Posts By Dave Bonta
For women who are difficult to love by Warsan Shire
An atmospheric video by New York-based artist BriAnna Olson for Warsan Shire‘s widely circulated poem.
Relativity by Sarah Howe
I wanted to share something by Sarah Howe today to celebrate her winning the TS Eliot prize with her collection Loop of Jade, “the first debut poetry collection to win the British prize since it was inaugurated in 1993” as the Guardian pointed out. YouTube has a couple of good videos of her reading her work, but the only videopoem is this one by Bridget Smith, produced for National Poetry Day 2015. The renowned physicist Stephen Hawking reads a poem Howe wrote especially for him. He praised the poem on Facebook:
Physicists and poets may differ in discipline, but both seek to communicate the beauty of the world around us. … Sarah Howe brings light to life in her poem “Relativity.”
It sounds as if this video, or one very like it, will be part of an upcoming Bridget Smith exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery in London, The Eye Needs a Horizon:
A high definition video installation shows a beam of light emanating from an unseen projector. The film shows nothing but light and particles of dust, yet it evokes a sense of drama and indeed of immensity using the sparest of means.
River Bicycle Peony (from August Notebook: A Death) by Robert Hass
This is a kind of metaphor, a stop-motion animation by Paige Speight of Robert Hass‘s “River Bicycle Peony.” Evan Montilla provided the voiceover.
Call for submissions: Carbon Culture’s $1000 poetry film prize
April 1 is the deadline to submit to this uniquely generous poetry film prize from Carbon Culture with judge Zata Banks from the UK-based PoetryFilm project. Here are the details.
Poetry Film Prize
We want to integrate film and literary culture. Carbon Culture will award a $1,000.00 prize for the best poetry film. Zata Kitowski, director of PoetryFilm, will pick the grand prize winner and finalists. The winning entry will receive $1,000.00. The top five entries will receive high-profile placements across our social media networks, a one page note alongside honorable mentions in our newsstand print and device editions. Deadline for submissions is April 1, 2016.
By submitting, you grant CCR the right to publish selected poetry films in our online issue as well as recognition in our print issue. All rights revert to the film creator(s) and/or submitter.
Rules for Submission
- Create a video adaptation of your original, unpublished poem.
- Post the video to a Youtube or Vimeo account and make it live.
- Submit the piece as an .Mp4 alongside your bio or team member’s bios to us.
- One submission per poet, please. If you previously created a poetry film for our initial guidelines listed in early 2015 for John Gosslee’s poem before we opened the contest to any original poem, you may submit this and one other poetry film for consideration.
Prize Announcements will be made in July 2016. Payment will be made via Paypal.
Film Types
All visual and textual interpretations of any contemporary poem written by you or someone on your team are welcome. Animation (digital or cartoon,) live action, kinetic poems, stop motion, anything you can imagine. We are looking for literal and non-literal interpretations of the poem. How long should it be? That is up to you. Poetry is meant to be heard and we encourage audio.
Eligibility
The prize is open to poets, students, individuals and teams.
Click Here to Submit Your Film.
Mor säger att det är ett minne / Mother says that it’s a memory by Eva Ström
The filmmaker Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon writes,
My last video for 2015 is also my most personal. Mor säger att det är ett minne is a poem by Eva Ström I found on lyrikline earlier this year. I decided to use it with the footage I shot during my mother’s last week. […]
I used the audio by Mechner (Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, 2005) as base for the music. Around Eva’s reading I composed a frail piece of music using only a piano and an old clock; [SoundCloud link]
The translation by Maria Freij was used as subtitles. […]
In the film you see my mother clipping her nails after bath. She had come home to die (after her decision to stop all treatment and medication). She wanted to spend her last days at home, with her children close by.
I am well aware that this video speaks to me and my family on a whole other level, but I also believe that the combination of this footage with the poem and the music works well for other people…
Thanks to Marc for his willingness to share such personal footage and go so deep.
Crows, Reckoning by Jessica Goodfellow
A poem by Jessica Goodfellow adapted to film for Motionpoems by Alex Hanson and Edward Chase Masterson of Commandr studio. See Masterson’s Vimeo upload for a full list of credits, which appear to have gone missing in Motionpoems’ otherwise fabulous new website design.
Released on January 1, this was the last episode (as they’re now calling them) in Motionpoems’ Season 6, which was produced in partnership with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and featured a lineup of all female U.S. poets. As with the others in this season, there’s a bonus interview with the poet. Here’s the final question and response:
What was your initial reaction to seeing the motionpoem?
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I had to watch the movie two or three times before I could take it in, because its story line was so different from the poem. I was all the while captivated by the the textures in the imagery, the childlike yet knowing voice of the narrator, the mystery of the film, those actual crows (I had expected animation since I did not think real animals would be feasible) and that final striking image. Even now, though I’ve watched the film a dozen times, it remains mysterious to me, but that’s the genius of what Alex Hanson and Edward Chase Masterson have done—adding layers of mystery rather than in trying to explicate the poem. Because of their film, the poem has become a deeper, more moving experience, one that evokes a despair in me that I did not expect.
Smell! by William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams’ own recitation of his poem is included in the soundtrack of this animation by Isaac Holland. The video is part of the Poetry of Perception series commissioned by Harvard for its Fundamentals of Neuroscience course.
Situation 7 by Claudia Rankine
Published online at TriQuarterly a year ago, this is the most recent of the Situation videos produced by Claudia Rankine with her husband, documentary photographer John Lucas, and included in text form in her award-winning collection of prose poetry Citizen.
Transmission by Ashleigh Lambert
Australian artist Marie Craven describes her first videopoem in many months as
Some fun with Sheffield dance music, DIY visual fx and poetry.
Concept & Editing: Marie Craven pixieguts.com
Music & Mixing: Adrian Carter soundcloud.com/adicarter
Voice: Nic S. verylikeawhale.wordpress.com
From a poem by Ashleigh Lambert poetrystorehouse.com/2015/03/28/ashleigh-lambert-poems
It’s nice to see filmmakers continuing to draw upon work in the Poetry Storehouse.
An Interview: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
This film by Maggie Bailey blends interpretative dance with snippets of a 1961 interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
An Interview stems from a desire to explore the life of Sylvia Plath. This short film analyzes Plath’s feelings about her relationship with her husband, daily life, and raising her children, through dance and gesture work, paired with excerpts of an interview with Plath and her husband, Ted Hughes. Though she says quite the opposite in this interview, we can infer that she feels a loss of identity and purpose in life, in the midst of caring for a new baby. The year of the interview is 1961, two years prior to Plath’s suicide. Directed & filmed by Maggie Bailey. Edited by Maggie Bailey and Tyler Rubin. Performed by Heather Bybee. Music by Michael Wall. Interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
