~ News and Views ~
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Scalia’s Poetry Slam”
View on Vimeo or at Daily Kos (which includes the text of the found poem).
Scalia’s Poetry Slam
Animation by Mark Flore
2015
For many years I made a living poking fun at people. And why not? There was money to be made and I was good at it. I’m still pretty good at it but now I’m a bit more reluctant to parade my sarcasm and wit for fear of backlash. There are those who misinterpret humor, sarcasm, satire, etc., but as the saying goes, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.
That being said, this week’s (bi-monthly) review is an animation that pokes fun at Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia—as well as the poetry community. The creator Mark Flore takes a political stand and combines it with slam poetry. The result is hilarious.
Scalia’s Poetry Slam is well done, unpretentious and fun. It reminds me of how unassuming animation on TV used to be when I was a kid. Aside from the process being labor intensive (artists would hand-draw every movement), I assume there was a time factor involved as well. The cartoons were created for network television and clients can be demanding. The artists had to get the message across using a minimal amount of movement. This applied to some animation houses but not all (Disney had larger teams and produced multiple projects). Much like the cartoons of yesteryear, this one gets the point across without all the bells and whistles. I like to compare it to the style of humor in a New Yorker cartoon: it’s the old less-is-more theory. The piece relies on simplicity to carry the joke. Scalia’s Poetry Slam does a good job in embracing irony and helps put a smile on one’s face, reminding us not to take ourselves too seriously.
Call for Submissions: 4th International Video Poetry/Film Poetry Festival in Athens
The +Institute [for Experimental Arts] and Void Network have just issued a call for the 4th International Video Poetry Festival 2015, linking to guidelines which refer to it as the International Film Poetry Festival. Regardless of which name you use, the deadline for submissions is November 20, and this will be their fourth year of putting on an event which stands out from the crowd of international videopoetry/poetry film festivals for its street-wise style and anarchist philosophy:
The yearly International Video Poetry Festival 2015 will be held for fourth time in Greece in Athens. Approximately 2000 people attended the festival last years
There will be two different zones of the festival. The first zone will include video poems, visual poems, short film poems and cinematic poetry by artists from all over the world (America, Asia, Europe, Africa). The second zone will include cross-platform collaborations of sound producers and music groups with poets and visual artists in live improvisations.
The International Video Poetry Festival 2015 attempts to create an open public space for the creative expression of all tendencies and streams of contemporary visual poetry.
It is very important to notice that this festival is a part of the counter-culture activities of Void Network and + the Institute [for Experimental Arts] and will be non-sponsored, free entrance, non commercial and non profit event. The festival will cover the costs (2000 posters, 15.000 flyers, high quality technical equipment e.t.c.) from the incomes of the bar of the festival.All the participating artists and the organizing groups will participate voluntary to the festival.
Void Network started organizing multi media poetry nights in 1990. Void Network and +the Institute [for Experimental Arts] believe that multi media Poetry Nights and Video Poetry shows can vibrate in the heart of Metropolis, bring new audiences in contact with contemporary poetry and open new creative dimensions for this ancient art. To achieve this, we respect the aspirations and the objectives of the artists, create high quality self organized exhibition areas and show rooms, we work with professional technicians and we offer meeting points and fields of expression for artists and people that tend to stand antagonistically to the mainstream culture.
Click through for links to photos from past years as well as the guidelines.
Call for submissions: Motionpoems’ Big Bridges Film Festival
Five finalist poems have been selected for Motionpoems’ Big Bridges project, and now a second competition has been announced, this time to select films made from three of those poems. The deadline is August 10, so you don’t have very much time. Links to the poems and full details are on the Motionpoems website. I’ll quote the description from their email newsletter, which was more succinct:
CALL FOR FILMS: $2500 in Prizes
Motionpoems invites filmmakers to create short films designed to inspire engineers, architects, and designers with ideas for the future of big bridges. America’s bridges are failing, and Target Studio at the Weisman Art Museum of the University of Minnesota is stirring public conversation by mounting a multidisciplinary exhibit that dreams big about big bridges. A national poetry contest has resulted in five finalist poems on this theme; we’re making three of those poems available to develop into your own short film; you could come away with a share of $2500 in awards. The deadline is August 10, 2015. Click here to read finalist poems, read the guidelines and enter the contest.
