~ literary magazines and websites ~
Call for Entries: Atticus Review’s 2nd Annual Videopoem Contest
This week Atticus Review, one of the best online magazines to regularly feature videopoems, poetry films, and other multimedia literary works, announced that their second annual videopoem contest is open for submissions. Marc Neys AKA Swoon is the judge.
Atticus Review is happy to announce our second annual Videopoem Contest judged by Swoon. You can submit up to 3 videopoems. The cost for entry is $10. You may submit video files or links to Vimeo or YouTube pages. Please no submissions from former students or close acquaintances of the Contest Judge. The videopoems can be previously published.
First Prize: $250 & Publication
Second Prize: $50 & Publication
Third Prize: Publication
Deadline: January 12th, 20120
Winner Announced: January 31st, 2020
SUBMIT HERE
ABOUT THE JUDGE:
Marc Neys / Swoon / No One
No One is a composer, Swoon a video-artist, and both personas reside in Marc Neys from Belgium.
As one of the leading and most prolific figures in modern videopoetry he made videopoems for and with writers from all over the globe. He inspired new creators through his workshops and showcases on videopoetry.
He creates works with a focus on the purely poetic quality of the moving image in relation to the spoken or written poem. A sophisticated interplay of constructed soundscapes and images with personal reflections. Through a visual language and references to his everyday life, he creates a framework in which the poems come to a different development.
He released 3 CDs over the last two years and his videos have been selected and featured at festivals all over the world.
Links:
https://musicfromnoone.bandcamp.com/
https://vimeo.com/swoon
Marc follows Moving Poems’ own Marie Craven, who judged the contest last year. (Here are the results.) Marc wrote about his philosophy on judging poetry film contests after his experience on the ZEBRA jury in 2016.
Call for essays: Poetryfilm Magazine
Poetryfilm Magazine, the print and electronic annual comprised of articles first published at the Weimar-based Poetryfilmkanal website, has a new call-out for essays. This year’s theme: Das Kino der Poesie, The Cinema of Poetry.
Dear readers,
At the beginning of May Cinema, a new anthology about the history of cinema, was released by the publisher Elif. Gathering a wide range of texts, authors like José Oliver or Ulrike Almut Sandig express their fascination for cinema in a captivating way. The Poetryfilm Magazine’s new edition wants to address this matter, just in reverse: we would like to dig deeper into the fascination for poetry, addressing the filmmakers’ and directors’ point of view. This direction of looking at the relation between poetry and film seems to have gained significance lately.
We would be neglecting the influence that poetry had on the development of the visual language of film, if we reduced poetry film to a mere translation of a poem into a film. Since the beginning of the 20th century, filmmakers took inspiration from poets and poems, using them as an inspiration, guideline or challenge for creating moving image work.
This “Cinema of Poetry” – the title refers to an influential yet critical text from 1965 by Pier Paolo Pasolini – ranges from independent experimental film to commercially successful authors’ cinema productions, from Stan Brakhage to Jim Jarmusch.
In the endeavor to investigate film making and the film language from the perspective of poetry, directors as well as theoreticians pointed out the differences between the two art forms: the poeticity of written poetry does not in itself make the poetry film poetic. The latter gains its poetic value not only through the simple fact that a poem is part of it or that it refers to or illustrates a poem.
Poetry films can acquire poetic texts by referring closely to or operating far from the text they work with. Films which work close to the text reach their limits once the visual illustration of it seems to double its meaning, making the visuals seem redundant. Films which are inspired by poems lose touch when the reference to the text is too vague or completely absent and the filmmaker’s final aim seems solely to be aimed at creating a poetic visual language.
Our current edition can be understood as a plea to direct our attention to those films inspired by poetry which do not declare a 1:1 translation from the written text to the moving image as their goal. The poetry film is on a quest for its own poeticity. The poetic author’s cinema should be seen as a guidance in this field.
