~ literary magazines and websites ~
Sharing poetry film festivals and exhibitions on the web: “Poems, Places & Soundscapes” points the way
All the work exhibited at the Poems, Places & Soundscapes audiopoetry and videopoetry exhibition is now on their website, for the benefit of anyone who couldn’t make it to Leicester in April. It would be great if more poetry-film screening events followed their lead. They’re even promising to post feedback and appreciation from the comments book and audio recording from an informal panel discussion held in conjunction with the exhibition.
As an exhibition rather than a festival, though, this may be something of a special case. Off-hand I can only think of three poetry film festivals whose websites archive a significant percentage of the films they’ve screened: Liberated Words (Bristol, UK), Co-Kisser (Minneapolis, US) and The Body Electric (Fort Collins, US). A more common approach is to share a list of the winning films, sometimes accompanied by screenshots. A few festivals have let their websites lapse altogether… and of course some never had a website to begin with, which is puzzling, to say the least.
It’s interesting to think about the different mind-sets that people bring to the poetry film genre(s). My own background as an online magazine editor and a poet for the page leads me to prioritize viewing videopoems/filmpoems on the web, because in part it’s so strongly parallel to the reader’s experience: it’s generally solitary, and one can go back and re-watch (re-read) as often as one likes. By contrast, people with a background in film tend to think in terms of festivals, theater runs and TV broadcasts: one-time or serial events, in connection with which the creators’ rights must be scrupulously protected. It’s to be expected, therefore, that to festival organizers, sharing screened works online must seem like a decidedly secondary affair, and potentially a bit of a hassle. But I would suggest that:
- you can reach a larger and more diverse audience online, and at the same time generate interest in attending future events by encouraging social-media sharing of the best films;
- many filmmakers these days are already uploading their works to video-hosting platforms as a matter of course, and in some cases only delay in posting them because film festival organizers have asked them to;
- sharing videos online is as easy as signing up for a free WordPress.com site, posting a Vimeo or YouTube link on a line by itself (thanks to the magic of oEmbed), and enabling Twitter and Facebook sharing icons at the bottom of the post.
There is a third, major stream of influence on videopoetry, however: video art, which strikes me as uniquely well-adapted to the web since the emphasis has always been on multiple plays for a maximum number of visitors. The difference I think lies in the quality of attention we bring to exhibitions in a physical as opposed to an online gallery. But in any case, the appeal of this approach is reflected in its near ubiquity now. Video screens have spread out of the art galleries and into all kinds of other museums and exhibition spaces, even leading to hybrid festival/exhibitions where multiple screens display suites of films in continuous loops. There are of course trade-offs involved in every decision on how to present filmic work, but given that videopoetry/filmpoetry is itself a hybrid genre, doesn’t it make sense to think in terms of multiple approaches to presentation, with no single outlet—web, festival, TV broadcast, art gallery—becoming the standard?
***
Returning to the Poems, Places & Soundscapes exhibition, I was interested to hear that it may have succeeded in doing something that a lot of poets claim as motivation for making videos of their work: reaching a broader audience than the usual poetry scenesters and academics. In an email, co-organizer Mark Goodwin wrote:
Overall the exhibition was received very well. There is a very positive and attentive review here: http://siobhanlogan.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/word-cubes-in-wild-place.html
The final exhibition gate-count was 1026. The Phoenix said that such a count was average to good for an exhibition in the Cube Gallery in April – they had estimated that the count would be around 700. So, considering this was essentially a poetry exhibition, I feel very pleased, and would suggest that for the presentation of poetry this is a long way above the average. […]
I saw quite a few folks who otherwise wouldn’t usually take time to engage with poetry, simply become poetically sucked into elsewhere via headphones! It really doesn’t get much better than that!
Escaping the writer’s closed loop: an interview with Rose Hunter
This is the 13th in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? This time we talk with Rose Hunter.