The Big Bridges Film Festival will be held on September 30, 2015 at the University of Minnesota.
Stefanie Orphal on the aural dimension of poetry film
German literary scholar Stefanie Orphal, author of Poesiefilm: Lyrik im audiovisuellen Medium [Poetry Film: Poetry in the Audiovisual Medium], has an essay up at Poetryfilmkanal on “The fascination of hearing poetry films.” Here’s an excerpt:
In recent years there has been an increasing awareness of matters of sound and acoustics, in film studies as well as in other areas. Our understanding of poetry film can benefit a lot from this development. The principal point that we can take from this research is this: Not just on the level of signs, in terms of text-image-relations, but on the level of perception itself sound and image are fused into something completely new, into a third thing that is more than the addition of both elements. While experimental film maker Maya Deren meditated on this effect as early as 1953 on a podium on poetry and the film, contemporary scholars like film theorist Michel Chion have systematically laid out how what we hear, shapes what we believe only to see in the audiovisual experience.
One of Chion’s central terms is ›synchresis‹, by which he describes the psychophysiological phenomenon that lets us attribute discrete events that we see and hear simultaneously to the same source, e. g. the dubbed voice to the actor on screen. Such an effect – also called cross-modal association – is subtly operative in the perception of all audio-film, but it is crucial to the experience of poems in an audiovisual context, because voice over poems are often clearly not part of a diegetic world and what we hear is set apart from what we see creating counterpoint and contrast. But even in the most modernist and experimental efforts of counterpoint or of contrasting sound-image-relations, in our perception both sound and image are always drawn together, contaminating each other as Michel Chion puts it. The effect of this play of forces can be intriguing. What is fascinating about poetry film, to me, is the stunning effect when such a complex combination of elements brings about something new, the impression that something is revealed in the image or in the poem.
Flick the Switch: The Making of “Homeopathy”
When I shared Lori Ersolmaz’s film Homeopathy on Monday, she got in touch and offered to write up some process notes. The resulting essay is of exceptional interest, I think, in showing just how closely a poetry-filmmaker can identify with a text—and how much she can make the resulting filmpoem or videopoem her own. —Dave Bonta
This filmpoem is a very personal endeavor, reflecting my feelings and emotions while I was undergoing treatment for an ovarian mass. From the time I received the head-spinning news, I spent most of my time trying to gather as much information as possible from the Internet, and spoke with friends who had been through a similar situation. At the onset of my symptoms I found myself awake at 2:00 AM experimenting with video in a darkened hotel room lit only by the TV. The footage is quite metaphoric in numerous ways. My conversations with doctors, family, and friends were often chaotic and distressing at best. I quickly found that my primary care doctor’s bedside manner didn’t mesh well with me because she insisted that I had ovarian cancer, while my oncologist surgeon and gynecologist gave me somewhat better odds.
While in despair and feeling incredibly uncreative, I searched for an appropriate poem on The Poetry Storehouse to re-create my feelings with visual storytelling. I didn’t have to look very far. Nina Corwin’s poem “Homeopathy” had just been uploaded, and I downloaded it along with the poet’s narration, which I used in my final piece. Corwin writes in “Homeopathy,” “We can play in the dark” and ironically this was represented with my hotel footage before I even read her poem.
I sat on the poem for several months, but during that time I made notes of additional visuals needed, filmed more and searched on Pond 5 and Archive.org for horror movies and nuclear bombings. While I edited the first minute or two prior to my surgery, it was largely left unfinished until a month after my recovery.
This is my longest filmpoem, and I purposely wanted it that way. Although I only had to wait two and half months to hear whether I had cancer or not, it felt like an eternity. Even though I kept a positive attitude, every waking moment I considered how my health issue would change my life and those around me forever. It was nothing short of gut-wrenching, and felt like it would never end. When I awoke from the five hour surgical ordeal and heard the good news from my husband—benign—indeed, as Homeopathy reveals, I felt incredibly lucky to be able to “play flick the switch…”
The film uses linear imagery that reflects the known yet unknown, and darting screen movements resemble the chaos and lack of control I felt. In the end I’m left with five new linear scars as a reminder of my experience.