CALL FOR ESSAYS
For our next magazine’s edition, we are looking for contributions which might ask: Which impact do the language of film and author’s cinema aesthetics have on the poetry film? Which elements or strategies of using the visual language of film can be adapted to the recitation of a poem? What is the relation between filmic and poetic poeticity? In this regard, are there specific differences between live action and animated films to be found? When does the poetry film reach an original, independent form of poeticity and when is it just a sum of different poeticities? We also encourage studies that examine the importance of written poetry for parts of film history or a certain filmmaker/director and describe the complex transformation process(es) which happen while aquiring a poem in conjunction with moving image making.
We cordially invite any contributions in written form (10.000 characters long, including blanks, avoiding footnotes wherever possible) until Oct 31st.
We are very much looking forward to interesting and inspiring submissions!
Aline Helmcke, Guido Naschert
It appears as if they’ve already posted the first new essay in this vein: “From The Cinema of Poetry to The Poetry of Cinema” by none other than Tom Konyves. Check it out.
Ian Gibbins, Lucy English interviewed about their videopoems and poetry films
Two very different but equally intriguing poets were interviewed recently in wide-ranging discussions that included questions about their film and video projects. The March 2019 issue of an Australian, bi-annual online literary journal called StylusLit featured Ian Gibbins in conversation with Rosanna Licari, and on March 5 the blog HeadStuff.org posted ‘It was an experiment and I didn’t really know how people would react’ | Interview With Lucy English. Taken together, they present an interesting range of possibilities for how to translate poetry into film/video, and the backgrounds of the poets are a study in contrasts: Ian from the world of science, and Lucy straddling the creative writing and slam/performance divide. It’s hard to select just a couple of quotes, but these should give you a taste:
Constructing the videopoems can happen in many different ways. Sometimes, I will have pre-existing text and then I get an idea for a video sequence which I will then go out and acquire. Sometimes I have some images I’ve collected for no special reason, and then I’ll match them to a pre-existing poem. Sometimes I’ll come up with a concept and then write some text and get the video more or less simultaneously.
The audio part of the video is an important element too. I’ve been putting some of my poems to my own music for a long time now either as performance or as part of art installations. So for some videos, I already have the complete soundtrack. Otherwise, I’ll compose music or soundscapes to suit the project at hand. In general, I prefer to have the soundtrack first and then fit the video to it. This allows me to closely match the visual and aural rhythms of the piece.
I’ve always enjoyed experimenting with animation and some of my early video poems were entirely based on animated text. More recently, I’ve been learning advanced video compositing techniques and 3D animation which allow me to create totally new visual environments from a mixture of pre-existing images and computer-generated scenes or effects. This process is 100% analogous to the way I use found or sampled text in my poems.
Ian Gibbins in conversation with Rosanna Licari
*
What I have learned from making short films in collaboration is that there is a visual language which although I was aware of I hadn’t fully taken on board how this works. I was so used to looking at films I wasn’t analysing them. I have now got a deeper insight into how using images affects the viewer and how a film maker doesn’t need to ‘illustrate’ what is in the poem. The language of film isn’t necessarily narrative; we are shown a series of images and we ascribe ‘meaning’ to them. Obviously when writing a novel there is a narrative structure which I don’t need if I am writing a poem or making a poetry film. I have a visual imagination and I have really liked exploring the world of visual images in poetry film. It’s going to be interesting to see if any of this is transferred to my writing of fiction. Perhaps my prose will become more ‘poetic’ and less led by ‘story’!
‘It was an experiment and I didn’t really know how people would react’ | Interview With Lucy English
Poetry + Video: a new touring program of international shorts
This week, Australian filmmaker Marie Craven launched Poetry + Video,
a new touring program of shorts from around the world. This hour-long collection surveys diverse contemporary expressions of poetry in video. A wide range of approaches includes: screen adaptations of page poetry, prose poetry, animations, poetry from found text and media, poetic cinema, text-on-screen, and spoken word.
The program is designed to be highly portable, and easily obtainable on request to screening spaces in any location. It is available for small to medium-sized venues in Australia and other places during 2019/2020.
The premiere screening will be on 4 May, 2019 at Garden Gallery, Murwillumbah, Australia. See the program itinerary for more details, including the outstanding live poets performing on the night. If you are in the vicinity of Murwillumbah, we hope to see you there to celebrate the launch!
