Posts By Dave Bonta
Ghazi Hussein: four poems and an interview
This is I came from the unknown to sing,
a short film about the Palestinian / Scottish Poet Ghazi Hussein
directed by Roxana Vilk camera Ian Dodds, Edited by Maryam Ghorbankarimi and Sound Design and composition by Peter Vilk
Executive produced by Scottish Poetry Library and United Creations Collective
Camera Ian Dodds
Editing Maryam Ghorbankarimi
Sound design and composition Peter Vilk
additional music by GOL
Hussein recites four poems in the film, two in English and two in Arabic: “Next visit,” “I came from the unknown to sing,” “I am an interesting file” and “To Edinburgh,” all from the book Taking it Like a Man: Torture and Survival a Journey in Poetry.
How to follow Moving Poems in the WordPress.com Reader
WordPress.com is the largest WordPress multi-site installation in the world, and for many people, it’s synonymous with WordPress itself — an understandable mistake. As an online publishing platform it’s hard to beat for reliability, security, and an idealistic corporate ethos focused squarely on creative self-expression and user empowerment (including data portability) that puts the likes of Facebook and Google to shame. One of the coolest features of the site is that, for logged-in users, the home page — WordPress.com — is a feed reader. The latest posts from all the WordPress.com blogs you subscribe to appear there in excerpt form, and if you click on a title, you’ll instantly get the whole post, and can even comment on it without clicking through to the site if you don’t want to. And it’s just had a re-design to make it easier to use and better looking than ever.
The feed reader is pretty hard to avoid for WordPress.com users, and therefore has gotten a high level of adoption as the site continues to evolve and take on some of the features of a social network. What a lot of users don’t realize, I think, is that they can subscribe to any site with a working feed — Blogspot blogs, sites on Squarespace, Weebly, you name it. That naturally includes Moving Poems and Moving Poems Magazine. Here’s how.
Go to WordPress.com and log in if you’re a member, or follow the instructions to sign up for a free membership if you’re not. Once you’re in the Reader, you’ll notice a left sidebar where the top item should say Followed Sites (if you’re using a mobile device, you may have that text appearing at the top, above the content: click on it to go to the sidebar items). Click on the button that says Manage, and you’ll go to a page with a listing of all the sites you’re following (if any) with a search bar at the top that says “enter a site URL to follow.” Try it! Go to any site on the web with regularly updating content, copy the home page URL out of your browser, and paste it in. If it has a feed, the site title will appear as an option immediately below with a link to click that says “Follow.” Voilà!
Moving Poems and Moving Poems Magazine are actually two separate, interlinked sites, but I’ve created a combined feed using a service called Feed Informer, so you could just copy and paste in that URL if you want: http://feed.informer.com/digests/GVVXE6OY6V/feeder.rss. This will give the full content of the posts, including videos that will play right within the Reader. But if you subscribe to each site separately by pasting in the respective URLs, movingpoems.com and movingpoems.com, that will not only give full content but also the ability to comment on posts without leaving the Reader — comments that will then show up on Moving Poems itself!* Whichever way you subscribe, as of the latest re-design you should now even be able to watch the daily videos without even expanding the excerpts to read the whole posts (though if you’re in that much of a hurry, you should really probably re-examine your priorities in life).
Lots of people already subscribe to Moving Poems (including the magazine content) through the weekly MailChimp newsletter, and if you’re an email-oriented person and you don’t follow very many other blogs, magazines and online newspapers, that will probably continue to be your most convenient option. But if you do follow a bunch of different sites, it might make more sense to use WordPress.com — or another feed reader such as Feedly. But for sheer ease of use and social network-like features (comments, likes, re-blogging) you’re unlikely to beat WordPress.com at this point.
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*For the tech-minded who are wondering how that’s possible, it’s because these are self-hosted WordPress sites and I use the Jetpack plugin from WordPress.com on both of them, in part because it’s the best “related posts” plugin out there.
Leaving at Day Break by Catherine Ayres
This is one of a new series of videopoems by Anglo-Breton poet Claire Trévien — Day Six of the first videopoetry advent calendar of which I’m aware. As with most of the others in the series so far, it presents the poem (this one by Northumbrian poet Catherine Ayres) as text-on-screen accompanying a deft remix of video and audio from the web:
Components:
Two videos, one from Beachfront B rolls: http://beachfrontbroll.com, the other from Justin Jason: https://vimeo.com/57236261
Music is ‘Grass’ by Silent Partner
Sound effects from http://soundbible.com by Mike Koenig and stephan
Collaged together by Claire Trévien
Subscribe to CTrevien on YouTube to follow along as the advent calendar unfolds.
