~ 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.
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
A wonderfully dystopian interpretation by student animator Aleksandra Korecka.
There Were Two Girls Who Looked A Lot The Same by Ellyn Maybe
Veronika Bauer directs, and the music is by Harlan Steinberger and Tommy Jordan. The audio track as a whole was created for the album Rodeo for the Sheepish from Hen House Studios. Ellen Maybe was named one of ten poets to watch in the new millennium by Writer’s Digest, and Henry Rollins has described her as “an irresistible force.”
Jupiter by Diana Syder
Sally Fryer animates a poem by Diana Syder for the Version Film Festival in Manchester. The poem is from the recent Comma Press title Planet Box, a collaboration between Syder and artist Laura Daly.
The White Room by Charles Simic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOF7hUJ29vY
An exceptionally interesting videopoem: “1 min photocopimation based on a poem by Charles Simic called The White Room. By Noush Anand, 2007,” says the note at YouTube. This is Anand’s only upload to YouTube. It’s been viewed all of 63 times — a travesty.
The video animates just the first two stanzas of Simic’s ten-stanza poem; read it in full at Poets.org.
Soxy by Sadie Fisher
A collaboration between Glenn-emlyn Richards and Sadie Fisher for the Comma Press Poetry Film Festival 2010. Fisher describes herself as
a writer of short fictions;
an actress of clear convictions;
an image maker & photoshop breaker;
a producer of films & inconstant lover of sox.
Motionpoems fundraising campaign breaks $10,000 mark
I’ve included notes about the fundraising campaign for Motionpoems in several recent posts at the main site. The donation page is now reporting that they’ve raised $5,112 from 53 donors, exceeding their goal of $5000 — but why stop there? It’s great to see poets and artists working so hard to bring compelling videopoetry to the masses, and they deserve all the support we can give them. An article at mnartists.org tells the story of how Todd Boss and Angella Kassube teamed up in 2008.
(Update) Angela tells me via email that the GiveMN fundraiser will be done next week, and pointed out that they qualified for $5,000 in matching funds — “kind of amazing that we’ve had ZERO money for 2 years and suddenly we have $10,000” to support Motionpoems! And they’ve just been accepted into the Kickstarter fundraising program, as well.
Suddenly the future is looking very bright for professionally made American poetry films.
Cairo by Yahia Lababidi
Tim Pieraccini made the video and recorded the reading, as well. Yahia Lababidi says that all his videos on YouTube illustrate poems from a collection called Fever Dreams, forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press.
Swimming Into Winter by Freya Manfred
Another MotionPoems production, intriguing to me because of the minimalist filming (though I liked the poem too, of course). The note on YouTube says:
A poem by Freya Manfred interpreted and filmed by Gregory Winter. Edited by Jeff Stickles and sound design and music by Tom Lecher, Ross Nelson and Echo Boys Music. Read by Freya Manfred.
How cool is it that the filmmaker’s name is Winter?! Freya Manfred is a Midwestern poet and the author of six books of poetry, a novel, and a literary memoir. According to her publisher Red Dragonfly Press, “Her half hour poem for television: ‘The Madwoman and the Mask’ appeared on KTCA-TV, Channel 2, in 1991.”
If you like what Todd Boss and Angella Kassube are doing at MotionPoems, don’t forget to send some holiday cheer their way.
The Crystal Gazer by Sara Teasdale
Film student Casey Regan directs. (For the rest of the credits, see Vimeo.)