The website is admirably complete, with bios of authors and filmmakers as well as descriptions of each film, all indexed in the right-hand sidebar. There’s even a trailer. Check it out.
Judging the first Atticus Videopoetry Contest
Atticus Review is one of a small number of poetry journals worldwide that regularly features videopoetry as part of its online presence. Edited by David Olimpio, it has been published from the USA since 2010, gathering a large readership. Videos are featured in the ‘mixed media‘ section, edited by Matt Mullins, a maker of outstanding videopoems himself. Many interesting hybrids of poetry and video have appeared there since this kind of work became part of Atticus in 2011. Towards the end of 2018, the announcement was made that the journal would for the first time stage a videopoetry contest, and calls for entries went out internationally. I was honoured to be invited to judge via the internet, from where I live in Queensland, Australia.
By the submissions deadline in early December, 115 poetry videos from different parts of the world had been sent to us. It was a pleasure to view all the work. I found quality in most of it. In fact, as a film-maker myself, the rich creativity of my peers was generally humbling (in a good way). The diversity and innovation of subjects and approaches inspired me. So it was a challenge to select only four awarded videos. These were published in Atticus Review on 11 January, along with some commentary on each of them from me, and further information about the film-makers and poets involved. They are best viewed on their respective pages on the Atticus site. Follow the links below to watch and learn more.
Things I Found in the Hedge (first prize)
Kathryn L. Darnell (director, animation)
Lucy English (writer, voice)
USA / UK
Qué Es El Amor (What Is Love) (second prize)
Eduardo Yagüe (director)
Lucy English (writer)
Spain / UK
The Whole Speaks (third prize)
Caroline Rumley (director)
Nelms Creekmur (writer, voice)
USA
The Cleanest Hands (honourable mention)
Amy Bailey (director, writer, voice)
USA
The Atticus contest will continue to happen yearly, a welcome addition to the international calendar of events surrounding videopoetry. To be among the first to find out when the next call for submissions goes out, and to receive regular news of ongoing publications in the journal, subscribe to email notifications.
…..
I’m taking the opportunity now to share some more of the videos sent in to us. While they were not awarded in the contest, I find each of them uniquely inspired. They are presented here in the sequence I think is most conducive to viewing and appreciating each of them.
Things About Myself and the World That I Will and Won’t Explain to My Year-Old Daughter When She’s Older
https://youtu.be/KL4hh3_FQ1Y
Victor A. Guzman (director)
Rich Ferguson (writer, performer)
USA
Plasticnic
https://vimeo.com/267531514
Tisha Deb Pillai (animator)
Fiona Tinwei Lam (writer)
Canada
Glitter
https://vimeo.com/290947393
Jane Glennie (director, voice)
Lucy English (writer, voice)
UK
Sea Inside Me
https://youtu.be/bOzf7SQXqMM
Brendan Bonsack (director)
Amy Bodossian (writer, performer)
Australia
Dog Daze
https://vimeo.com/238368813
Ian Gibbins (writer, director, voice, music)
Australia
Song for Hellos and Goodbyes
https://vimeo.com/312567950
Tommy Becker (writer, director, music, performer)
USA
Shiver
https://youtu.be/lN0B2SEMTng
Mark Niehus (writer, director, music)
Australia
The Names of Trees
https://vimeo.com/306908806
Pam Falkenberg & Jack Cochran (directors)
Lucy English (writer, voice)
USA / UK
small lines on the great earth
https://youtu.be/kTwRJ8kTUlk
Edward O’Donnelly (director)
Malcolm Ritchie (writer, performer)
Scotland
My Trauma
(turn on ‘closed captions’ for subtitles)
https://youtu.be/7i8A-uUV8rA
Yves Bommenel (writer, director, performer)
France
There are yet more videos I would happily share from the contest submissions, by artists whose work I admire. Alas, too many for one article.
…..
I’ve now related my enthusiasm for the journal, the contest, the work received, the process of viewing and the honour of judging. So it may seem strange when I say that, in general, I’m not the biggest fan of competitions in the arts.
