~ Video Library ~
Assault to Abjury by Raymond McDaniel
Raymond McDaniel reads a poem from his collection Saltwater Empire, which recently came under attack for its use of Katrina survivors’ words as “found poetry.” He defended himself here. It’s interesting that despite the huge volume of commentary both essays attracted, on the Poetry Foundation site and elsewhere, this video from his collection (albeit for a different poem than the lengthy one under attack) had been viewed just six times in the 19 months since it was posted on YouTube. It’s almost as if all the people criticizing McDaniel have never made even a cursory effort to familiarize themselves with his work.
Hum Bom! by Allen Ginsberg
This is Part 1 of the poem — a dramatisation which I think it is safe to say Ginsberg would’ve loved. The filmmaker, Caroline Petters, is a professional photographer.
June (Juni) by Dag T. Straumsvåg
Robert Hedin translated the poem from Norwegian, and Jay Orff made the video for Motionpoems. See Willow Springs Literary Magazine for the text in both languages and Straumsvåg’s discussion of its origins.
MotionPoems is currently holding a fundraiser to support its video artists.
MOTIONPOEMS was co-founded in 2008 by Todd Boss (poet) and Angella Kassube (artist, animator, artistic director, and producer). Our roles are primarily curatorial. Since 2008, we’ve paired poets with video teams to develop nearly two dozen one-minute films from poems by Robert Bly, Jane Hirshfield, Marvin Bell, Freya Manfred, David Mason, and others. Over 30 artists have been involved in just the past two years alone.
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BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP! We want to start paying a SMALL STIPEND to our technical and video artists. Many of them are putting more than 100 hours into these projects, outside of the 40-hour work week! We want to reward them for their passion, their creativity, and their willingness to take an artistic risk. Our video artists are our greatest asset, a key to our growing success. We’d like to show them that our community loves and supports their extensive investment in MOTIONPOEMS.
Iemand moet de tafel dekken (Somebody has to set the table) by Joke van Leeuwen
Sometimes, a videopoem is so damn good, it doesn’t matter if you can’t understand a word of it. This is one such videopoem. Lucette Braune directed.
What I Wouldn’t Give by Amie Saramelkonian
Si Clark animates. According to an online bio, Amie Saramelkonian
lives in the South West of England with her husband and two cats. Until recently the majority of her publications have been in scientific and engineering journals. She writes predominantly poetry, but also writes shorts, has several unfinished novels and is currently working on a screenplay.
Dirty Dinky by Theodore Roethke
I do believe Michael John Muller found the perfect text for this fun little experiment: the title poem for Roethke’s collection of poems for children.
Currie by Dorothy Baird
This new collaboration for the This Collection project features Anna Dickie, who also contributed a poem to the project (see “Same Place, Different View“), in charge of camera and editing, joined by Stefanie Tan for the sound editing. As Stefanie explains on Vimeo,
With the help of the local butcher, traffic lady and sporting residents, Dorothy Baird and Anna Dickie bring to life the portrait of Edinburgh’s unassuming suburb, Currie.
The bus 44 links Anna’s stomping ground, Haddington to Dorothy’s neighbourhood, Currie and this intimate collaboration adds to the magical mysterious connections the poems from thiscollection continues to unearth.
Anna used only photographic stills to piece together the concept for the film.
For more on Dorothy Baird, here’s a bio and interview.
