~ 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.
Every Day You Play (Juegas Todos los Días) by Pablo Neruda
This is poem XIV from Veinte Poemas de Amor y Una Canción Desesperada (1924), envideoed by Will Jardine.
America by Walt Whitman
http://www.vimeo.com/15575046
Alexander Pulido calls this film American Disillusion:
The now-famous (thank you Levi’s) wax cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reading the first verse of his famous poem ‘America’, juxtaposed against imagery of America in reality.
Philip Binder is credited with the cinematography. (For the Levi’s ad using the same wax recording, see here.)
The Boys by Francesca Eva Ashcroft
“A blend of rotoscope animation, stop-motion animation, and live action video … Directed and animated by Tom McPhee. Written and spoken by Francesca Eva Ashcroft.” This was the first-place winner of the 2010 Poetry in Film competition.
Your Super Bookstore Recommends by Dean Young
Another “teleportal reading“:
When Dean Young came to the East Austin warehouse where we film our videos, the sky was threatening. By the time he got started, a biblical downpour was underway. You can hear the rain on the tin roof as he reads. Of course, as these things tend to go, it cleared up the second the shoot was finished. Still, we like the way the atmospheric sound plays off of Scott Gelber’s animation, which alters live footage of Dean reading in front of a green screen and layers it with gorgeous hand-painted imagery. Dean’s most recent book, a work of prose on poetry titled The Art of Recklessness, is available from Graywolf Press.
This is one case where a literal interpretation of the poem really works!
Until Next Time by Nabila Jameel
Filmmaker Rachel Laine collaborated with poet Nabila Jameel in preparation for the Comma Press Film Poem Festival 2010. I found a bio of Jameel at the (UK) Poetry Society website:
Runner-up in the Manchester Cathedral International Religious Poetry Competition 2010. Published in anthologies, Stand Magazine and Poetry & Audience. … Currently writing a chapter on ‘Performance’ for an academic book.
Let Us Consider by Russell Edson
As long as I’ve been doing this site, I still haven’t posted quite all the videos from the “Poetry Everywhere” series of animations by students at docUWM, the documentary media center based in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Film Department, produced under the aegis of the Poetry Foundation. As usual with this series, the poet himself is the reader here.
-ed by Mairi Sharratt
Scottish artist and filmmaker Alastair Cook’s latest filmpoem (and in my opinion his best to date). Here’s what he says about it at Vimeo:
-ed is my film of a poem by Mairi Sharratt, from her as yet unpublished (nudge) collection This is a Poem. You can read more of Mairi’s work on her excellent blog, alumpinthethroat.wordpress.com.
It took a long time for me to begin this filmpoem for two reasons: I have been busy with this summer’s solo film and photography show as part of the Edinburgh Festival; also the poem is dark and yet meditative, lifting to a powerful crescendo and as a result I felt that I needed to introduce a figurative element. So I ruminated…
Mairi says in a blog post that the film will be screened at Edingbugh’s Hidden Door Festival, which runs from October 22-24.
Inferno (A Poet’s Novel) by Eileen Myles
The reading is evidently an excerpt from Myles’ new book. Update: this is not from Inferno, but a more recent piece (see comments). It takes a little while to get going, but stick with it: the hand-drawn, typographic animation on a green screen behind the reading is unique. It’s the work of Scott Gelber for Teleportal Readings, which includes some additional information:
This is the first of nine videos we shot in collaboration with Rattapallax at the Bowery Poetry Club this summer. That’s BPC founder Bob Holman you hear in the background during the beginning, before he gets whatevered by Eileen. We filmed with a green screen and Scott Gelber added animation after the fact (we’ve yet to perfect the magic of manifesting amazing, hand-drawn typefaces live, but believe us when we say we’re working on it). Eileen’s newest book, Inferno (A Poet’s Novel) is available from OR Books.
And here then is an excerpt from Inferno (via EileenMyles.com).
http://vimeo.com/14155318
Finally, here’s a book trailer for Inferno.
