~ News and Views ~
Interview with poet-filmmaker Sara Anika Mithra at Voice Alpha
Voice Alpha, a blog focused on reading poetry aloud for an audience, has an interview with American poet Sara Anika Mithra about her use of audio- and videopoetry. I was especially struck by her description of how doing audio recordings helps her work through early drafts of poems, but she made some interesting points about video remix as well:
On Vimeo, with my found footage poem-videos, I’m engaging a distinct medium — video — that acts like a carrier oil for perfume. Poetry can be too rarefied to carry scent alone. Unlike recording my performances, the process for editing video out of archival footage is _not_ closely related to writing. Finding home movies from the 50s and splicing them into a three minute video is a subtractive process, like sculpture — paring away excess scraps of image to create a tone more than a narrative. It’s a decadent and aesthetic practice that gives each poem a visual soundtrack. I love editing video — it eats away hours of time and allows pleasure, plus gives me the chance to collaborate with musicians on the score. These massive projects take months, so I need to commit to a poem that bears scrutiny without boring me.
Filmpoem at Southbank Centre in July — full schedule of events
Those who weren’t able to make it to Antwerp for the Felix Poetry Festival a couple of weeks ago will have another chance to see this year’s, traveling version of the Filmpoem Festival at London’s Southbank Centre in mid-July. Let me just paste in the description from the Filmpoem website:
Filmpoem will be partnering up with Southbank Centre to bring our own unique blend of artists films, workshops and events to the Poetry International, held from Thursday 17 July 2014 – Monday 21 July 2014. Poetry International is part of Southbank Centre’s Festival of Love – the festival features an exciting programme of free events, differently- themed weekends, performances, poetry, talks and pop-ups. Poetry International is a bold and inspiring festival of poetry, film and spoken word as part of our summer Festival of Love. For, after all, ‘at the touch of love everyone becomes a poet’ (Plato).
– Filmpoem will showcase on rotation on the screens throughout the Foyer for the entire festival! Friday 18 – Monday 21 July/ 10am to 11pm/ Presented on screen in the Foyers at Royal Festival Hall. This is a FREE event.
– Filmpoem will be judging and presenting the prizes for the SHOT THROUGH THE HEART Poetry Film Competition on Friday 18 July 2014 at 6.45pm.
– Alastair Cook will be delving a Filmpoem children’s workshop with poet Carolyn Jess-Cooke and composer Luca Nasciuti – the resulting film will be screened at 4.30pm on Saturday 19th July. This is a FREE event.
– Poetry Society director Judith Palmer and Filmpoem director Alastair Cook will present a screening of new films commissioned by Filmpoem and Felix Poetry Society in association with the Poetry Society, including the National Poetry Competition commissions and commissions from David Harsent, Michael Symmons Roberts, Helen Mort and John Glenday/ Saturday 19 Jul 2014 6.30pm. This is a FREE event.
Phew! See y’all there.
Since I’m in the U.K. this summer, I’ll be able to attend some of this myself, including the Saturday evening program, and I hope to get a chance to meet some Moving Poems readers and contributors. Come over and say hi if you see me. I’ll be the guy with the beard and the ball cap scribbling things into a pocket notebook (because, you know, I’m still too technophobic to own a mobile device).
Review of Filmpoem 2014, Antwerp in Huffington Post blog
Poet and filmmaker Robert Peake has posted a handy summary of last weekend’s Filmpoem 2014 Festival—part of the Felix Poetry Festival in Antwerp—by way of sharing the seven videos that constituted the first part of the program: “An Introduction to the Film-Poem.”
Poets, musicians and filmmakers from all over the world converged on a converted packing house in Antwerp, Belgium last Saturday for a day of gorging on film-poems. It was glorious.
While last year in Dunbar, Scotland had an element of novelty on its side, this year was carefully structured to up the ante. A group of Dutch and Flemish film-poem artists presented their work, along with the debut screening of the UK National Poetry Competition film-poems, Absent Voices films, conversations with poets in response film-poems of their work that they had just seen, and even live performances of voice and music in accompaniment to film. The scope, variety, and innovation was impressive, not to mention the roster of heavy-hitters in both the poetry and film genres.