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
RH: I love it any time someone interprets my writing. I’m interested in what they see, especially if it’s something I haven’t seen, or if I disagree with their ideas. And there is something extra going on when work gets interpreted in a different form I think. For example I’ve been really impressed with what people have come up with as covers for my books, and how different they are to what I would have thought of. As writers we are in that closed loop in a sense, creating in the same medium more or less, as we are criticizing in. (Not that criticism isn’t also a creation of course.) But there isn’t that marked transfer, for example, that there is in writing about visual art or music, say. So I think it’s really interesting to look at these videos as (also) a form of engaged criticism in the sense of being an interpretation that shines a light on the work, in a different form. They’re also kind of translations, of course.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at The Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
RH: Just the one so far, which you did, Nic! I love it, and I love how different it is to what I had imagined. Having not considered the scene (in “You As Tunnel”) beyond what I saw in my head while writing it, I thought automatically of grainy images, maybe black and white or desaturated, flickering perhaps, a gritty realism. Which is not very original (for this poem). I loved your fresh, non-literal take, and the visual symbols you created with the planets and the headphoned and sunglassed woman. You got to a really emotionally true part of that experience. Of my experience. So that is just so interesting to me.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
RH: Yes, for sure I would do it again! Well, re advice I’m not sure, so I’ll just share my experience of submitting. When I was getting together the poems to send, I thought well first of all your guidelines say short, so that ruled out a lot of my current stuff in particular. Then I thought I would take them all out of my You As Poetry book in case that serial idea is interesting to anyone. So I got together five short ones from that book. It’s strange, I had a feeling that the one that you made a video out of might be the one most suitable actually. I don’t know why exactly, but I remember it passing through my mind, that probably someone will make that one. Maybe because it has a clearer narrative than the others and is more serious. And/or because it is very scene specific, and therefore provides more of a jumping-off point for someone else, whereas some of the others I sent are already “jumped-off” so to speak. If that makes sense. Anyway, not advice per se, just something I thought of.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
RH: No, not offhand. I love what you’re doing.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
RH: Well, I blogged about some of my experiences (specifically the issue of reading my work out loud, and my insecurity/phobia). That’s here, and also you reblogged it at Voice Alpha. Thanks for the experience and the questions, and I look forward to keeping in touch and seeing what you do next!
Blackbird magazine feature on 1921 poetry film Manhatta
I’ve been known to refer to the avant-garde film Manhatta by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, which includes lines from Walt Whitman, as the first true film poem, but that might not be entirely accurate, according to a feature on the film in the Spring 2014 issue of Blackbird.
Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler filmed Manhatta throughout 1920, after Sheeler approached Strand. The film consists of sixty-four shots, mainly of lower Manhattan, with intertitles consisting of lines (sometimes partial or revised) from the Whitman poems “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) and “Sparkles from the Wheel” (1871). It is unclear if the intertitles were integral to the filmmakers’ vision or if the Rialto imposed them.
That Strand and Sheeler hoped to explore the relationship (and the threshold) between photography and film, however, is clear. Manhatta’s shots involve a still camera focused on compositions of city architecture. While the larger elements are static, movement occurs in each shot, often from steam or people miniaturized by the cityscape.
Whether or not the intertitles were part of the original conceit, Manhatta, as it has come to us, presents tensions between text and image, as well as between movement and stillness in film, and between a city’s architecture and its inhabitants.
(Emphasis added.) Another fascinating detail of the original, 1921 screening: this silent film would not have gone unaccompanied, as a contemporary newspaper account makes clear:
Hugo Riesenfeld had the orchestra play all the old favorites like “Annie Rooney,” “Sidewalks of New York,” “She May Have Seen Better Days,” “My Mother Was a Lady,” etc. Two minutes more of it and there would have been community singing—a few intrepid souls were tuning up, as it was.
The feature includes a review from 1921 by Robert Allerton Parker, as well as an embed of the film itself.
Third Form and Swoon’s View columns feature poetry documentary projects
As usual, the first of May saw new columns by Erica Goss and Marc Neys in their respective columns in Connotation Press and Awkword Paper Cut, and as usual, both were well worth checking out. What was more unusual is that each columnist chose to focus on a documentary-stye poetry video. In her “Third Form” column, Goss interviewed the makers of a fascinating Pakistani film (which I included on Moving Poems several months ago), Danatum Passu, by Shehrbano Saiyid and Zoheb Veljee. I was especially struck by the fact that it all started by chance, which is how so much good art gets made, I think. And the technological challenges of filming and recording in the remote Hunza valley makes for an entertaining and inspiring story. Here’s a snippet:
“No one has ever recorded the people of the Hunza – at least their music – before,” Zoheb said. The video tells the story of a poem written by Hunza poet Shahid Akhtar, transformed into a song, and sung by the children of Passu and nearby small towns. “Danatum Passu” loosely translates to “Passu’s Open Field.”