The arts can never be judged in a truly objective way, in the manner of sporting achievements, for example, that can be decided on measurable microseconds in a race. As I see it, the best we can do when adjudicating the arts is to be as impartial as possible in applying our personal preferences. Our individual sensibilities will have been formed from a combination of direct experiences in life, what we have learned in formal and informal cultural and educational settings, our raw responses to other work as audience members over time, and possibly our experience of participating in the creation process itself, including philosophies and methods we have developed. We will likely be affected by how these influences come together at the particular time when we are making our decisions, which might be different in another month, year or decade. Other factors might feed into this process, whether we are judges in a competition, or simply making personal choices about what to watch and recommend as the ‘best’. There’s nothing absolute in the arts. In short, as I see it, the reception of work in this arena is essentially subjective.
As an artist, and as someone who has been a teacher, I am concerned with the psychological, emotional, and ego ramifications of ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ in relation to creativity (when I say ‘artist’ in this context, I mean film-maker and/or poet). Competitions by their nature focus most attention and reward on the winners. Although we might not want to admit it, the much greater number of participating artists can be left feeling disappointed and lacking to varying degrees. Depending on stage of experience as artists, along with levels of personal and creative development, this may have an impact on ability to function in our work. In some cases, it can lead to artistic growth and more satisfying outcomes. In others, it is simply discouraging of an artist’s practice. Perhaps my attitude is overly maternal in relation to adult people responsible for their own response to challenges. On the other hand, the arts are an area where personal vulnerabilities are often put on the line in a rather naked way, and so the person behind the work may well be more vulnerable in ability to process a perceived ‘failure’. In an era when mental illness has risen to epidemic proportions, coupled with higher rates of this long known to exist in the arts, I think giving some consideration to these issues is warranted.
Competitions in the arts might also be seen in some ways as another expression of competition in capitalism. This makes me wonder: do we really want to approach the arts as survival of the fittest, or else as a kind of lottery? If we are idealistic, there might be some discomfort in approaching the arts in this manner, especially if political resistance or advocacy form any part of the motivation for being involved.
Then there is the issue of entry fees for competitions. For some time I refused to enter any of my work in events that charged a fee to submit. Like so many artists, I have lived in relative poverty my whole life, and have already freely invested time, talent, passion, skill, and whatever limited resources I have available, to produce the work. Then again, I know that there are significant expenses involved in staging competitions as well, and that organisers are usually giving a great deal of their time for free, as well as their energy, dedication, passion and skills (but watch out for the profit-making motives of some events). Still, wherever possible, I think it would be best to avoid entry fees. My personal view is that competitions don’t need to offer cash prizes. Without these, entry fees may not be needed, or kept to a bare minimum. I believe the honour and attention focused on winning works is ultimately the most valuable and practical reward.
Having said all that, I’m not really ‘against’ competitions. The shades of ambivalence I feel are mostly about idealism versus practical realities on the ground. While I have some hesitations, I recognise the value of competitions for generating excitement in artists and audiences, and for focusing and growing an artistic culture. Ultimately, the more ways to highlight creative work we love, the better.
In the specific case of videopoetry competitions, my personal experience has been positive in almost all instances of submitting, and of having work celebrated or declined. Rejection letters have been respectful, sometimes even encouraging. I find the videopoetry community to be unusually supportive of artists on the whole. But from past experience on the broader film festival circuit, and what I know of other artists’ experiences, this is not always the case in the wider world of the arts, where personal creative work can be treated much more like pure commodity. So I’m offering what I’ve said here as food for thought about the staging of arts competitions in general, and to encourage ongoing care in the treatment of artists and their work.
…..
Videopoetry appears to be ever-growing, with artists from many nations now engaged in the practice, and a collective body of work increasingly exhibited and appreciated worldwide. This hybrid of poetry and cinema (including all its various generic labels), has roots going back a long way in film history, especially in the areas of the experimental and avant garde. As Helen Dewbery has suggested in a recent article, its roots may be more ancient still, if we think of the genre as simply one of the myriad contemporary expressions of poetry itself. In this line of thinking, it might be said that poetry began as an oral tradition and has adapted to new technologies and approaches throughout history. Long may this fine lineage continue, in any of the old and new forms the future promises.
