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Tom Konyves on the making of a videopoetry manifesto

On 19 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Miscellaneous
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7WMAVnwZSk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5y8RQUSdoY

Tom’s presentation at Visible Verse Festival 2011, held at the Cinémathèque Pacifique in Vancouver, November 4-5, 2011. Do set aside half an hour to watch this.

We’re living at an amazing point in time as far as this particular genre [videopoetry] is concerned. It is so new. It can make you feel like you’re living in the 1920s, when the great art revolutions were taking place.

As many regular visitors to this site are probably aware, Tom Konyves coined the term “videopoetry” back in the 1970s and has played a strong role in shaping its conception, at least among avant-garde poets. It’s not necessary to have first read his new videopoetry manifesto, but this certainly helps to introduce and contextualize it.

You don’t have to be an avant-garde poet to appreciate Tom’s points about, for example, the subversion of narrative expectations or the importance of poetic juxtaposition in a videopoem. But what’s especially appealing about this talk to me is what it reveals about Tom’s careful and methodical thought process, his essential generosity and his openness to opinions contrary to his own — qualities not normally associated with authors of manifestos, as he acknowledges:

In writing a manifesto, you tend to be very polemic, you tend to say that this is the only way to look at works, but I came across this quote from genre theorist Richard Cole, who wrote: “The phrase ‘tyranny of genre’ is normally taken to signify how generic structures constrain individual creativity. If genre functions as a taxonomic classification system, it could constrain individual creativity.” So I was concerned about that, that what I had to say about videopoetry may have that kind of effect.

Watch the talk, and then check out the manifesto on Issuu. Also, the earlier Poem Film Manifesto by Ian Cottage, which Tom mentions around 12:50 in Part 1 above, may be read at Cottage’s blog.

dollhouse by Shabnam Piryaei

On 17 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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It’s not often you see such roles as Key Grip, Script Supervisor and Gaffer in the credits of a poetry film! Even better, it still goes in the author-made videopoem category, as Iranian-American poet Shabnam Piryaei is credited as both writer and main director. According to the bio on her website, her print publication credits are as impressive as her film credits. It’s always heartening to see a poet working in film at such a high level of professional expertise.

Ochtend (Dawning) by Yahia Lababidi

On 16 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Swoon re-edited a video he originally posted eight months ago, making it shorter, more visually appealing and I think more effective in the process. I’m not sure why I didn’t share the original, but I love this videopoem now. The poem was written in English by the Egyptian poet Yahia Lababidi, and has been translated into Dutch by Katelijne De Vuyst for the soundrack. Swoon and his wife Arlekeno Anselmo, who reads the translation, are Belgian. This is perhaps an extreme example of a widespread tendency I’ve noticed in the online videopoetry community to ignore national boundaries and strive to overcome linguistic ones, as well — facilitated, I would argue, by the change in focus from written text to audio and visual media. We are no longer quite so locked into our separate linguistic and cultural rooms.

Profile by R.W. Perkins

On 13 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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“Profile is a stream of consciousness combination of poetry and prose. The visuals of the film were intended to represent the chaos of thought.” This would be a mesmerizing piece even without R.W. Perkins’ very interesting and detailed process notes on Vimeo and at his website (q.v.). Last Friday at VidPoFilm, Brenda Clews captured the essence of the excitement that many of us in the online videopoetry community feel about this film:

R.W. Perkins has it all in this video. When I saw it I felt it was a marker of our era. That surely many films of this type will follow, but his was the first. Identity in the twenty-first century is shaped by social media sites. Your life is not contained in your private diaries and photo albums anymore; it’s all on-line now. The notion of who we are has never been more global or more revealing.

One’s Facebook profile updates and photo albums provide many snapshots of a life. R.W. Perkins has captured that sense of a collided life, a life of snapshots and home videos and snatches of writing. It is a fast-paced life. We describe ourselves to each other. There are millions of us. Facebook is approaching 1/7th of the world’s population. It is a social media site that is creating a twenty-first sense of self.

Put it all together and you get, PROFILE. On his website, R.W. Perkins offers his essay on his videopoem, Profiles, as his Profile.

Read the rest (and if you have any interest in the videopoem/filmpoem genre, don’t miss a post at VidPoFilm).

It Wasn’t the Flu by Ren Powell

On 12 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems
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Norway-based American poet Ren Powell writes,

I saw a website called fiverr. People will do/make things for 5 bucks. Nathan is making play doh stop motion animations with his kids: 15 seconds for 5.

The result is something of an exquisite corpse… with kids.

It Wasn’t the Flu (From Mercy Island. Phoenicia Publishing, 2011).

I find the result really delightful and satisfying — more so than many more sophisticated poetry animations I’ve seen.

