~ Videopoems ~
Videopoetry, filmpoetry, cinepoetry, poetry-film… the label doesn’t matter. What matters is that text and images enter into dialogue, creating a new, poetic whole.
Giacometti’s Pears by Donna Vorreyer
I couldn’t resist making a video for one of Donna Vorreyer‘s poems at The Poetry Storehouse myself. “Giacometti’s Pears” was originally published in Weave magazine. I blogged about my process a bit at Via Negativa last week.
The Royal Oak by Benedict Newbery
An award-winning watercolor animation by Sandra Salter, with additional animation by Meg Bisineer, for a poem by Benedict Newbery (read here by Tony Fish). For additional credits, see Vimeo, which includes this description:
A local pub, despite it’s refit continues to be a bolt-hole, refuge and home to its regulars. An animated poetry film.
Channel 4 commissioned Sandra Salter and Benedict Newbery to make a film for its first Random Acts Season. The film was broadcast on Channel 4 in October 2012. The animation is based on the poem The Royal Oak which was published in Magma, and this film sees a further evolution of Newbery and Salter’s poetry film style using watercolour and transitions.
The Royal Oak won the Best Animation Audience Choice Award at the Purbeck Shorts competition at the Purbeck Film Festival held on 18 October 2013. It was described by the Festival as ‘a beautifully observed, watercolour, animated poem.’
The film was also exhibited in the 2013 Ludlow Open Rural Contemporary Art Showcase, and chosen as the opening film for the Filmpoem Festival in Dunbar, Scotland, in August 2013.
Trauermantel by Luisa A. Igloria
Along with Mortal Ghazal and Oir, this forms the third in what has turned out to be a triptych of Luisa A. Igloria videopoems, says its maker Swoon (Marc Neys).
People who have been following my works a bit, know I have a thing with artworks in a triptych.
When Luisa approached me to make a video for one of the poems in her book ‘The Saints of Streets‘, I was not thinking triptych.
Yet Luisa sent me several recordings and as it happens I liked her poems (and her readings for that matter) a lot. So in the end I made three videopoems […] and because of her voice and her style these do belong together. To me anyway.
The trauermantel is the same species of butterfly known as mourning cloak in North American and Camberwell beauty in the U.K. Swoon writes,
I wanted light, colours and an abstract spirit-like feel for this one.
Only at the end of the video (after the poem) I come up with a concrete image.
These images are also my first attempt to create something of an animated sequence. The image of the butterfly was made by Katrijn Clemer using the outlines of a real Trauermantel and one of the faces of the video for Oir.
Meek by Harry Martinson
A poem by the 20th-century Swedish poet Harry Martinson, one of three recently animated by Ana Perez Lopez, who writes:
Olofström is nature: tall trees, infinite lakes and the echoing voice of Harry Martinson. But Olofström grew with a factory, a building where everything from pots, bullets and cars can be made.
After spending a month as an art resident in Nabbeboda Skola I tried to combine this three elements in one project. I interview Johnny Carlson and wondered around the town. I stuck my nose into Harry Martinson’s poems and left pen be taken by his imagination.
I illustrated three of his poems and brought them to life with animation. I hope you enjoy these bits of Olofström through the penetrating voice of Johnny Carlson.
Iluzjonista / Illusionist by Slawomir Elsner
A poem by the Polish artist Slawomir Elsner turned into a film by choreographer, dancer and filmmaker Jagoda Bobrowska, who notes that it was a
Film made for a competition “Nakrec wiersz” (shoot a poem)
Idea, directing, montage, music: Jagoda Bobrowska
Dance: Elena Sgarbi and Svelin Velchev
Sweet Tea by Eric Blanchard
https://vimeo.com/79032004
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Another pair of video remixes for a poem in The Poetry Storehouse. This time, the poem is by Eric Blanchard, and what’s especially interesting is that they employ the very same soundtrack, with a reading by Nic S. and a soundscape composed by Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon. The first video is by Nic and the second is by Swoon, and as you’ll see, they take very different approaches. Nic uses images and animation by Donna Kuhn, while Marc worked with four still photos, as he describes in a blog post:
I started from 4 pictures: that I took in my series ‘Dust of time‘; pictures of wood, rotten, wet,… Colours golden brown (like tea).
First I merged those pictures together, creating a short 10 second film showing those merged pictures. What followed was a stream of re-editing and layering of those 10 seconds… Until there was nothing recognisable left. Only a constant moving stream of psychedelic forms…
These two videopoems are an excellent demonstration of the fun to be had working with material at The Poetry Storehouse. Keep ’em coming, folks.
Playing Duets with Heisenberg’s Ghost by Peg Duthie
Othniel Smith used images from the Internet Archive featuring Martha Davis to accompany a reading (by Nic S.) from The Poetry Storehouse, where the author, Peg Duthie, has five poems. Sebastian herself had also earlier made a video remix of the same poem, and it’s interesting to compare her approach with Smith’s:
https://vimeo.com/77778283
According to a note at the site, the poem appears in a collection called From Measured Extravagance (Upper Rubber Boot, 2012), and was first published in The 3rd Annual SFPA Poetry Contest in 2008: Energy (Spec House of Poetry). So it’s definitely been getting around!
Stopping by Dick Jones
A video by Nic S. for a poem and author recording at The Poetry Storehouse, one of three there by the British poet, blogger and musician Dick Jones.
Today is your advocate by Peter Ciccariello
I’m featuring videos based on poems in The Poetry Storehouse this week. Artist and poet Peter Ciccariello has three texts on the site. This one was read by Nic S. and made into a film by Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon. Marc shared some process notes at his blog.
This soundtrack/reading led me to images I shot over a year ago. Footage of someone looking back, remembering the past, someone watching life gliding by her… Just a few long shots (in and out of focus), nothing else…just the gaze.
Underground by Emer Martin
https://vimeo.com/76805308
Like Judith Dekker’s lark, this is a videopoem made from a passage of poetic prose: in this case, the unpublished novel The Affection of a Hag by Irish writer Emer Martin. Daragh McCarthy is the producer, editor, composer and reader, with filming by Richard Donnelly (see Vimeo for the complete credits). McCarthy writes,
I came across the work of Emer Martin in a copy of Stinging Fly magazine that a friend left in my flat on a winter evening in 2011.
Leafing through the contents I was struck by the title “going underground” in the novel extracts section, as I had made a film about the Dublin punk rock scene “The Stars Are Underground”.
Reading the character’s monologue in my kitchen I realised I was speaking it out loud, caught up in the rhythm. The words felt like an anger cheat sheet and history lesson and I immediately knew I wanted to put it to music.
The words seemed to encapsulate what myself and many of my contemporaries have been trying to express in terms of our place within history at this time and how we might begin to create a route forward.
While initially they suggested a full throttle approach, in the end a considered and deliberate reading was more appropriate.
I had been planning to combine my love of both film and music and felt that this piece was where I should start.
I wanted the visuals to be abstract for the most part, suggestive of the natural world and an internal world in equal measure.
I wanted the music to be a combination of midi, analogue and the human voice. I have been exploring Shape Note singing for some time and felt it’s raw human power would suit the sense of a people’s emotional response to their situation perfectly.
The Whole Place is Dark by Nick Sturm
Video by DJ Berndt for a poem by Nick Sturm that originally appeared in Ink Node. (Hat-tip: “The dA-Zed guide to Alt Lit.”)
