~ 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.
Accordionist by George Szirtes
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8115726312814139043&ei=9q4BS-2vAsfdlQfe5rCLBA
A poem by George Szirtes, translated into film by the London-based video production company Atticus Finch for a British television series called Poems on the Underground (not to be confused with the long-standing project of the same name that places poems “in tube carriages across London”).
The Language is Pronounced “Dead” by Christian Peet
Christian Peet refers to his Big American Trip videos as postcards, but they’re videopoetry as far as I’m concerned. The info at YouTube seems worth quoting in full:
Performed by Kim Gek Lin Short, directed and edited by James Short, based on the book BIG AMERICAN TRIP by Christian Peet. A diverse group of activists, actors, artists, musicians, writers, and otherwise lovely & concerned individuals from all over the US have collaborated with the author to create a polyvocal series of video readings / interpretations based on the book. Assuming the form of postcards authored by an “alien” of unknown nationality, ethnicity, and gender, addressing a variety of people and organizations (political figures, multinational corporations, people in public toilets, et al), BIG AMERICAN TRIP is a startling document of fear and loneliness in the 21st century U.S. Whether deconstructing road signs, a failed relationship, or the state of contemporary poetry, the voice(s) behind these texts is/are at once familiar and strange, determined to be free, and desperate to communicate with anyone who has ever felt at odds with the Language of a Nation.
Black Hole by Chris Woods
A piece by English poet Chris Woods, interpreted by Liam Dunlop for Comma Press’s “poem films.” It’s a little hard to understand on first listen, but you can read it at the Vimeo page.
The Country by Billy Collins
Another in the popular series of animated Billy Collins poems produced by JWT-NY. This one’s by Brady Baltezore. Purely as a cartoon, I think it might be the most satisfying of the lot.
For Poetry, this by Tony Curtis
Irish poet Tony Curtis reads his poem about the death of Delmore Schwartz in this animation by Tim Phelan.
Song to Belong by Nathan Jones
An innovative video by the Liverpool-based arts collective Mercy for a poem by their creative director, Nathan Jones.
Shiver & You Have Weather by Matthea Harvey
A piece by Matthea Harvey, delightfully illustrated by Joseph Kraemer for the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Everywhere series.
The Genius of the Crowd by Charles Bukowski
I’m not a big Charles Bukowski fan, but this is a well-done animation and deserves to be included. It was evidently a collaborative effort: Stefano Internullo, Lorenzo Miglietta, Emanuele Roccucci, Enrico Tanno, and Giacomo Tessitore are the names given in the credits, and they are all evidently from a Rome- and London-based design firm called Digital Bathroom. About this film, they say:
The concept was to make the same feeling of dirt, disullusione and inevitability of events in a short film. The pencil was chosen to give an intimate tone in the project.The video was made in a week, from concept to dvd, and the illustrations have this inherent urgency that makes the tract nervous.
The Long Street by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Paul May says, “A little super8 movie I shot in college. It’s based on the Ferlinghetti poem The Long Street.” The poem appeared in A Coney Island of the Mind, and may be read via Google Books here.
Walking Around by Pablo Neruda
“Perhaps one of Neruda’s more disturbing poems, Walking Around, comes to life through a mosaic of classic silent horror films featuring among others the great John Barrymore,” says Four Seasons Productions. Recitation and translation by Robert Bly.
There are a number of videos for this poem on YouTube, but I find all of them flawed in some way — it’s one of my favorite poems. The approach here is at least original.
Four Seasons are, by the way, mistaken about the date: it was published in 1935 in Residencia en Tierra II, not in 1971 as they claim. The title is in English in the original.
Woman’s Constancy by John Donne
Here’s a film by John Le Brocq called One Night Stand – Perfect End, in which the John Donne poem serves as a (mostly) internal monologue for the protagonist.
Woman’s Constancy
by John DonneNOW thou hast loved me one whole day,
To-morrow when thou leavest, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?
Or that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers’ contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?
Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could
Dispute, and conquer, if I would;
Which I abstain to do,
For by to-morrow I may think so too.
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Simpsons read “The Raven” (with help from James Earl Jones) in the third episode of the show’s second season (1990), “Treehouse of Horror I.”
