Posts By Dave Bonta

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

Window Interplay by Francisco José Blanco

On 22 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry
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I don’t entirely understand Josephine Gustavsson’s explanation for the method here, but it sounds highly imaginative:

Every day, trains scrape off iron filings from the rails of the tube network. These filings are regularly removed by staff, since they can otherwise interfere with the signaling system. The procedure is carried out using a machine that contains a magnetic force.

The visualisation of the poem ‘Window Interplay’ is made for the moving image screens of the London Underground, to inspire Monday morning commuters. It is made through a series of explorations, making use of iron powder and magnetic fields.


Francisco José Blanco is a Venezuelan artist resident in Sweden.

Every Day You Play (Juegas Todos los Días) by Pablo Neruda

On 21 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This is poem XIV from Veinte Poemas de Amor y Una Canción Desesperada (1924), envideoed by Will Jardine.

America by Walt Whitman

On 20 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
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http://www.vimeo.com/15575046

Alexander Pulido calls this film American Disillusion:

The now-famous (thank you Levi’s) wax cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reading the first verse of his famous poem ‘America’, juxtaposed against imagery of America in reality.

Philip Binder is credited with the cinematography. (For the Levi’s ad using the same wax recording, see here.)

Souffle (Breathe) by Emma Passmore

On 19 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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This is the French version of the film that just won the Public Jury Prize for Best Film at the 2010 Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. Emma Passmore is a British writer, director, and poet, and Breathe was one of 26 films screened this year, out of more than 900 submitted.

Evidently restrictions imposed by some of the festivals it’s been entered in will prevent Breathe from being shared online for another year, but here’s what Emma wrote on Vimeo for the French version:

Using super 8mm footage I originally shot on the London Underground 13 years ago, which captured commuters unawares as they made their way to and from work. The new voice over is a poem which describes the effect of modern life – sucking up time and energy, when all one wishes for is time to breathe; time to live. I aimed to create an evocative piece concerned with longing, hope, history and soul.

The other awards handed out in Berlin yesterday are listed on the website.

The Boys by Francesca Eva Ashcroft

On 18 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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“A blend of rotoscope animation, stop-motion animation, and live action video … Directed and animated by Tom McPhee. Written and spoken by Francesca Eva Ashcroft.” This was the first-place winner of the 2010 Poetry in Film competition.

Your Super Bookstore Recommends by Dean Young

On 15 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Performance Poetry
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Another “teleportal reading“:

When Dean Young came to the East Austin warehouse where we film our videos, the sky was threatening. By the time he got started, a biblical downpour was underway. You can hear the rain on the tin roof as he reads. Of course, as these things tend to go, it cleared up the second the shoot was finished. Still, we like the way the atmospheric sound plays off of Scott Gelber’s animation, which alters live footage of Dean reading in front of a green screen and layers it with gorgeous hand-painted imagery. Dean’s most recent book, a work of prose on poetry titled The Art of Recklessness, is available from Graywolf Press.

This is one case where a literal interpretation of the poem really works!

Until Next Time by Nabila Jameel

On 14 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
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Filmmaker Rachel Laine collaborated with poet Nabila Jameel in preparation for the Comma Press Film Poem Festival 2010. I found a bio of Jameel at the (UK) Poetry Society website:

Runner-up in the Manchester Cathedral International Religious Poetry Competition 2010. Published in anthologies, Stand Magazine and Poetry & Audience. … Currently writing a chapter on ‘Performance’ for an academic book.

ONandOnScreen is a unique online poetry journal in…

On 13 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - literary magazines and websites

ONandOnScreen is a unique online poetry journal in which “videos are linked with poems and poems with videos, widening the spectrum and essential strangeness of each … a conversation between moving words and moving images, on and on.” Ekphrastic poems in response to films are a little outside the scope of the main Moving Poems site, but are very interesting nonetheless. Do check out the site (and note that their next reading period will begin on November 1).

Let Us Consider by Russell Edson

On 13 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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As long as I’ve been doing this site, I still haven’t posted quite all the videos from the “Poetry Everywhere” series of animations by students at docUWM, the documentary media center based in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Film Department, produced under the aegis of the Poetry Foundation. As usual with this series, the poet himself is the reader here.

The Spider by Gabor Barabas

On 12 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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I’m not sure why I never posted this one before. The poem is based on the work of the late sculptor Louise Bourgeois. Juan Delcan, the animator, is an artist in his own right; his animation for Billy Collins’ poem “The Dead” is one of the most popular animated poems on the web. The poet, Gabor Barabas, doesn’t seem to have a website, but is a retired pediatrician with a flourishing second career in theatre and poetry.

Easy to Love a Beautiful Woman by Vanessa Plain

On 11 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Update: Video is no longer online.

Viral Verse marked the first anniversary of their launch with this videopoem, written, filmed and narrated by Vanessa Plain. Here’s what she wrote about the film over at VV and at Vimeo:

Easy to Love a Beautiful Woman is a dramatic narrative, a sci-fi poem. It was inspired by a worrying trend – I see a lot of love for the Earth but little faith.

They say we are here because of planetary accident. The intelligence of nature is dismissed as illusionary. We convince ourselves that it us vs. nature, yet we are here only by the Earth’s good grace.

We are dazzled by technology, believing any new discovery to be for our good. But all too often our choices have proved wrong.

The poem is a cautionary tale. It’s set in a future when Revelations become real and they tell us to pack…

Easy to love a new idea,
Fall deep in its charms.
Jump head first with a cursory look
blind to any harm.

-ed by Mairi Sharratt

On 8 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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Scottish artist and filmmaker Alastair Cook’s latest filmpoem (and in my opinion his best to date). Here’s what he says about it at Vimeo:

-ed is my film of a poem by Mairi Sharratt, from her as yet unpublished (nudge) collection This is a Poem. You can read more of Mairi’s work on her excellent blog, alumpinthethroat.wordpress.com.

It took a long time for me to begin this filmpoem for two reasons: I have been busy with this summer’s solo film and photography show as part of the Edinburgh Festival; also the poem is dark and yet meditative, lifting to a powerful crescendo and as a result I felt that I needed to introduce a figurative element. So I ruminated…

Mairi says in a blog post that the film will be screened at Edingbugh’s Hidden Door Festival, which runs from October 22-24.