobson. (For the text of the poem with proper punctuation and such, see The Poetry Archive.)

London by William Blake

This student film by Alex Robinson offers a new take on Blake’s “mind-forged manacles.”

eloise by Al Rempel

British Columbia-based poet Al Rempel made this film with post-production help from Steph St. Laurent of VideoNexus Productions. The text is from Remple’s collection understories.