Seepferdchen und Flugfische (Seahorses and Flying Fish) by Hugo Ball

On 11 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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And now for something completely different: Bob Marsh chants the 1916 Dada sound poem by Hugo Ball in a marvellous video interpretation by drummer and videographer Grant Strombeck.

The Genius of the Crowd by Charles Bukowski

On 10 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Another Bukowski videopoem by the graphic design company immprint. This one includes the poet’s own reading, and “the soundtrack is by immprint with most of the footage shot in New York.”

I’m not sure about the repurposing of this poem for an environmental message, but I do like the device of counting up the total human population as the film rolls, and the soundtrack is damn near perfect.

Um fiapo de homem (An excuse for a man) by Nereu Afonso

On 9 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This is FIAPO, a short poetry film available in multiple languages and with its own Facebook page. The poet, Nereu Afonso, is credited with the screenplay and also stars in the film. Alexandre Braga directs. The description at Vimeo and Facebook reads,

Um homem só, palavras de um homem só…
O que dizer? Como dizer e para quem dizer quando o silêncio à sua volta lhe parece portador de mais sentido?
O que é mais lúcido? O que é mais absurdo? Falar ou calar?
Esta é a terceira experiência criativa de Alexandre Braga e Nereu Afonso. Talvez não trará respostas. Contentar-se-á em lançar perguntas. Perguntas presas num último fiapo… no qual poderíamos nos agarrar.

Google Translate renders this as follows:

A man, a man only words …
What to say? How to say and who to tell when the silence around him seems to carry more meaning?
What is more lucid? What is more absurd? Speak or be silent?
This is the third creative experience of Alexandre Afonso Braga and Nereus. It may not bring answers. Content will be to launch questions. Questions lint trapped in the last … in which we cling.

(Hat-tip: the Video and Film Poetry group on Vimeo)

Just As, After a Point, Job Cried Out by K.A. Hays

On 6 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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Motionpoems are releasing their 2012 crop of animations one a month; this is the first — an animation by Emma Burghardt of a poem by K.A. Hays. Please see the post at the Motionpoems website for the text of the poem and its full publication history.

By the way, if you like what Motionpoems are doing to bring great American poems to the big and small screen (including, hopefully, cable TV), please consider donating to their current fundraising campaign. Unfortunately, they were locked out of a major state arts grant this year due to a little-publicized change in the application process, so their need for donations is especially acute right now.

Isn’t It Time We… by John Siddique

On 5 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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http://vimeo.com/23682194

This is “Hawthorne Moon,” the one installment in John Siddique‘s Thirteen Moons video series which isn’t an animation. It was shot and directed by the poet himself with final editing by Walter Santucci.

14th Avenue Tshwane (née Pretoria) by Gérard Rudolf

On 4 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Alastair Cook‘s 16th filmpoem is also his third collaboration with South African poet and actor Gérard Rudolf. Alastair writes,

14th Avenue Tshwane (née Pretoria) is a poem by Gérard Rudolf from his collection Orphaned Latitudes. It is my first work of 2012 and illustrates the year’s intent: it is made from tangible film, not digital recordings, and 2012 is the year of using the digital to edit the analogue. I cannot edit without digital, I cannot make film without analogue. The year of Rollei, Bolex and Collodion. See you soon and Happy New Year!

This film contains Standard 8, Super 8, 16mm and miniDV, edited digitally.

The text of the poem appears on the publisher’s page for Orphaned Latitudes.

Piece Work by Robert Peake

On 3 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Poet Robert Peake’s first venture into the genre arose spontaneously and in collaboration with his wife, Valerie Kampmeier, who provided the music and the idea, as she describes on her blog:

This afternoon was the last day of the Christmas holidays, unexpectedly sunny, crisp and breezy. After the departure of some visitors, Robert and I were about to go out for a walk and some tea and cake, when he suddenly pointed to a patch of light on the wall behind me. The reflections from the garden of waving branches and the wrought iron of a clothes post were casting flickering shadows onto the wall in an astonishing fashion, almost like a silent movie. Robert grabbed his iPhone and captured some video. “You could use that for a poem-film, “ I remarked, thinking about the beautiful short videos some friends had made recently.

When we got home from our walk, I began improvising to the footage on the piano, while Robert listened and wrote. Within twenty minutes we both had something. Remarkably, when Robert read his poem aloud, it was exactly the right length. He recorded it, synchronized it with the video, and then I recorded my part on top onto a different track so that we could experiment with individual volume and colour.

Read the rest (and visit Robert’s blog for the text). It’s always exciting to see a new poet entering the videopoem/film-poem genre, and the high quality and organic process here bodes well for Peake and Kampmeier’s future efforts.