The poet, Shahid Akhtar, writes in Wakhi, a language derived from ancient Persian. He worked in obscurity until now, and has never before been published. Zoheb and Shehrbano discovered him via a tip from a local cab driver. “There are few land lines and limited cell connectivity where Shahid lives,” Zoheb said. “I had to wait for him for hours after I arrived, drinking tea with his relatives.” Akhtar’s song, “Danatum Passu,” is the theme of the video, and carries a message of the danger of losing one’s culture. “It has a strong impact when children sing it,” Zoheb said.
“Danatum Passu” is part of a longer documentary that Shehrbano is working on about spirituality and music in this part of the world. “Theirs is a singing community: music and religion are wound together. The children gain confidence through music and performing. They have exposure to music through early religious training,” she said. “The story is about the musicians of Gojal, the socio-economic challenges they face in their daily lives, and in bringing their talent to a wider global audience. The documentary focuses on children – two in particular – with a love for music, and shows Zoheb’s process of discovering and recording music, poetry and artists. He is the thread that binds together the musicians, the unity and diversity of music across Gojal.” The documentary uses music to demonstrate the area’s people and their “deep sense of pride for their land and heritage,” especially in the face of repeated natural disasters; for example, the 2010 landslide that hit the Gojal village of Atabad.
Do read the rest.
Meanwhile, in his “Swoon’s View” column, Neys describes another documentary about kids, these ones in Britain: We Are Poets, by Alex Ramseyer-Bache and Daniel Lucchesi.
In the age of Facebook and digital communication, a remarkable group of British teenagers have chosen to define themselves through one of the most ancient, and potent, forms of culture out there – the spoken poem. WE ARE POETS intimately follows the lives and words of the UK’s multi-ethnic noughties generation as the Leeds Young Authors poetry team prepare for a transformational journey of a lifetime, from the red bricked back streets of inner city North England, to a stage in front of the White House at Brave New Voices – the world’s most prestigious poetry slam competition. Anyone tempted to dismiss today’s youth as politically apathetic better pay heed – here is electrifying evidence to the contrary.
Lucchesi and Ramseyer-Bache did a good job creating a narrative line in the film (the Leeds Young Authors performance in the competition creating the needed tension) but they kept the structure loose enough to give the characters and scenes time to develop and breathe.
The whole film is heartfelt and every performance is raw and attractive. If you don’t have any interest in spoken poetry, you should really try to see this film because it might open you up to a whole new view on this form of poetry. You’ll get sucked into it each time someone stands in front of the mic and belts out another beautiful stanza.
“A more open kind of collaboration”: an interview with Steve Klepetar
This is the 12th in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? Steve Klepetar is our 12th interviewee; both video remixes made so far with texts of his from the Poetry Storehouse were featured on Moving Poems this week.
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
SK: I find the entire concept of the Poetry Storehouse, with its invitation to multiple readings and remixes, thrilling. In the past, I have been fortunate to collaborate with the painter Bill Ellingson, my colleague at Saint Cloud State University, and with composer Richard Lavenda of Rice University, for whom I wrote a libretto and who set several of my poems to music. In those cases I worked closely with the other artists. The Poetry Storehouse allows a different kind of collaboration, one that is more open, and allows for surprises. There is something liberating about writing a poem, controlling all aspects of that process through final revisions, and then releasing it and relinquishing control while waiting to see what others might create with it.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at The Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
SK: So far two of my poems have been recorded by someone other than myself, and I love the results. That other voice is female and lightly carries an accent quite different from my own, still rather thick New York City sound, little changed from my many years in Minnesota. Those readings have stirred me with their clarity and loveliness. Two of my poems have been used in remixes, and I’ve enjoyed both a good deal. They are quite different, as are the poems they work with. One sets a short love poem about a woman working in a late fall garden against an image of Marilyn Monroe sashaying through a room, captivating male eyes as she goes. The juxtaposition strikes me as playfully erotic, funny and apt at the same time. The other works with a surreal poem about counting, settling up, paying existential debts, and the remix is wild. My favorite section involves a can of beans being opened, poured out onto a plate and eaten, a visual pun about bean counters perhaps?
