Posts By Dave Bonta
Wszelki wypadek / Could Have by Wisława Szymborska
Be sure to expand this to full-screen. It’s one of several videos of Szymborska poems directed by Agnieszka Bronowska featuring Polish sign language performers, all from a longer presentation called “Nothing Twice.” I’m not entirely sure I understand the relationship between the video and the live performance, but here are the complete notes from Vimeo:
A part of the performance “Nothing Twice” (to be premiered during Live Performers Meeting in Rome, May 2012).
Directed by: Agnieszka “Bronka” Bronowska
Music: Dave Evans
Video and visual effects: Agnieszka Bronowska
Performers (video): Joanna Łacheta (feat. Sandeep Patil, Senbo Xiao, Dave Evans, Jozef Ivanecky, Johannes Wagner, Jing Zhou, Ilona Baldus, and Wolfgang Müller)
Performers (live): Agata Jurkiewicz, Agnieszka Bronowka, VJ Emiko, and Dave Evans
Piano and sound engineering: Dave Evans
Vocals (spoken word): Agnieszka Bronowska
The poem (“Wszelki wypadek” by Wisława Szymborska) was translated into English by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh.
Credits: Thanks to Joanna Łacheta, Bartosz Marganiec, and Foundation for the Promotion of Deaf Culture “KOKON” for a great meritoric support and assistance in Polish Sign Language interpretation of Wisława Szymborskaʼs poetry.
Underwear by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
An animation by film student Aja Rose Matthews, with the reading of course by Ferlinghetti himself.
Remains of a Man / Rest van een mens by Peter Wullen
http://vimeo.com/41097136
Another Swoon film for a poem by his compatriot Peter Wullen. This one incorporates CCTV footage courtesy of ITN News. He also made a version in the original Dutch:
http://vimeo.com/41639292
According to a note on Vimeo, this was screened at ‘In de Luwte’ (Roosdaal, Belgium) from 18-20 May 2012 (kalmkunstfestival.be).
Thoreau and the Lightning by David Wagoner
See the Motionpoems website for the text. The animator and director is Adam Tow. As with April’s Motionpoem, the free email newsletter contained additional content not archived on the website — an interview with Tow.
Motionpoems: What made you choose this poem to work with?
Adam Tow: After reading all the poems available for this year’s event, ‘Thoreau and the Lightning’ was the piece that I had the strongest connection to. As I read it, I was reminded of my grandfather’s home in the country and the land around it. He was a hard working midwestern man that for some reason I felt had a lot in common with the character in the poem.MP: What is this poem’s most important moment for you?
AT: For me, the lines that ask if he should “feel humbled” and “give thanks” are the crux of the story. The moving truck and estate sale sign are references to my experiences watching my grandfather’s estate being sold as his health deteriorated. Visually speaking, the tree exploding is my favorite shot.MP: What was the biggest challenge in turning this piece into a film, and what was your solution?
AT: I struggled with how I wanted to interpret the final sentence of the poem. I had two ideas for what meaning to imply with the visuals (one involving a hearse, the other a moving truck). As far as how to depict things, I wasn’t sure how to show both the positive memories of the past as well as the farm’s abandoned state at the same time. I decided to use a shimmery effect to illustrate his memories overlaid on the farm’s present day appearance.MP: What did you find most surprising in this process?
AT: It was interesting to see how much you can change the implied message of the poem just by altering a seemingly minor visual element. Also, hearing the music and voiceover for the first time was one of the most exciting moments I’ve had in the last year.MP: Is there anything else you want to add?
AT: I have to give loads of thanks and credit to Scott Yoshimura (music composition/performance, voiceover) and Logan Christian (audio recording and mixing). I intentionally gave them zero direction and they knocked it out of the park, as I knew they would. Also, many thanks to David Wagoner for agreeing to let me humbly interpret his poem.
Envy of Other People’s Poems by Robert Hass
This is The Sirens Couldn’t Sing, produced and directed by Nicolas Leither. Leither’s notes on Vimeo are fascinating:
Shot at Inglenook Vineyards in the Napa Valley, this film features a Mutoscope, an early motion picture device (1895-1909) with a series of rotating photographs, like a flip book. Mutoscopes quickly became scandalous as developers used them for peep shows (“penny-in-the-slot peep shows”) featuring naked or nearly naked women.
Watching a Mutoscope film is intimate, eerie, and interactive (you have to crank the handle yourself). I found an important metaphor about silence, sexuality, and the oppression of women between the Mutoscope experience in the film and Robert Hass’s enchanting meta-poem, which I had the pleasure of hearing him read at the Studio One Reading Series in Oakland (2010).
Three Poems by Alexzenia Davis
Jesse Russell Brooks edited and directed this film in collaboration with the author, Alexzenia Davis. The poems are “Make Me,” “My Silhouette,” and “A Lady’s Psyche.”
The City Limits by A. R. Ammons
David Huntington‘s “visualization of the poem by A. R. Ammons.”
The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski
A highly imaginative remix of Tom Waits’ reading. This is definitely a case where the video improves on the poem for me. By itself, I find the text didactic and somewhat clichéd. But director Neil Chan, producer Kathryn Kelly and actress Skyler Carlin have taken it to another level.
When I Move by Khary Jackson
I’ve posted a lot of dance + poetry videos and a lot of spoken word videos, but I believe this is the first in which the poet dances as he recites his poem. This was produced by the St. Paul, Minnesota-based organization Poetry Observed, which according to the description on YouTube “is committed to producing high quality videos of performance poetry, filmed off the stage. Our first series features Minnesota spoken word poets and was produced in collaboration with Button Poetry.”
from “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in” by e.e. cummings
http://vimeo.com/39763560
The young South African filmmaker Coenraad Viviers and his assistants had perhaps a bit too much fun with this section of cummings’ poem. (Read the complete poem at the Poetry Foundation website.)
Post-Operative Complications Following the Extraction of Memory by Taha Muhammed Ali
The translation by Peter Cole may be read at Poetry International Web. The filmmaker, Lotte Marie Allen, notes that this was
shot in nablus, ramallah, hebron, abu dis, qalandia, jericho, west bank. sinai, egypt. animations from arabic dictionary drawings, postcards, posters, roads and rock formations, my own drawings.