The Book of Hours is complete in web form and published in tree-flesh media
I’ve been remiss in mentioning that Lucy English’s unique Book of Hours, an online calendar of poetry films made in collaboration with video artists and filmmakers from around the world, is at last complete — and worth many hours of exploration. Not only that, but there’s a printed version of the texts now out from Burning Eye Books, a terrific UK publisher specializing in spoken word poets. Many of the most effective poems in the book emerged during the process of collaboration, making this a unique milestone in the history of filmpoem innovation comparable in stature to the poetry films of Tony Harrison.
To whet your appetite further, there’s a new review of the book by poet and novelist Deborah Harvey over at Poetry Film Live.
It’s an ingenious idea – a calendar of poems that re-imagine the illustrated psalter of mediaeval literature for a secular, 21st century readership/audience. Lucy is supported in this endeavour by her extensive knowledge of the both fields, coupled with a poetic voice that is especially well suited to the demands of poetry film.
For all that there are mentions of stained glass, doom paintings, sun dials and psalmicly panting sheep, the subject-matter of the poems is resolutely secular. Churches are places to be visited in a spirit of curiosity rather than devotion, saints are grey and made of lead, and no miracles happen at wells that are simply oozy patches in stony holes. Similarly, the lives encapsulated in the poems are not ones of monastic contemplation. The poems accommodate a sizeable cast of friends, ex-lovers, family members, former inhabitants of holiday cottages, personifications of the seasons, and animals, and include arrivals from and departures for destinations far beyond an anchorite’s cell.
And yet the sacred is here, in the poet’s tender attention to moments snagged in the memory, rendering them dream-like, and magnified by their lifting up as an offering to the reader. This is the poetry of non sequiturs, missed opportunities, small losses that loom large, the lives we don’t lead […]
Read the rest. And if you see an announcement of a screening of the project in your area, don’t miss it!
Wild Whispers Poetry Film Project debuts on the web
Multi-author collaborations are relatively rare in modern poetry culture — one of the significant ways in which videopoetry and filmpoetry deviate from established norms. With poetry films, collaboration is if anything more common than one-person productions. And this collaborative angle is nowhere more evident than in the new website for the Wild Whispers Poetry Film Project (whose call-out we shared here two years ago). The result feels like the audiovisual equivalent of renga-meets-exquisite corpse.
Wild Whispers is an international film poetry project that started with one poem and led to 15 versions in 12 languages and 12 poetry films.
The films, in different languages, were all ‘whispered’ from the previous one. The project travelled from England to India, Australia, Taiwan, France, South Africa, the Netherlands, Sweden, Wales and the USA, creating poetry films in English, Malayalam, Chinese, French, Afrikaans, Dutch, American Sign Language, Navajo, Spanish, and Welsh.
Started by the UK poet Chaucer Cameron of Elephant’s Footprint Film Poetry and Poetry Film Live, the project drew inspiration from recent political events and more, as Cameron explains:
[…] My own desire to connect was both personal and political and certainly focused on the bigger picture. I am most passionate about film poetry, and consider it to be the perfect vehicle for exciting collaborations and for fostering strong, positive connections between countries and across the world.
One of the initial inspirations behind the Wild Whispers project was a single image of a Buryat Shaman performing a libation – a ritual pouring of liquid, milk or grains, as an offering to the gods or spirits in memory of the dead. When I discovered this image I was also in the process of writing a vision statement for Elephant’s Footprint and came across an article by visual artist Mary Russell and author Gerard Wozek, the collaborative duo of “Mercury in Motion”. I found we shared a belief that visual and literary art carry spiritual, political, and sociological messages and that visual poetry is a physical manifestation of what it means to be a human being engaged in seeking community, and that the medium of film poetry is intrinsically alchemic—magic.
The call-out to poets, translators and poetry filmmakers to be involved in Wild Whispers has resulted in just that: magic.
Read the rest, then watch the films. (Disclaimer: one of them is mine.)