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
SK: I would participate in this kind of experiment again in a heartbeat, with enthusiasm and pleasure. In fact, I submitted three poems, and did not wait very long before submitting three more. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to record my own readings, and to hear other readings and uses of my work — or work that has become mine and someone else’s. I would certainly advise other poets to participate, provided they could let go of individual ownership and would enjoy taking a risk.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
SK: My experience has been entirely positive, and I cannot think of anything I would change.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
SK: I should add that I have been following the Poetry Storehouse on Facebook, and have enjoyed various readings and remixes of other poets’ work with different readers and video artists. I have also garnered some lovely comments from friends old and new. There is something so democratic about this process, which allows fresh views and voices to mingle with one another.
The soundtrack as an element of film-poem creation: an interview with Marc Neys
Belgian filmmaker Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon, needs no introduction to fans of videopoetry. In an earlier interview in this series, he answered some general questions about his video remixing of poems from the Poetry Storehouse. Since Marc is also an electronic composer/musician and puts such a strong emphasis on the sound of the poetry he adapts to video, we wanted to question him in a bit more depth about the role of sound and music in his work.
Talk about how you view the soundtrack as an element of film-poem creation. Which comes first for you—the soundtrack or the images?
MN: I always consider my soundscapes the mortar of my videopoems. They pull the combination of the different building blocks together and hold them there. Very often they set the pace and lay down the main atmosphere of the whole video.
It doesn’t matter what came first (with me it’s sometimes the music, sometimes the images, sometimes the poem), but I do construct a soundtrack (with the reading) as a base before I start my editing, always—even if I had the images first. That provides me a timeline to work with.
Do you always build your own soundtrack or do you sometimes use tracks made by others? How do you decide whether to make your own or not?
MN: In 90 percent of my works I have built my own soundscapes, not that I consider myself a great composer—certainly not a musician in the strict sense of the word. But I just love making those.
I worked with others a few times. (Kathy McTavish is a great collaborator, but also Lunova Labs, Hanklebury and Sonologyst are a few of my SoundCloud friends I have worked with.)
Talk about the process of building a soundtrack. What comes first? How does the work process develop?
MN: That’s a hard one. I work organically. I love sounds, industrial as well as natural. I record sounds often—from crinkly paper and plastic to to coke cans, coffee and other household appliances, nature sounds, etc. I also use a collection of toy instruments to play with.
I collect my recordings just as I do with footage and images. I have a library of sounds and melodies that I use as building blocks. So it’s hard to say what comes first.
I start with a sound, add another, and another, shift, stretch, combine, add a fleeting melody or arrangement here and there… shift again… until, during that process, something happens. Some things suddenly ‘click’ and work together.
When dealing with a poem, I use the recording of the poem as one of the building blocks. Sometimes I build around the poem, sometimes I use (re-edited) existing tracks to lay the poem in.
What sort of hardware and software do you use to create your soundtracks? Have you always used these, or has there been a progression in the sophistication of your sound tools over the years?
MN: I use a combination of tools. I record my sounds analog (with an old tape recorder) as well a digitally (with a simple USB microphone, a Yeti) All my sounds are put into digital files using software by Magix (originally bought to transfer my old vinyl collection to MP3)
To create new arrangements and mix them with these soundfiles I also use Magix (Music Maker).
In MIDI I can ‘play’ any sequence of notes in any instrument, sound or style and combine it all in different tracks.
I would love to get my hands on some real (but old) instruments. I love the sound of anything ‘broken’. I would also love to get some better recording equipment (better mic’s, a new recorder…) but all those things cost money and take up space. (The space is there—one day my attic will be a full studio :-) —but the money isn’t.)
