Posts By Dave Bonta

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

Wood Worms by David Morley

On 23 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Documentary, Performance Poetry
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Poem, installation and explanation by David Morley

Video by University of Warwick, UK

This is one of a serious of videos featuring Morley and his Slow Poetry workshop. A University of Warwick newsletter has more on the poetry trail Morley constructed:

Warwick academic and poet Professor David Morley recently contributed over 80 poems to a “slow art” poetry trail in woodland at Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire. The “slow poems” are written into natural materials to form a woodland trail and will remain there until they naturally fade and disappear.

The slow art trail aims to raise awareness of environmental issues and explore how artists can develop a more sustainable approach to their creative practice. David Morley, Professor of Creative Writing, was inspired by natural features of the estate including an abandoned Christmas tree plantation, the River Strid, and Barden Tower.

His collection includes ankle-high Haikus written into Elm and longer poems written on easels and fabric. The ‘slow poems’ are designed to be contemplated and enjoyed in the natural woodland and landscape of Bolton Abbey.

The project was developed by Chrysalis Arts – an award-winning public art company which works to regenerate communities by creating public artwork that expresses and reinforces local identity and sense of place.

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New Word Hawda (New Word Order) by Linton Kwesi Johnson

On 22 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Performance Poetry
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Poem by Linton Kwesi Johnson, read live at the 16th International Festival of Poetry in Medellin, Columbia in 2006

The Parentage of the Dix Pear by Ren Powell

On 21 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems
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Poem and animation by Ren Powell

For a higher quality version, see AnimaPoetics.

Nothing by John Cooper Clarke

On 20 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Poem by John Cooper Clarke

Film by C. Flannery with narration by Robert Bulsara

Another brilliantly simple video poem from Comma Film.

A Julia de Burgos (To Julia de Burgos)

On 17 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Musical settings
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Julia de Burgos‘ poem to her public self (Spanish text here). Leonard Bernstein conducts the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra in a television performance of a work he composed, Songfest, which borrows texts from various American poets. Daisy Newman is the soprano. In a 1986 review of a Deutsche Grammophon recording, Music critic Edward Greenfield wrote,

If I had to choose one work of Bernstein’s for my Desert Island, it would certainly be Songfest, a cycle of 12 American poems which in its sharpness of imagination brings out Bernstein’s finest qualities. Rather like Britten in the Nocturne and the Serenade, he combines musical ingenuity with illuminatingly poetic response to each poem. The result is not just witty and brilliant, as you would expect, but often intensely beautiful and deeply moving, as in the haunting Whitman love poem and the radiant setting for women’s trio of Anne Bradstreet’s poem ”To my dear and loving husband”.

To watch the entire song cycle on YouTube, start here.

I’m not sure which translation they used for the subtitles (perhaps Bernstein’s own?) but a better one, by Jack Agüeros, may be read here.

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Ay, Ay, Ay de la Grifa Negra by Julia de Burgos

On 16 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - interviews, Performance Poetry
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YADagH8ipY

Poem by Julia de Burgos, translated by Jack Agüeros

I’ve been looking for videos of poems by the great 20th-century Puerto Rican poet and feminist Julia de Burgos in honor of the confinrmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, so I was happy to run across this installment from the generally wonderful Favorite Poem Project, featuring bilingual public school teacher Glaisma Perez-Silva.

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Dark Cities by Stacie M. Kiner, Jan McLaughlin and Bruce Weber

On 15 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A 16mm, ten-minute-long film “based on a poem by Stacie M. Kiner, Jan McLaughlin and Bruce Weber,” directed by Edward J. Reasor and produced/written by Jan McLaughlin. For the rest of the credits, see here.

2 poemas para baños (two poems for bathrooms) by Julián Herbert

On 14 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Concrete and visual poetry
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p-QkerEWb4

Video documentation of a typographic installation in public restrooms by the Mexican poet Julián Herbert. The music is “Mind map”, by Jar G. This project forms part of the activities of a collective for visual and kinetic poetry known as El Taller de la Caballeriza.

The first poem says, “To translate is to {invent the light/arrange the voice} on the other side of the mirror.”

My Mind is Peopled with a Great Crowd by Barry Pomeroy

On 13 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Poem and video by Barry Pomeroy, from the YouTube-based literary magazine Shape of a Box. The video isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good, I think, and I want to showcase as many author-made videos here as possible. Aaron Bissell is credited with an editing role. Visit the YouTube page for the text of the poem and a short bio of the author, though a more entertaining biography may be found here:

Barry Pomeroy received his PhD. from University of Manitoba in 2000, although it would be a pity if that were his sum total. He is an itinerant English professor, boat designer and builder, traveller, carver, sometimes mechanic, woodworker, and web designer. As a writer he is responsible for Multiple Personality Disorder, a long poem in dialogue; at present he is thrashing through another novel tentatively entitled Meeting Ray, and a collection of stories loosely based on the Christian bible called A Bloody History of the Fertile Crescent.

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Who Says Words with My Mouth by Jalal ad-Din Rumi

On 10 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
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Coleman Barks reads his version of the Rumi poem. I found the combination with old streetcar footage strangely effective. (The music is a little irritating, though.) As usual with the YouTube video poems from Four Seasons Productions, no credits are given for filmmaker(s). Another of their videos features a much less interesting, New Agey interpretation of a Barks/Rumi poem, “Only Breath.”


Front Towards Enemy by Eric Gamalinda

On 9 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Concrete and visual poetry
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Avant-garde videopoem by Eric Gamalinda, “constructed out of images shot randomly around new york city.”

Mommie’s Coming Back by Jan McLaughlin

On 8 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Poem and video by Jan McLaughlin, who blogs at Faux Press. This was originally shot in 35mm, black and white, in 1994 — see McLaughlin’s filmography for the complete details.

It’s pretty impressive that a professional filmmaker can also write poems this good.