Atticus Review Videopoem Contest deadline approaches
Just a reminder for all my fellow procrastinators that the deadline for the Atticus Review‘s first annual videopoem contest is coming up on December 3. Atticus Review is one of the few major online literary magazines to make room for multimedia work over the years, and the judge for this first contest, the Australian experimental filmmaker Marie Craven, is one of the most original innovators in the genre, so you don’t want to miss this opportunity! Submit here.
Visible Poetry Project 2019: filmmaker applications and poetry submissions extended till Nov 10
The New York-based Visible Poetry Project will once again be releasing 30 poetry films—one a day—in April, and for the third year in a row, their original call somehow slipped under my radar. (This is what happens when sites don’t have a blog I can subscribe to.) But when I finally remembered to go look at their website just now, I noticed that the deadline for both poetry submissions and filmmaker applications are still open… for five more days! Here’s what they say about the latter:
UPDATE: The deadline for applications has been extended to November 10, 2018!
Applications for the Visible Poetry Project 2019 series open on September 10, 2018 and close on October 31, 2018.
The Visible Poetry Project strives to emphasize the diversity of the global film community, and so encourage you to apply regardless of background or circumstance. Whether filmmaking is your hobby, profession, private outlet, or public expression, your work is welcome.
Within your application, please provide a reel and/or links to previous films you’ve created. All work samples must be original, and you must be one of the main contributors. You may submit up to three links. We recommend submitting samples that you believe to be representative of the greater styles and themes in your work. If you are accepted, this will help inform which poet you may get paired with.
You may apply as part of a team (up to two filmmakers). If you are applying as part of a team, please submit only one application. Please include links to reels for both collaborators, and send an email to visiblepoetryproject@gmail.com, CC’ing your co-director.
If you are a producer, director of photography, or editor, and are interested in being involved in the 2019 series, please email visiblepoetryproject@gmail.com.
Click through for the application form. (Here’s the poetry submission form.)
This project has yielded some really high-quality work so far in a wide range of styles, so if you’re at all ambitious about making poetry films, why not throw your hat in the ring?
Call for work: The Atticus Review Videopoem Contest
Atticus Review, one of the few major online literary magazines to consistently make room for poetry film and other mixed media work, this week announced a new videopoem contest.
Atticus Review is happy to announce our first annual Videopoem Contest judged by Marie Craven. You can submit up to 3 videopoems. The cost for entry is $15. You may submit video files or links to Vimeo or YouTube pages. Please no submissions from former students or close acquaintances of the Contest Judge. The videopoems can be previously published.
First Prize: $300
Second Prize: $75
Third Prize: $25Deadline: December 3rd, 2018 Winner Announced: January 7th, 2019
A note about gifting of contest fees: We know contests can get expensive for writers. That’s why we’ve added ways for friends, family, or any kind of generous benefactor (we won’t ask questions!) to gift you a contest entry. A sponsor can make a one-time gift to you for your submission fee, or they can become a Patreon Supporter at the “Sustainer” level or above and then get in touch with us to request a free contest entry for a friend and send us your name and email address. Also, while we’re talking about Patreon, you can become a Patreon Supporter at the “Sustainer” level or above and you will be able to submit to any current or future Atticus Review videopoem contest for free as long as you remain a supporter. Also, you’d be helping us publish great writing and art.
About the judge: Marie Craven began making experimental and narrative shorts in the mid 1980s, working with super 8, 16mm and 35mm film formats. During the 1990s and into the 2000s her work was widely screened and awarded at major international film festivals. Since 2007, she has been working in digital media, mostly via internet collaboration with artists and musicians around the world. A central focus on video poetry began in 2014, and since that time she has made more than 60 videos with many poets from different countries. Her video poetry has since been screened at most of the film poetry festivals internationally, and featured in online journals. Over the decades, she has also been involved in teaching, seminars, reviewing and festival programming. Her recent videos can be found at http://vimeo.com/mariecraven
I like the idea of gifting someone else’s entry fee. And of course I’m chuffed to see such a good poetry filmmaker acting as judge.