Give us an example of a soundtrack you created recently that you are very happy with – why did this one work out so well in your view? (If you can’t choose, how about that amazing soundtrack for ‘Sweet Tea’ by Eric Blanchard at the Storehouse..?)
MN: I wouldn’t use one If I didn’t believe it worked, but some work better than others I guess. It’s also in the ear of the viewer.
I kinda liked this one:
http://soundcloud.com/swoon_aka_marc_neys/bees-in-the-eaves-swoon-bill
Bees in the Eaves on SoundCloud
I loved the combination of that metallic-sounding percussion (for those who want to know: it’s the sound of an old wind-up music box, stretched and slowed down until it sounded like light metal plates) with the simple and light drone (a combination of MIDI sounds, wind—me blowing into the mic—and violins. Also slowed down). The harsh sounds (electronic) at the end come from this great online theremin I recently found, and I let them clash with some piano sounds I played on this online instrument and the metallic percussion of the intro.
But that’s the last time I let someone peek into the cooking pots! I myself, when hearing great soundscapes, don’t want to know where certain sounds come from or how and with what they were made.
What is your advice on soundtracks to film-makers who are just starting out?
MN: Listen, watch and learn. Experiment! Trial and error and keep the errors!
Twin-sister videopoetry collaborators featured at Connotation Press
For her Third Form column at Connotation Press this month, Erica Goss interviewed Cecelia and Justine Post, the artist and poet behind the videopoem/book trailer Beast (which I also shared at Moving Poems a few weeks back).
Poet Justine Post and her identical twin sister, artist Cecelia Post, collaborated on the video book trailer for Justine’s poetry collection Beast, just out from Augury Books. I spoke with Justine and Cecelia separately in February about the video, collaborations, and being twins in two creative, distinct yet overlapping disciplines.
“Many of our memories are the same since we were together all the time growing up. I often use ‘we’ instead of ‘me.’ We even share the same dreams. We live apart now but we are still very connected,” Justine told me. She is currently earning her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Houston, and her sister is a visual artist who runs Fowler arts collective in Brooklyn. According to Cecelia, “Justine’s poems articulate my visual work, and we understand our work better through each other.”
“I think poetry and the visual arts are well-fitted,” Justine said. “I always loved Cecelia’s video, ‘You Made Me (Sewing).’ I pushed my sister to finish it. The poem and the video tell different stories, but they enrich each other.” In the video, a young woman (played by Cecelia) sews herself into a nylon, flesh-colored bodysuit while the narrator (Justine) reads Justine’s poem “Self-Portrait as Beast.”
Transatlantic Poetry has a new home on the web
Transatlantic Poetry, the YouTube- and Google+ Hangouts-enabled online reading space for British and American poets founded last summer by Robert Peake, has a brand new website on its own URL, translatlanticpoetry.com. Please adjust your links and bookmarks. Peake writes,
Since our first broadcast in July, TRANSATLANTIC Poetry has featured 25 poets in nearly ten hours of poetry readings and conversations, garnering upwards of 2,200 views in 67 countries. We have done this with the help of five outstanding poetry broadcast partners, and are in conversation with several others. So, it only seems right that what began as a simple portal page on my personal website should now fledge to its own domain.
Part of the intent of the new site is to support partners with the tools they need to promote and host their own shows autonomously. From the beginning, my intention has been not only to take them fishing for world-class poetry programming, but also to teach them to fish in this big ocean of new technology. Giving the community its own dedicated website is therefore another step toward my assuming an increasing educational and supportive role in relation to these readings.
For now, the site is basically a copy of the old portal page. Over time, I expect it to expand, and hope to include new voices in the news section as partners step to the fore to promote their programming. We have excellent poets, excellent partners, and an excellent audience. Over time, we hope to have an excellent website as well.
It already looks pretty damn good to me.
Remixing the vocabulary of orchids: an interview with Diane Lockward
This is the tenth in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? Our tenth interview is with Diane Lockward (website – blog).
