Posts By Dave Bonta
The Love of the Sun: five poems by Matt Hetherington
This is Marie Craven’s fifth film made in collaboration with the Australian poet Matt Hetherington. Perhaps fittingly, it contains five of his poems.
This is the final film version of The Love of the Sun, from five poems out of Matt Hetherington’s poetry collection of the same name. The video had its first presentation as a live audiovisual performance at the Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Poetry Festival in Cork, Ireland in late November 2019. Thanks to festival director, Paul Casey, and the Arts Council of Ireland, I was able to be there in person. I traveled from Australia with Adelaide actor, Claudia La Rose-Bell, also a guest of the festival. Claudia gave a live reading of three of Matt’s poems in rhythm with the images on the screen, and with a pre-recorded music soundtrack by Steve Kelly (aka Douglas Deep, Manfred Hamil). This included Matt’s voice speaking two of his poems. After the brilliant festival in Cork, Claudia and I then traveled to other places in Europe. We presented The Love of the Sun live again, at the video poetry festival in Athens. Directing live audiovisual performance was a first for me. Happily, it went smoothly and was well received.
I Don’t Own Anxiety, But I Borrow It Regularly by Kelli Russell Agodon
We can’t plan a party for the apocalypse
because friends of the apocalypse know
the apocalypse always shows up
uninvited and with a bag of half-eaten chips.
A film Marie Craven made for a poem by Seattle-based poet Kelli Russell Agodon for the 2019 series of Visible Poetry Project films. Glass journal, where the text originally appeared, included a process note from Kelli:
This poem was written on a poetry date with Susan Rich. I’m not sure what prompted the poem, but I was thinking about loss and death (as one normally does on a Friday) and this poem came from that moment. As someone who carries not only a saint in her pocket, but also anxiety too, I’ve found one of the easiest ways to lose my midnight fears is by knowing sometimes I just need to stand outside on my deck at 2 in the morning to feel secure.
And here are Marie’s process notes from her blog:
In 2017, I followed a series of videos appearing during the month of April, also known as National Poetry Month in the USA, a celebration that is global in various forms as well. These interesting pieces were being published daily by the Visible Poetry Project, based in New York. In mid-2018, I happened to see a call for film-maker submissions for the 2019 VPP series. I sent my application that same night. A few months later, I was delighted to have been selected as one of 30 film-makers from around the world to participate in this year’s series. The process firstly involved reading a series of poems from 60 writers, and returning a shortlist of three poets I might like to work with. VPP soon announced that I was to collaborate with my top choice, the well-known US poet, Kelli Russell Agodon. Kelli and I then started communicating directly, and she sent me a larger collection of poems, three of which I felt drawn to adapt to the screen. I vacillated between two of them for a little while, until Kelli suggested I ‘go with my gut’. At this point I knew the poem of choice would be I Don’t Own Anxiety, But I Borrow it Regularly (eventually shortened to I Don’t Own Anxiety for the film adaptation). I straight-away knew who I would most like to ask to voice the poem, and so I contacted poet and film-maker, Cindy St. Onge, with whom I’ve been fortunate to have prior collaborations. Cindy’s readings of the poem were recorded by Eric Sorenson, both of them in Portland, Oregon. Eric had quickly responded to my call-out on social media for a technician in that city to assist with recording Cindy’s voice. As always, Cindy’s readings of the poem were sensitive, articulate and well-modulated – a joy to receive and work with them. VPP allocated a producer to our project, Alina Sodano, who monitored progress through a series of rolling deadlines leading towards the film’s release date in April 2019. Alina was instrumental in securing the music I most wished for our film, a piece entitled Blames and Revelations, by Matt Howes & Dan Slatter, licensed for our project via Premium Beat. Footage for the film was sourced from royalty-free subscription site, Videoblocks, including work from their contributors, Vadim Key (Belarus), WeAre (Ukraine), ProStock (Slovenia), Oles Ishchuk (Ukraine), glowonconcept (Thailand), and Sergey Gribanov (Russia). Editing is my primary area of interest and pleasure in film-making, which accounts in large measure for my easy embrace of ‘found media’, such as may be sourced on licences like royalty-free, creative commons, copyleft, and public domain. Sourcing media in this way gives me legal permission to adapt, remix and re-create it in my non-commercial videos, each fragment given new life in the new contexts I create. As with Half Measures, written up earlier in this blog piece, the editing challenge for I Don’t Own Anxiety was bringing together the diverse written, vocal, musical and visual elements, to create a film that, in its final form, felt organic and whole. Our film was released on 28 April and will continue to be distributed now with the other films in the 2019 series by the Visible Poetry Project.
