~ 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.
Bridge For The Living by Philip Larkin
The high quality of this poem-film as a film convinced me it deserves a place here, despite the (to my taste) rather too literal correspondence of film image to textual image. Actually, as a commemorative work for the bridge itself, it’s hard to see how the film could’ve avoided such literalism — and it’s not as if the choice of shots and camera angles doesn’t exercise the viewer’s imagination, too. At any rate, here’s the description at Vimeo (edited slightly to remove typos):
Written to commemorate the opening of the Humber Bridge, ‘Bridge For The Living’ finds Philip Larkin ruminating both on the effect he believed the bridge would have on the city of Hull and its environs but also on the nature of man’s need for connectivity.
This film returns to the poem during the 30th anniversary year of the Humber Bridge and illustrates and explores Larkin’s sentiments. The read is supplied by Hull-born Oscar-nominated acting legend Sir Tom Courtenay and is the second time he has completed a film based on a Larkin poem with Yorkshire film-maker Dave Lee, their previous collaboration being a multi-award nominated adaptation of ‘Here’.
‘Bridge For The Living’ has been made for the 2011 Humber Mouth Literary Festival with support from Hull City Council and the National Lottery.
It won an award at Glimmer 2011: The Hull International Short Film Festival. The Jury said: “Dave Lee has created a mesmerizing film with a timeless feel. Bridge for the Living is stunning; a wonderful use of time-lapse, fantastic camera angles and flawless editing, this work perfectly compliments the Philip Larkin poem with its beautiful cinematography, all complimented by Sir Tom Courtney’s voice over.”
The Humber Mouth website is here.
Aan Het Water / On the Water by Bernard Dewulf
Two films commissioned by the Felix Poetry Festival for a poem by Antwerp’s City Poet, Bernard Dewulf. The filmmakers, Alastair Cook and Swoon Bildos (Marc Neys), are of course no strangers to Moving Poems. See Swoon’s write-up on the festival at the discussion blog.
The Return by Edna St. Vincent Millay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLNkl5UqY4g
Voice and editing by Nic S., using public-domain footage from the Hubble space telescope.
Nuchter zijn we langdradig / Dreary when Sober by Delphine Lecompte
Delphine Lecompte is a British expat writer living in Belgium a Belgian poet with a fondness for inventive bios (see comments). She’s responsible for both the translation and the reading here. Concept, camera, editing and sound are all the work of Swoon, who blogged:
De video werd een oefening in ‘langdradigheid’ versus ‘spanning’…een video waarin zo weinig mogelijk gebeurt tegen een klankband waarin kinderen akelig vrolijk zijn…of zoiets…
Which Google Translate renders as:
The video was an exercise in ‘wordiness’ versus ‘power’ … a video in which as little as possible is done to a soundtrack [in] which children [are] eerily cheerful … or something …
How to Time an Engine by Matt Mullins
A remix of 1940s footage, both professional and amateur, by R.W. Perkins for a piece by Matt Mullins from his book Three Ways Of The Saw. The recitation is by Mullins.
Ganthier by Kwame Dawes
Another in the Voices from Haiti series produced by the Pulitzer Center, exploring life after the earthquake and focusing on the lives of those affected by HIV/AIDS, with poetry by Kwame Dawes, images by photographer Andre Lambertson, editing by Robin Bell and music by Kevin Simmonds. See YouTube for the text.
Postcard From Persephone by Luisa A. Igloria
http://vimeo.com/43880844
The reading isn’t perfect, but the imaginative shot selection more than makes up for that, I think. And while most student videopoems come out of film classes, this was unusual in that it was made for a literature class, according to the brief description at Vimeo.
For more on the poet, see her website.
Four Steps Removed: Taxidermy – poems by Jenny Donnison, Angelina Ayers, Noel Williams and Helen Cadbury
A series of poems by four UK poets that were all prompted by the same exhibition, “12 Heads and the Reynard Diary,” by artist Susannah Gent, at Bank Street Arts, Sheffield. The poems are:
“Taxidermy” – Jenny Donnison
“Taxidermy I, II, III” – Angelina Ayers
“Notes on Taxidermy – A Poem Found in Susannah Gent” – Noel Williams
“Young Red and the Urban Fox” – Helen Cadbury
“Teumessian Fox” – Jenny Donnison
Mark Gittins recorded the poets and made a video, but passed it on to the composer, Lyndon Scarfe, without the recordings, which were only combined with his sountrack at the very end — an interesting process.
Jonah by Robert Peake
Alastair Cook‘s 20th filmpoem uses a text and reading by Robert Peake. The film is due to premiere at the Felix Poetry Festival in Antwerp on June 15.
The poem’s back-story is fascinating. Let me quote from the first couple of paragraphs from Alastair’s description on Vimeo:
[P]rior to London, Robert lived in a small town full of artists in the foothills of the Santa Barbara mountains called Ojai (a Chumash Indian name meaning either “moon” or “nest”). He lived next to the directors of the local theatre company on one side, and a metal sculptor called Mark Benkert and his wife Marcia on the other. One morning just before dawn, a 400-pound black bear wandered through the theatre directors’ yard and out onto Robert’s street. He then climbed into a tree and became stuck.
Robert takes up the story: “he drew us all out, awed us with his presence, and brought us together as neighbours. Sadly, because it was also the first day of bear hunting season, he was shot out of the tree that night and killed by the wildlife “authorities.” Benkert swung into action, welding and cutting all night to produce a half-ton metal outline of a bear in rusted iron sheeting. Early the next morning, a capable rock climber, he hauled himself and the statue up the tree and placed it there–his bulletproof metal bear defying all. As far as I know, it is still in the tree. Mark and I became closer, and finally discovered that we held in common losing a son: my James in infancy, his Jonah gone at thirty-two from drugs and mental illness leading to suicide. The town commissioned Mark to create a bigger second statue to be displayed prominently.”
It Noarderland / The Northern Land by Durk van der Ploeg
Richard van der Laan‘s “visual arrangement of Frisian poetry on moving canvas.” The reading is by Siem de Vlas, a Frisian landscape architect who also appears in the film, “working in his studio and visiting the grave of the famous dutch landscape architect Lucas Pieters Roodbaard (1782 – 1851),” as the description on Vimeo puts it. Here’s the original text of Durk van der Ploeg’s poem. As someone of (distant) Frisian ancestry, I was happy to find this videopoem.
Ecclesiastes 11:1 by Richard Wilbur
Faith Eskola created this month’s Motionpoem for a poem by America’s preeminent contemporary formalist poet. See Motionpoems for the text and some process notes by Eskola in the comments.