As for the music, I hadn’t realized it, but on an earlier visit to Pond 5 I downloaded the free Chopin Sonata No. 2 in B-flat music file. The music was familiar to me, and I didn’t know why, but it hit the somber note of my feelings. Slow. Deliberate. Making peace with what could be next. Little did I know until I Googled it that this is Chopin’s well-known Funeral March!
I couldn’t be happier to have had access to Nina Corwin’s fine poem, and the process provided me with recovery and closure, yet helped me to document my emotions before, during and after a traumatic life event.
[UPDATE] I asked Nina Corwin if she would be willing to share a bit about the composition of the poem and her reaction to my filmpoem. This is what she wrote:
Homeopathy started with a line from an e-mail to a poet friend coming in from out-of-town. A riff on “playing” sick associated playing hooky, playing doctor and the healing powers of child’s play. Once the homeopathic references suggested themselves, the poem found its name.
This is one of those rare poems that wrote itself—much more quickly than is usual for me. It got accepted by an on-line journal I admired (and had previously been rejected by) called Anti- before I knew it.
There’s something wonderful about poetry (and other art forms), especially poetry that makes such associative leaps, is that people reading it can evoke their own associations. It’s the ineffable connection between expression and experience.
Lori had a very different experience of the poem. I have had my poetry rendered by composers on several occasions. Sometimes the piece involves collaboration, though others given with the idea that once I “hand it over,” I give free rein to the interpretations of that artist. It’s rather like a game of telephone. Another sort of play (maybe something I could weave into the poem after the fact),
The result that Lori has created gives a whole new life to the poem.
Interview with Tom Konyves at Connotation Press
In her latest “Third Form” column at Connotation Press, Erica Goss interviews videopoetry pioneer Tom Konyves. Goss’s usual pattern of paraphrasing and quoting from a conversation conducted by telephone gave way here to a more standard question-and-answer format, and the interview delves into aspects of Konyves’ background which were new to me. Here’s how Goss herself summarized it:
In this interview, Tom discusses, among other things, making his first videopoem on ½” reel-to-reel videotape, the medium of video being “unrecognized” by Herman Berlandt, Director of the San Francisco Poetry Film Workshop, what text-image relationships have in common with male-female relationships, and falling in love with language as a child.
I particularly liked the story of how Konyves came to make his first videopoem. But I think the most quotable bit is from the end of the interview:
Text-image relationships are no different from male-female relationships. Sometimes they get along, sometimes they don’t. They get along when they are totally aware of the other’s “potential” as well as their own. For each has the potential to be effective in different ways. They don’t try to overpower the other or usurp each other’s roles in the structure of the work. A particular image provides the only possible context in which the words are intended to be experienced. When they “complete” each other, the work is “pure poetry”. And once you’ve realized that, you will always associate the images with the text of the work. They have become soulmates. How many “video poems” have this attribute? Watch one, then close your eyes and listen to the words. Can you picture the scene? Throughout?
Do go read the whole interview.
New essays on poetry film by Nissmah Roshdy and Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel
The German website Poetryfilmkanal has been sticking to its schedule of monthly featured poetry films and weekly short essays. Much of the content is in German, of course, including a recent essay by ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival organizer Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, “Poesiefilme, Festivals und soziale Netzwerke,” but Google Translate gives the gist of it.