Die Ameisen / The Ants by Joachim Ringelnatz
A 2019 film by Marie Craven. Here’s what she wrote about it on her blog:
The Ants was made for the poetry film competition of the Leipzig Poetry Society in Germany. The challenge was to make a film based on any poem by Joachim Ringelnatz (1883-1934), a cabaret poet and absurd humorist. Most of the Ringelnatz poems I have read are strange and funny, and very short. I chose Die Ameisen/The Ants for its whimsy, and partly because it includes a reference to Australia, where I live. It’s a coincidence too that ants have been a funny and instructive presence in my life. The film is bilingual, in German first and then English. It was a fun film to make, with music created for it by my long-time collaborator, Adrian Carter, and collage art by Kollage Kid. Both of them are in the UK.
The film ended up taking first place in the contest.
All this week I’m going to be featuring recent poetry films by Marie Craven. When she joined Moving Poems as an editor last year, our initial instinct was to avoid sharing her own films too often to avoid the appearance of favoritism, but I’ve recently changed my mind about that. Marie has become one of the most prominent filmmakers in the international poetry film scene, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. So it’s catch-up time! Especially since Marie has just caught up on her blog, and I can simply quote her process notes for most of these films.
Poetry Film Live relaunches
Poetry film Live relaunched last Wednesday with new content and a slightly new focus. Published and edited by the poetry film-making duo Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron, it has a new tagline, “A New Way with Poetry,” and is described as “a UK based webzine which publishes poetry film, performances, readings, essays and reviews. It is also the platform for Elephant’s Footprint online poetry film training.” A welcome message currently at the top of the home page goes into more detail:
Poetry Film Live has made some changes!
Following a brief furlough from the end of last year, Poetry Film Live has come back with a renewed focus on the work of poets and the type of poetry film that is a literary form. A form of poetry that is visual, not solely textual, that moves rather than stays put on a page.
Poetry Film Live has responded to the changes that have developed during the Covid19 pandemic. The future of poetry gatherings, reading series and open mics is uncertain both in the short and longer term, therefore, Poetry Film Live is including performances and readings of poetry.
These are new and exciting times and we hope you will consider participating and supporting Poetry Film Live by sending us your submissions, we look forward to seeing your work.
Start by watching the two videos below: ‘How to Make Voice Recordings from Home Better’ and ‘Top Tip for filming yourself reading a poem from a smartphone’.
We have also announced the launch of online poetry film training for poets – see the link for more details.
The course is only £75 and I’m not aware of anyone else offering this right now, so I’m glad they’re featuring it. It’s a real service to the community.
The submission guidelines are mostly sensible, though it’s too bad the maximum duration is so short (six minutes). My only other criticism of the site is the large sticky header, which reduces screen real estate significantly. Viewers not in the habit of expanding videos to full screen, or clicking F11 on a PC to push the website to full screen, are sure to be frustrated.
But these are minor quibbles. It’s great to be able welcome Poetry Film Live back to active duty. (We at Moving Poems know all about unannounced brief furloughs!) Go visit.