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
DL: Letting someone else work with my poem was not at all a difficult choice because I was familiar with The Poetry Storehouse project and had seen numerous examples of the work that was being done there. So I knew the poems were going to a good place and that if they did get picked up for a video I’d be happy with the result. (That’s kind of like submitting poems to journals, i.e., it’s important to be familiar with the journal before you submit or you might end up being sorry you submitted.)
The idea of seeing my work in another format was exciting, not intimidating. I’d previously had poems set to music, a few set to dance, and one sung by a choir of opera singers! So this video project struck me as a nice possibility for my work.
Certainly, I feel that I own my own work and would be less than pleased if someone just took it and used it without permission, but everything with The Poetry Storehouse is out in the open. I chose to submit, knowing that my poems might be used for a remix. The result is a true collaboration.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at The Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
DL: I was absolutely thrilled with Nic’s video interpretation of my poem “Orchids.” She got it just right, although I had no idea what “right” was until I saw what she’d done. Then I said, Oh yes, oh wow! That’s just right! The artwork selected, a group of still images by Adam Martinakis, is deliciously sexy and mysterious, much as orchids are, so the artwork seemed perfect for the poem. The music track and the pacing all came together just right, even though there’s not one single orchid pictured in the video. It’s really a new interpretation.
I consider myself to have been extremely lucky in that another filmmaker, Paul Broderick, selected the same poem and Nic’s reading of it for his own video interpretation. This second video is very different from Nic’s but also wonderful and full of sexiness and mystery—and lots of gorgeous orchids.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
DL: I absolutely would do this again. There’s no downside, no reason not to. This is one more way of spreading the word about poetry and of breathing new life into individual poems. My advice to other poets considering submitting is to choose poems that have a strong visual element and that appeal not just to the sense of sight but to the other senses as well. I suggest selecting fairly short poems as the video will include some lead-in time and some closing time for credits at the end. I read somewhere that the typical viewer won’t hang around to watch a video for more than two minutes, so the submitter should keep that in mind. Finally, I suggest lyric poems rather than narrative ones, poems that suggest, that are open to interpretation, poems with some layers.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
DL: No, I can’t think of a thing I’d suggest changing. Just keep on doing what you’re doing and continue to get the word out about what you’re doing.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
DL: It was fun from start to finish. I’d like to mention that I wrote the poem “Orchids” after reading The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession, by Susan Orlean. The book is about orchid hunting in Florida. I found the vocabulary of orchids fascinating and the lure of the hunt intriguing. I used some of the vocabulary in the poem and tried to capture the intrigue that orchids exude. So you could say that my poem is a sort of remix of the book. There’s also a movie based on the book, Adaptation—another kind of remix. So it pleases me to see yet one more incarnation for orchids.
“Anything I create belongs to anyone who wants it”: an interview with Bill Yarrow
This is the ninth in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? Our ninth interview is with Bill Yarrow.
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
BY: I don’t believe in private property (alas, I live in a world which does), and neither do I believe in private intellectual property. As far as I’m concerned, anything I create belongs (excluding rights reserved to any and all publishers of the material) to anyone who wants it, and everyone can, with attribution (and respecting publishers’ rights where applicable), use it in basically any way he or she likes.* So when I found out about The Poetry Storehouse, I was delighted because its philosophy of sharing and collaborative creativity is my philosophy as well.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at the Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
BY: When you send your work out into the world, you are releasing it, you are giving it away. It no longer belongs to you. You can’t control how people read it, react to it, interpret it, or, in the case of The Poetry Storehouse, reuse and remix it.
I am delighted that other artists found two of the poems I put in The Poetry Storehouse of enough interest and inspiration to fashion from them something of their own. Othniel Smith’s fashioned a literal rendition of my poem “Florid Psychosis.” I found his video remix an extremely witty and entertaining translation. Nic S. sought a poetic counterpart to my poem “Need” and created (adding her own brilliant reading of the poem as well as a beautifully haunting soundtrack) a mesmerizing video. I was enchanted by her remix. I especially liked that both creators found their material in the Internet Archive, Othniel using film clips from films in the Prelinger Archive, Nic using footage mostly from NASA archives.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
BY: In a heartbeat!
My advice to other poets? Submit your BEST work to The Poetry Storehouse in a heartbeat!