How Do You Raise A Black Child? by Cortney Lamar Charleston
Cortney Lamar Charleston’s searing poem, from his forthcoming collection Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017), is brought to the screen by director Seyi Peter-Thomas, Motionpoems and Station Film:
“This poem is about the precarious balance black parents have to strike in order to raise their kids ‘right,’ ” director Seyi Peter-Thomas says of Lamar Charleston’s piece. “It’s wrenching and thought-provoking.” Seyi’s film perfectly communicates this balance as it follows young Malik and his mother navigating life’s highs and lows. The moments of levity and those of unsolicited sobriety explore the complexity of Malik’s experiences as a part of a larger conversation on race and community within today’s uneasy social and political climate.
Seyi says, “Maybe what’s really being asked is how do we save a black child? And, what are the elements we must save them from? It’s a uniquely American conversation, one we’re all having on some level right now.” He hopes viewers will connect with the humanity in the film and also be prompted to ask and answer some questions of their own.
Motionpoems’ newest season of films are based on poems by black American poets, and presented in association with Cave Canem, a home for black poetry.
View more of Seyi’s work HERE.
For Gasoline by James Brush
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Earlier this week, Spanish filmmakers Javi Zurrón (Myblue Audiovisual) and Eduardo Yagüe simultaneously released these two films based on the same poem by the Texas-based writer James Brush, from his collection of road poetry, Highway Sky. In the Myblue Audiovisual version, Brush’s recitation is in the soundtrack, with Yagüe’s Spanish translation in titling; in his own film, Yagüe reads the translation and the original appears on the screen. In their footage and soundtracks, the two films are completely different but complementary, interpreting the text in a similar manner. Aida Riesgo of Myblue Audiovisual stars in both, and Javi Zurrón is the male actor in Yagüe’s Gasolina.
The romance of the automobile is as old as pop music, but usually it’s some specific hot car or motorcycle, not gasoline itself, that is depicted as an object of desire. These videopoems feel simultaneously new and deeply indebted to the music video tradition, not in the soundtrack but in the iconography (a scene of a rock concert, a Ramones t-shirt, a tattoo, etc.).
ПИЛИГРИМЫ / Pilgrims by Joseph Brodsky
Pilgrims is “a short film based on the poem of the same name by Russian-American Nobel Prize winning poet Joseph Brodsky,” performed, directed, cinematography by John Doan. Click the CC icon for subtitles in Russian, German, French, or English. The synopsis on Vimeo reads:
Poet alone with his thoughts and feeling tries to find answers to life’s greatest questions. Where is this world going? What is real and what is illusory? Where can one find salvation and peace? Will his inner pilgrimage come to an end?
In addition to his other roles, Doan was also the English translator here; the music is by Moby. Visit the Facebook page for more information on the film.
48-hour filmpoem challenge nets 13 entries
Two weeks ago we told you about the 48-hour filmpoem challenge in Glasgow scheduled for this weekend. I must admit, I was skeptical about how many teams would compete, but according to CinePoems’ Twitter feed, no less than 13 teams entered the competition:
THIRTEEN teams are a GO for #48hrfilmpoems in Glasgow! Just under 8 hours to go until the deadline…keep going! You're marvellous, you are!
— AllTheseNewRelations (@cine_poems) December 4, 2016
And all 13 made the deadline:
And that's thirteen for thirteen! All teams successfully completed #48hrfilmpoems ! Screening starting in 10 mins…
— AllTheseNewRelations (@cine_poems) December 4, 2016
Congratulations to all involved. I hope some of the films will make it online so I can share them on Moving Poems. But more importantly, I hope this exercise has made converts out of some more poets and filmmakers! We’ll have to see what further news emerges about this, but it already sounds like a model worth trying to replicate elsewhere.
Call for entries: Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival 2017
The Vienna-based Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival 2017 is 11 months away, but they’ve already issued a call for submissions. The deadline is March 30. Here’s the English-language version of their call. Note that the primary focus of the festival is on German-language films, but, they say,
we will increase the amount of international film screenings by adding another festival day. It will be a single day for international films. These films will be chosen by curators within a network of European poetry film festivals.
MAIN COMPETITION Please be aware: We can only accept competition entries from German speaking countries (residency or nationality) for the main competition. German language in the films is wanted. Exceptions will be made, when the literature shorts show an outstanding quality and offer German subtitles.