The Blue from Heaven by Stevie Smith
Stevie Smith‘s poem is brought to life through the magic of Norwich-based animator and professor Suzie Hanna. Here’s the description on Vimeo:
Glenda Jackson provides the voice of poet Stevie Smith in this animated interpretation of her extraordinary 1950’s poem ‘The Blue from Heaven’. Suzie Hanna has adapted and animated the poet’s own drawings to communicate her rueful, wistful, comic, and melancholy themes with music and sound design by Phil Archer. In Stevie Smith’s awkward world, King Arthur banishes Guinevere to the palace, and he enters the blue from heaven.
Sonámbulo / The Sleepwalker by Theodore Ushev
A surrealist journey through colours and shapes inspired by the poem Romance Sonámbulo by Federico García Lorca. Visual poetry in the rhythm of fantastic dreams and passionate nights.
This is a poetry film only in the sense that it takes its inspiration from one stanza of Lorca’s, but it’s a brilliant animated homage to Spanish surrealism that reminded me of everything I love about the whole Generation of ’27, which includes so many of my favorite poets and artists. It’s difficult to imagine 20th century poetry and art without this incredible flowering of talent in the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War. U.S. poets who came of age in the 1960s were heavily influenced by Spanish poetry in translation; I’d say it was equal in impact to translations of classical Chinese and Japanese poetry. For me, getting a bilingual anthology of 20th-century Spanish poetry as a Christmas present when I was 11 was a life-changing experience. I doubt I would’ve become a poet otherwise.
Anyway, here’s a serviceable English translation of “Romance Sonámbulo”, followed by the original.
For more about the film, see its webpage. Theodore Asenov Ushev is a Bulgarian animator, graphic designer, illustrator and multimedia artist based in Montreal.
Secrets of the perpetually sick [redacted] by Jackie Morrey-Grace
Janet Lees‘ first poetry film with a text by another writer sees her trying out a completely new filmmaking approach as well. Manx author and performance poet Jackie Morrey-Grace recites her poem ‘Secrets of the perpetually sick’ in a hospital, but does anyone hear her? As Janet wrote on the Poetry Film Live Facebook page,
We were filming in a hospital training room last year and I was drawn to the security camera footage which was showing on a screen in an adjacent room. I filmed this and slowed it down and really like the dark quality of it, simmering with the rage, despair and alienation Jackie has experienced due to chronic and severely crippling autoimmune health challenges. Redacting her much longer poem felt quite brutal, but in a sense that was also fitting, because in the system Jackie was often unheard and outright dismissed.
The music is ‘Anxious‘ by Sextile. For more of Jackie’s performance poetry, see her YouTube channel.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron
This prophetic poem by the late, great Gil Scott-Heron has been on my mind a lot lately. I went to see if anyone had ever made a decent video for it, and found this on YouTube (though I subsequently swapped in the production company’s own upload from Vimeo). It was produced in 2001 by Peter Collingridge and directed by Julian House as a video trailer for Scott-Heron’s collected lyrics and poems, Now and Then (Canongate Books). A link in the YouTube description took me to Collingridge’s Apt Studio, a British “digital consultancy to publishers,” where I found a page for the film, as well as the original Flash version, still live:
Find a Way to Meet Each Other by Tasos Sagris + Whodoes
A chaotic, hedonistic vision of—and soundtrack for—urban revolution. Greek videopoet Tasos Sagris collaborates with the musician/composer Whodoes. This is the digital single and official video clip from their upcoming LP, Phenomenology of the Guillotine.
Sagris directed the video, with camera work by Alkistis Kafetziis and actors Sissy Doutsiou, Lily Tsesmatzoglou, Katerina Pantouli, Ioanna Kordoni, and Anastasia. They sent us some promotional material, which is worth quoting at some length as one example of an alternative to the more standard ways in which poetry tends to be published and disseminated.
The TASOS SAGRIS + WHODOES duo presents the sound of endless metropolitan pressure. Through his poetry, Tasos Sagris photographs the current era on a political, social and existential level, domestically and globally, asking questions about the present and the future of this world, looking for moments of revolt and escape routes. The synthetic diversity of Whodoes enhances the emotional meaning of the words with post-rock, darkwave, ambient, new classical, avant-garde, electronica and ethnic compositions that travel lyrically while giving a cinematic dimension to the whole work.