Fortunately for us monolingual types, the latest essay, by Egyptian filmmaker Nissmah Roshdy—”Poetry Films: A Genre Alien To A Poetry Nation“—is in English. Roshdy brings a unique perspective on a uniquely poetry-drenched culture:
For some reason, Arabic Poetry, which is only the most significant form of art produced by the Arab world and considered one of the most visually rich and sophisticated breeds of poetry, had never officially taken part in the conversation of poetry films worldwide in a noteworthy manner. It sounded crazy to me, but I figured that it’s not surprising if you actually consider how many Arabs today appreciate or even understand their own poetry. But regardless of that, the main problem I saw was because of how poets and visual artists in the Arab world have no interest in collaborating with one another. The issue, as I see it, is from the literary experts side. For many writers, the argument usually made is that the beauty of poetry must be in the words only and how they manifest themselves visually in the imagination of each reader. However, this notion should not be threatened by the discourse of poetry films, because a poetry film is essentially a manifestation of the imagination exercise we go through while reading a poem. The defining line here is in accepting a Poetry film as an example of a visual representation of a poem as seen by one person.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “At The Same Moment”
https://vimeo.com/68786837
At The Same Moment
Animation by Ezra Wube
2013
Let me begin by saying that although I appreciate the craft, I am not a poet. That’s why I partnered up with Nicelle Davis and assorted other poets to illustrate books and video poems. I visually interpret their words and manipulate the images to move in sync with the audio, thereby merging the two art forms. This is what video poetry is all about, the combination of visual, audio and time.
At The Same Moment is exactly that. It is a video poem that incorporates time and visual art, yet successfully transcends the absence of words. Again, I am not a poet, but watching this piece I feel as if I can write my own, thus allowing me to shift seamlessly from illustrator to writer and then motion artist.
At The Same Moment consists of stop motion animation paint on a single canvas. Personally I think it takes a lot of guts to paint, photograph and cover the images with new ones. Every image is well done, and they have a beautiful quality to them. It reminds me of the artist/animator William Kentridge who draws an image in charcoal, photographs it and erases it but not completely. He continues to draw over on the same paper, leaving a ghost of his images.
There is something to be said for painting. For me, good painting is uplifting and bad painting is annoying. This coupled with movement is perhaps how this type of art should be displayed, on a monitor in someone’s home, office, museum, etc. It would be a wonderful alternative to static art.
Motionpoems announce partnership with Cave Canem for Season 7, issue call for submissions
I was very interested to see this announcement in the sidebar of Motionpoems‘ latest email newsletter:
We’re excited to be partnering with Cave Canem as our exclusive content partner for next season! Founded in 1996, this organization is a home to the many voices of African American poetry. All of next season’s motionpoems will come from African American writers. If you’re a Cave Canem fellow, we want you to submit. Contact Cave Canem for more details.
As curator of Moving Poems, I’ve been frustrated with the relative scarcity of good poetry films and videopoems featuring the work of African American poets, though it’s offset to some extent by a proliferation of performance documentary videos. (And frankly, I might miss a lot because of my tendency to search Vimeo rather than YouTube.) So I am very cheered to learn about this. It seems like a logical development from Motionpoems’ partnership with VIDA for the current season to put a spotlight on women poets.
Upcoming poetry-film and videopoetry events
June 27 in Berlin
Lyrikmarkt (Poesiefestival Berlin)
Darüber hinaus werden die besten historischen und internationalen Poesiefilme, unter anderem von Paul Bogaert, Kristian Pedersen, John Albert Jansen, Marie Silkeberg, Ghayath Almadhoun, Eleni Gioti, Hubert Sielecki, Man Ray, Paul Desnos und Gerhard Rühm zu sehen sein.
July 6-11 in London
Ross Sutherland’s “Standby For Tape Back-Up” at the Soho Theatre
After a hard-drive crash and a near death experience, Ross Sutherland found himself house-bound with only one thing for company: an old videotape that once belonged to his granddad.
Over the months that followed, Ross memorised every second of the tape. Slowly, he learnt how to manipulate the images into telling the story of his life. The videotape allowed Ross to open a dialogue with his late grandfather, and eventually helped him confront the illness that had nearly ended his life.
The true story of one man’s journey into synchronicity and madness.
July 11 in Penzance, UK
PoetryFilm Penzance
“A screening of poetry films curated and presented by Zata Banks” at the Penzance Literary Festival in Cornwall.
July 16 in Reykjavik
PoetryFilm Reykjavik
“A screening of poetry films and live performances curated and presented by Zata Banks” at Mengi.