INTERNATIONAL AWARD We know, that there is a great interest from the international community to participate. Therefore we have created a second competition called „SPECIAL AWARD“ after a given festival poem. This competition is open to film makers from all over the world. For the next Poetry Film Festival we have chosen a love poem from Rainer Maria Rilke. It is called „To Lou Andre Salome“. The poem was written in 1911. You can download the spoken version of Rainer Maria Rilkes’ „Tou Lou Andre Salome“ in German for free. We also provide you with a licensed English translation of the festival poem under creative commons. It’s very interesting, that this kind of competition attracts many professionals who like to experience different versions of films based on the same text. On the other hand, it offers people a easy chance to make their first poetry movie in their life.
SIDE PROGRAM Beside the competition screenings we will offer an international film program in co-operation with selected curators, talks, poetry readings and a multimedia performance. Please keep in touch with us to find out more about the festival program.
CURATORS & JURY The Art Visuals & Poetry Filmfestival in Vienna is directed by Sigrun Höllrigl. Hubert Sielecki supports her as a curator. Beside there will be an independent competition jury selecting the winner films and honorable mentions.
PRIZES There will be two prizes for the winners. The prize-money will be fixed with our partners and sponsors. I can not go into details. Due to a major change in art funding in Austria, we will know the results very late this time – it means appr. 4 months before the festival start. We now plan to award the best film of both competition with a cash prize.
FESTIVAL Selected films will be presented in curated programs during the Art Visuals & Poetry Filmfestival Nov 9-11, 2017 in Vienna. We will let you know our program over the website.Beside the festival we organize poetry film screenings with other partners. Please let us know, if you want to be part of it.
SUBMISSIONS Competition deadline is March 30, 2017. The screening copies of the selected film makers should arrive until June 30, 2017. You can submit by following this link and by filling in this online submission form. For all platform users of filmfreeway and festhome there’s an entrance fee of 15 Euro to cover the efforts selecting the specific poetry films among the submitted films. Please read carefully the guidelines! We are a Poetry Film Festival! We only take literature & poetry films either from German speaking countries or poetry films dedicated to the given Rilke poem of the festival.
CONDITIONS OF PARTICIPATION / GUIDELINES & RULES / Deadline for entries March 30, 2017
For a successful participation these rules need to be followed:
-The submitted literary short film or poetry film has a length of 2 until 20 minutes max. and is based on a literary short text or poem.
-EITHER: The film maker or director has an Austrian, German or Swiss passport or residency. Further international collaborations (composer, writer) in the team are welcomed. OR for the second competition: The film is based on our festival poem from Rainer Maria Rilke. You can make a new recording based on the German original text or use the voice recording we offer. Remixes of the existing voice over are allowed.
– The film is not older than 10 years (2007).
– The film has not been submitted before.
– ART VISUALS & POETRY is granted the right to screen the film in the context of the competition and the festival.
– The application and copyright declaration arrive in time. Deadline is March 30, 2017. We prefer a sighting via internet link (password protected, vimeo, You Tube, dropbox). You can onpass additional film information via e-mail: office@poetry.or.at
– SCREENING FORMAT: We only accept films in the following formats: mov or mp4 File, H264, Sound uncompressed, 48 000 kHz, 16 bit. The films will be converted into DCP format.We wish you good luck & happy work!
Sigrun Höllrigl, your festival directrice & her team
Antesala altísima / Lofty Anteroom by Estefanía González
Spanish poet Estefanía González appears as one of three actors in this film interpretation of her poem from director Eduardo Yagüe. The English translation in the subtitles is the work of Jean Morris, and the music is from Swoon‘s album Time & River.
The poem appears in González’s 2013 collection Hierba de noche, which, according to this webpage, was born in large part from her activity on blogs, Twitter, and other social networks and internet collaborations. So it seems especially appropriate that her work should now be the subject of further web-based collaboration and transformation. As a blogging poet myself, I love her description of her outlook:
Sigo desperdigando poemas y semillas por las cunetas. Sigo vertiéndome como un jovenzuelo infinito. Sigo prefiriendo lo por venir a lo obrado. La perfección aún me recuerda a la muerte, cualquier elección me recuerda a la muerte. Quizá se trate de inmadurez. Seguramente.
(I keep scattering poems and seeds into the gutters. I keep pouring myself like an endless youth. I still prefer whatever is coming to what’s already been made. Perfection still reminds me of death, any choice reminds me of death. Maybe it’s immature. Surely.)