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
BY: I just write poems. I don’t have imagination for much else.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
BY: Yes, two things.
- The Poetry Storehouse accepts previously-published poems! Do you understand how important, how generous, and how amazing that is?
- Having your work available to further development and expression (personally, I see it as resurrection) is a great blessing. Being published on The Poetry Storehouse is a munificent opportunity. If you don’t take advantage of it, you have only yourself to blame.
*That is to say, a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode
“We relinquish control the moment we agree to publish our work”: an interview with Lennart Lundh
This is the eighth in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? Our eighth interview is with Lennart Lundh.
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
LL: Unless someone decides to edit my words, changing their meaning to suit different purposes, I’m not all that possessive or reactive. We relinquish control the moment we agree with the editor who wants to publish our work. Some presentations carry the words, and some drop them from a tall building. We take that chance. I confess I had a moment’s paternal concern (or perhaps culture shock) when Nic S. recorded one of my poems which was clearly written in a male voice, but only because mine is the sole voice that had read my work aloud up to that point. After a mental step back, I recognized the reading as excellent and life went on.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at the Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
LL: The recorded readings by Siddartha Beth Pierce and Nic have pleased me. They’re true to my intent in gathering the words, even with different choices in cadence and emphasis. The video and soundtrack choices in the remixes by Nic (Sandburg and Photograph), Marc Neys (Elegy), and Paul Broderick (also Elegy) represent somebody else’s visions of what the words mean, and I respect that — not because it’s what I signed on for, but because I don’t believe any piece of art means precisely the same thing to any two beholders (or to any single one across repeated meetings). The end result is fascinating to me in how the shifted colors and nuances of my words still work nicely through those different interpretations.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
LL: Hell, yes, I’d do this again, and hope to get the chance. It’d be lovely if repeat submissions became part of the policy. As for other writers, my advice would be to think in terms of the larger process, follow the Poetry Storehouse’s guidelines — and if in doubt or puzzled, ask Nic her opinion; she’s a pleasure to work with.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
LL: There’s nothing I’d change. This has been a great learning experience, and I’m pleased with how my words have been handled. It’s certainly broadened my horizons and offered more paths for me to follow as an artist.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
LL: Yeah: Thank you!
New at Awkword Paper Cut: videopoetry contest and a feature on Melissa Diem
Belgian videopoet Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon, is behind two features this month at the online magazine Awkword Paper Cut. His monthly column “Swoon’s View” focuses on two films by Irish poet and filmmaker Melissa Diem (also a favorite here at Moving Poems), balancing his critiques with Diem’s own notes about the making of each. It’s always interesting to hear someone who has achieved mastery both as a poet and as a filmmaker describe their creative process. Here, for example, is Diem discussing the second of the two films:
The poem, Appraisal, came about by exploring ideas of alienation and personal identity in relation to others through testing the physical and social world we find ourselves in and by testing the limits within the self. And of course these worlds in turn test us, sometimes relentlessly. It was this aspect of the poem that I wanted to explore in the poetry film. The initial idea came about organically when I was doing a quick frame rate test and Cayley (the little girl in the film) happened to be dancing about the room. We were only half paying attention to each. When I played back the footage I was moved by her expressions, the concentration playing across her face at certain times, her earnestness and innocence as she focused on positioning her small limbs in certain movements. It was that innocence against the great expansiveness of life rushing towards us, with its many tests, that I wanted to capture.
Also this month at Awkword Paper Cut, submissions are open for a unique writing contest: they’re looking for “500 words or less of prose, poetry, or flash fiction to match the video by award winning filmmaker Marc Neys (aka Swoon).”
The submission that best suits the video by Swoon will be selected by a panel of seven judges to be recorded, added to the video and showcased on Awkword Paper Cut including airplay on our Podcast! In addition, the winning submission will also receive membership to The Film Movement’s Film of the Month Club – Offering some of the finest independent filmmaking available! ALSO…Top selection along with runner ups will be featured on the Awkword Paper Cut Podcast!
Here’s the video:
Who wouldn’t want a chance to collaborate on a new videopoem (or videoessay, etc.) with Swoon? Submit by March 31. Details here and complete guidelines here.