Tom Konyves, Kristian Pedersen and Nicholas Bertini at Poetryfilmkanal
Poetryfilmkanal, the Weimar-based website that also produces an annual print Poetry Film Magazine, has posted three new essays in English over the past month. First, the Italian author and animator Nicholas Bertini described the making of his experimental work in New Alphabets:
Encoding and decoding signs and shapes is the main focus of the research behind my work. It’s legitimate to say that communication is based on an alphabet, or better many alphabets, that lead back to writing. But what happens if, instead of a blank sheet having width and height, we have one including the dimension of time? Paradoxically a blank sheet that erases the hic et nunc of a mark, or that can contain hundreds or thousands.
Here shapes and signs, besides appearing in their two-dimensionality can mutate over time, allowing a level of communication that writing as we know it can not transmit. That’s what interests me in my research: the possibility to communicate through signs that can be decoded as new alphabets, thus including movement as part of the alphabet, like a sign or word.
In this process traditional writing is not left aside, there’s no intention to discredit or surpass it. Instead I find myself mixing this two languages, morphing and fusing them together.
On September 3, the prominent videopoet and theorist Tom Konyves weighed in with some Talking Points, which are divided into three sections: “Terms of service”; “Illustration and the function of the image”; and “Performance and the function of the poet’s body on screen”. Konyves’ points are well illustrated with embedded videos. I thought his consideration of literal interpretation in poetry film vs. the more allusive approach of videopoetry proper was especially interesting:
To convey a clear, unambiguous meaning of a pre-existing poem, the most effective visual approach an artist can take is a literal interpretation. While it presents a coherent relationship between word and image, any content on the image-track that is a direct representation of key words in the poem is bound to alert the viewer to a world view that values order, harmony and singular meanings.
Interviewed for BBC’s Sunday Feature: Crossing the Border – Poetry and Film, Alastair Cook commented on his 2013 filmpoem, Lifted, based on the poet Jo Bell’s experience at Lock 30 of the Trent & Mersey Canal, one of a series of canal-themed poems commissioned by the Canal & River Trust: »There is a literalness in this … I am visually illustrating what she is talking about,« which he then qualifies with »but very quietly, very much in the background.« In the background of the work, we can hear Jo Bell’s voice reciting the poem. It is accompanied by a series of (well-composed) shots at Lock 30: the canal, the water, the lock gates closing, close-up of the water, back to the lock gate, back to the water, extreme close-up of the lock gate, back to water, an extreme close-up tilt on the gate, back to water, back to the canal … This series of »establishing« shots does indeed convey the background to Bell’s poem. The shots say simply, quietly, Here. Here is where the poet gathered her observations and subsequently wrote the poem. Without ambiguity, the images connect the viewer with the spatial references in the poem. Jo Bell’s poem comes through unchanged, loud and clear. You have only to listen.
On the other hand, the world view revealed through a »metaphorical lens« cannot accept a coherent, orderly universe. Its approach takes for its subject the critique of conventional word-image associations, organizing its elements – in this genre by enlisting the image-track as the »dominant« element – to make associations surprising and »strange«, to be open to multiple interpretations of these associations and, most importantly, to use the unstable nature of language (the ambiguities in the text) to help us experience a videopoem in a new, playful, indirect way.
And most recently, the Norwegian animator Kristian Pedersen has a craft essay up, Graphic listening — “Visualizing The Bøyg: About my tribute to Oskar Fischingers concept of visual music in my film Bøygen (2016).” Pedersen has always been one of my favorite poetry animators, so it was great to read — and see, thanks to the copious illustrations — where one particular animation of his came from.
When making films tied to poetry or prose, I find abstraction to be a successful vessel. Like music, it can connect directly to emotion, and facilitate individual experience. I always turn to history of visual music – these works of art, some of them close to a century old, still stand as monuments of inspiration. The masters of abstract cinema paved such a vast area of experimentation, and stunningly beautiful works, there is always something new to learn from them. In every case, I always come back to Oskar Fischinger (1900–1967).*
This was especially significant with my visual music short Bøygen of 2016: From deep in the misty Norwegian mountains comes the unnerving sense of numbing apathy. This is The Boyg, in old Norwegian folklore known as a large, invisible serpent that seem to surround you and suggests you avoid challenges. Made famous by playwright Henrik Ibsen, the Boyg is today a term for a formless obstacle; lack of initiative, creeping anxiety or a problem difficult to untangle.