The above mix with synchronized video art screenings in their live performances is a unique experience for the public, which makes it special in its artistic categories. Breaking the barrier of classical poetry gatherings, they tour for concerts and performances in Greece and in institutions of known value abroad, such as the Frankfurt School of Fine Arts (Portikus Museum), the London School of Economics, etc.
Tasos Sagris is a poet, theater director and activist born in Athens in 1972. In 1990 he co-created the international anarchist cultural group Void Network and at 2008 the Institute for Experimental Arts- a contemporary theater group for research, performance and cultural education. He tours often in Europe, Asia, Mexico and USA for talks, multimedia poetry actions, exhibitions, performances and theater shows. His poetry is a melancholic call out for chaos, revolt, hedonism and social awareness.
Tasos Sagris was poet and frontman of the Greek music band Horror Vacui during the 90s and from early 90s until today he presents poetry events – cross platform collaborations of poets, djs, video artists and musicians. Organizing for more than 30 years festivals, events and actions in public spaces around the world he is an anarchist artist from 21st century. He participates in social movements in Greece and Europe. […]
Whodoes was born in Greece-Athens in 1981. Whodoes’ music is a combination of ambient / soundtrack music, post rock, shoe-gaze, cinematographic electronica and ethnic soundscapes. His poetic sound works like a bridge for experiences of the past to the present and the future, while at the same time sensitively approaching the functions of life in direct connection with urban environments and secret nature. Guitarist – a composer, a true fan of experimentation, research and improvisation, sharpening his imagination using foreign bodies on the guitar such as effects, violin-bow, metal slide, e-bow, wood (turning the electric guitar in a Mediterranean traditional “Santuri” instrument), combined with the use of music technology, turntables, loops and programming creating a special sound with which he composes. With his own musical identity and style, he presents alone or together with poet Tasos Sagris a unique audiovisual spectacle on stage.
There’s a Facebook page for the duo.
I come from the fire city. by Eve L. Ewing
Chicago poet and sociologist Eve L. Ewing‘s 2017 poem in a 16mm film adaptation for Motionpoems (Season 8) by director Daniel Daly, with cinematography by Josh Farmelo. See its page on Daly’s website for the list of festival selections, which include ZEBRA in Berlin and the 50th Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam.
The voiceover is from the lone actor in the film, Khadija Shari, and while I would still like the film without knowing that, I do love how much this suggests about the way a cherished, powerful poem can inhabit someone until they know it by heart and it becomes part of the rhythm of their life. At that point, can it really still be said to be the sole property of its author?
The poem originally appeared in Ewing’s widely praised first collection Electric Arches from Chicago’s Haymarket Books, an increasingly prominent left-wing press named for the famous Haymarket riot of May 4, 1886. In a review for Public Books, Jehan Roberson notes:
To read Eve L. Ewing is to read Chicago. […] It’s important to know that Chicago has historically been an oasis for Black aspirations, particularly during northern journeys during the Great Migration; it is also the place where so many of those dreams fell prey to institutions built to halt Black prosperity. Redlining, predatory lending, forced segregation, and some of the nation’s highest homicide rates are part of the city’s backdrop, past and present. So are the hopes of Black folks. Black artists have charted both Chicagos: Lorraine Hansberry in A Raisin in the Sun, Richard Wright in Native Son, Gwendolyn Brooks in poetry that registered the city’s awe and perils.
In many ways and for many artists, Chicago is a genesis and a promised land. Ewing’s Chicago burns brighter than the many fires that have leveled the city, illuminates more strongly than the spotlights wielded by a media eager to highlight Black death. Her writing maps the spirit of the city, a spirit that many argue has vanished, but that Ewing maintains is still pulsating with Black dreams and potential.
This poetry film invites us to imagine that city by imagining how the poet or actor/reader might imagine it — a lesson for so many filmmakers whose first instinct is to treat a poem as a script.