Robert Peake on “poetry, film, and the dance of memory”
The American-British poet and poetry-filmmaker Robert Peake is the author of this week’s essay at Poetryfilmkanal: “Mnemosyne’s Tango: Poetry, Film, and the Dance of Memory.” I thought it was one of the most original things I’ve read about the the genre.
The relationship between art and memory has long been a family affair, since Mnemosyne is the mother of the Muses. In fact, some of the earliest uses of both poetry and film were for recording cultural history – either by compressing an epic tale into alliteration and rhyme to facilitate memorisation, or by compressing light and sound into physical media. Compression leads to portability and potency, but also imposes unique constraints, which have evolved into our current understanding of the distinct artistic possibilities of each discipline.
In format, the auditory and visual natures of film and poetry are clearly different. Yet a flickering screen can be viewed like a page, and a poem can be read like a script. The cæsura, line break, and stanza break in poetry mirror film’s range of visual transitions. Clearly, they have some fundamental moves in common. How, then, does the poetryfilm best come together to fascinate, transport, and change us?
Peake’s essay is the latest addition to the Magazin section of Poetryfilmkanal. Previous installments in this series of short essays have included “Poetryfilms: when poetry and film have a flirt,” by Eleni Cay; “CINEPOEM – or – Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” by Cathy de Haan (in German); my own essay, “The Discovery of Fire: One Poet’s Journey into Poetry-Film“; and “Redefining poetry in the age of the screen,” by Tom Konyves.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Ursonate (an excerpt)”
https://vimeo.com/66612735
Ursonate (an excerpt)
Poetry by Kurt Schwitters
Film by William Shum
2013
According to the description on Vimeo, this is
A short excerpt from Kurt Schwitters’ sound poem, “Ursonate”. The typeface was created from scratch and inspired by the “Merz” art Schwitters created, hence the name, “Merzy”.
Kurt Schwitters, along with Hugo Ball and Hans Kasper Ivan Karp, was a major pioneer of sound poetry. This art form gained recognition in the early 20th century. A product of Dada, sound poetry has been popular in several movements and has successfully influenced and moved into postmodernism. I would say with confidence that its influence has also made its way into hip-hop and rap.
Dada is probably my favorite movement. There were so many rules that were broken. It gave significance to graphic design, paving the way for it to become a viable art form and not just a vehicle for advertisements. Dada allowed for experimentation. I believe this way of thinking was the result of World War I and its aftermath. Artists always have a lot to say but at this point in time, there wasn’t much to lose and Europe was in the process of trying to recover. Needless to say, the impact of history will always be significant because we use art to record our culture. That said, I will get on with my opinion of this mini masterpiece.
Ursonate is one of Schwitters’ better-known works. The video by William Shum is an excerpt from the poem. The typeface may be the first created from scratch and used in a video poem. What I like most about this piece is the fact that it is stimulating and I have no idea what the poet is saying. I don’t need to know. The message comes across perfectly through the images and the recording of the sound, which is Schwitters’ voice.
I love the black and white video; the imagery of toys (by the way, I had the Charlie Weaver Bartender toy that appears in the beginning of the video) interlaced with street scenes, dogs, and stoop-sales continues to enhance the feeling of a time that, although not too long ago, is rapidly dissolving. The type flies in, out, overlaps—creating a flow that keeps us at this point in time. The subway scene at the end is a very nice touch. This too has sound, which although it isn’t made up of words, seems to complete the video very nicely.
If sound poetry was invented for performance, then video poetry could be a feasible fit. It’s as if the two genres were made for each other.
Here’s what the Wikipedia article on sound poetry says about the poem:
Schwitters composed and performed an early example of sound poetry, Ursonate (1922–32; a translation of the title is Original Sonata or Primeval Sonata). The poem was influenced by Raoul Hausmann’s poem “fmsbw” which Schwitters heard recited by Hausmann in Prague, 1921. Schwitters first performed the piece on 14 February 1925 at the home of Irmgard Kiepenheuer in Potsdam. He subsequently performed it regularly, both developing and extending it. He published his notations for the recital in the last Merz periodical in 1932, although he would continue to develop the piece for at least the next ten years.