To express an abstract idea with an abstract visual language was a labyrinth of trial and error. But a successful marriage of sound and image can open a doorway directly into the synapses. Research for this project covered both ancient Norwegian folklore and film history. The starting point was a journey to the Center of Visual Music in February 2015.
Fascinating stuff. Do click through and read all three essays.
Flicker film, and a review of the world’s first documentary on videopoetry
Two new English-language articles have recently been published in the online version of Poetryfilm Magazine, the bilingual journal embedded in the Weimar-based Poetryfilmkanal website and released annually in a print and PDF version. UK artist and typographer Jane Glennie, a couple of whose videos I’ve shared at Moving Poems, has an essay titled Flicker film and the videopoem:
A ›flicker film‹, as I have made them and understand them thus far, consists not of moving image footage but of a series of still images presented at around 24 or 25 per second. It could be described as an extremely rapid slideshow. Cinema film is also, of course, still images projected at 24 frames per second, but with the intention of transforming frames into seamless movement, whereas a flicker film disrupts the seamless with disparate frames.
Glennie gives a brief history of the technique, which dates back to 1966, then talks about its relevance today, and to her own practice:
Flicker film can also be perceived as reflective upon the broader culture of the online environment where so much time is now spent. Indeed, Parker’s film was derived from her Instagram feed. Image usage, sophistication and relevance continues to grow rapidly. In 2014, two thousand million photos were shared per day across five key social media platforms, rising to over three thousand million in 2015. Upcoming generations are expected to communicate with images even more than at present (happily videopoetry is part of this ever growing online scene). Flicker film can have instant visual impact in a short length and can capture attention in the brief, ephemeral encounters of social media. For instance, my film Being and being empty (2018) was selected for the world’s first Instagram Poetry exhibition at the National Poetry Library in London. But flicker film also offers challenges to the viewer: what can be perceived each time it is viewed? What images or messages might have entered the subconscious? If I continue to view the film – can I perceive more through practice or ›training myself‹ or do I enter a visual fatigue and ›see‹ less and less? A flicker film can be seen as a test of endurance and the brain’s ability to digest images at speed and through the subconscious. If we are to continue to consume images at ever greater volumes and pace, the flicker film begs the question – what are the limits that human cognition can take? Is there a point at which the message and/or the poetic is lost in the frenzy? I am interested in how the fleeting can be imprinted in the mind and create an overall impression through repetition, the subliminal message, and/or the blurring of the distinctions between discrete elements.
Fascinating stuff. Do go read the whole thing.
The other article was my own, published just yesterday: ›Versogramas‹ and the Possibilities for Videopoetry.
Versogramas, the 2017 film directed by Belén Montero, is apparently the world’s first documentary about videopoetry, and as such, it’s likely that viewers may come to it with heightened expectations which will not be fulfilled. Taken on its own terms, however, I found it a delightful romp with a few glaring defects. It has great potential as a teaching aid in the poetry or film classroom—especially if, as I hope, its official web release is accompanied by links to all the videos and videopoets in the film. It’s also available as part of a bookDVD from Editorial Galaxia (which I have not seen).
Quoting oneself is always a bit awkward, but let me skip over the snarky bit and give one more excerpt:
It’s impressive that the producers can focus on just one part of the world—Spain, especially the Galician region—add a handful of filmmakers and videopoets from outside that region, and still end up with a highly varied, complete-feeling snapshot of the state of videopoetry in the 21st century. […] I liked the rootedness of this approach, and I enjoyed getting a sense of how Spanish and Galician poets and artists have been working with videopoesía in recent years.
And for all its playing around with definitions, Versogramas does not end up providing some kind of unified field theory of videopoetry, thank God. (Though it does give Konyves the last word, as is fitting.) What it does, and does very well, is present us with a series of possibilities: this is what videopoetry might be (the narrative sections); this is what a bunch of actual practitioners have found it to be (the interviews).
I had, of course, much more to say than that. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have seen the documentary, and if and when it becomes generally available online, I’ll be sure to share the link here.