Organiser Alastair Cook emphasised the point that the film-poem genre is an inclusive and encouraging one–suggesting that we all start somewhere, even if with the video facility on our smart phones, and start making film-poems. Particularly helpful in that regard was the first screening, an introduction to the film-poem. Luckily, most of the works that Alastair picked to illustrate the depth and range of this genre are also available online. What follows, below, are those films (recommended to view in full-screen mode).
Watch. Enjoy. Make film-poems. Perhaps I’ll see you at a film-poem festival soon.
Click through to watch the films.
Embracing the “fuzzy” areas: an interview with poetry film critic Laura Theobald at Awkword Paper Cut
I was pleased to discover just now that my linking to Laura Theobold’s blog irreducible: a study on the concept and genre of poetry film has led to a short interview over at Awkword Paper Cut. Here’s a bit of it:
I think the genre as we know and understand it today is really new (which explains, in part, the lack of criticism). In the past it’s been really utilitarian, I think: a way for people to just hear and “see” the poetry they couldn’t in person (think of the million videos of poets simply reading their work aloud in front of a camera), but what it’s becoming is a lot more interesting. It’s becoming a new way for poets to create poetry, really, and to reach new audiences. But for everyone I think the goal is a little different: for some artist/poets it can be sort of like an extension of the selfie, a way to establish their brand; for others, it’s about creating a kind of harmony between word and image; some people just want to make something no one has ever made before—because the technology is there. For everyone who’s into it, I think it’s mostly about making something beautiful.
It’s funny, kind of: this project began with a desire to learn where boundaries lie, like “What IS a poetry film?” but I think during the process of bearing down on these distinctions, I realized that I think the future wants us to shed this kind of desire for delineation. I think a progressive future isn’t about making more categories for things we want to understand better, but about embracing the borderlands and “fuzzy” areas when they are doing something meaningful (and I think this applies in a lot of ways), and just like celebrate the fact that they exist.
Swoon on J.P. Sipilä
Marc Neys’ “Swoon’s View” column at Awkword Paper Cut this month offers an appreciation of the Finnish videopoet J.P. Sipilä — in particular, his recently completed “online poem installation,” Sleight of Tree.
Sipilä creates compositions that generate gentle moving images in relation to poetic texts that leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition. He has discovered innovative approaches to putting poetry on screen. This means re-thinking the relationship of image, sound, and text that move in lyrical spaces, creating multiple ways to experience poetry.
If I only had one word to describe this body of work it would be grace. I don’t do the whole experience justice by separating these two videos from the rest. They do, however, give you a taste.
The separate lives of poems: an interview with Sherry O’Keefe
This is the 15th 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 Sherry O’Keefe.
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.
SO: If a poem is a rock, and if that rock is in my hand, I look for its entry point. Rocks can be cracked open to reveal a network of both the beauty and the ugly inside, but where exactly is the best entry point? And how and when? Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse is submitting to the experience of watching another hand with that rock, turning it over and over, searching for an entry point. So many possibilities, it’s liberating to witness. There’s more than one way to gain entry, to crack that rock cleanly.
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.
SO: I tend to write from a state of confusion, seeking clarity. But if I focus too much on clarity what I write becomes a narrow experience. I like most when the seemingly disconnected connect with points coming from a wider field. Finding the balance between holding on and letting go has become easier because the remixes present views from that wider field.
Through The Poetry Storehouse, my poem about a pilot building the N a universe using the table setting at a café became a film featuring a wolf in the wilderness. The poem was a result of a dinner conversation; the remix expanded it, offering a new vista point from which one could experience wider implications of a universal law.
A second poem featuring a setting of an afternoon spent at a remote ranch became a film based on vintage news reels of beavers and men moving houses, a young girl watching from the window. On the surface my poem presented honey and bees, bells and dying goats, but beneath the surface was a respite from the solitary path we each face, this respite appearing in the random, circular ways we connect to one another.
Both remixes kept from bopping the poems on the nose and instead expanded into a wider view, allowing for so many more entry points.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
SO: I would love to do this again. It’s too easy to hold tight to what we intend the poem to be, but every time the poem is read by someone else, it takes on a life separate from its creator. I have learned something new each time my poetry has been featured in a remix. The experience of letting go is liberating.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
SO: I like the relaxed atmosphere at the Storehouse. It allows for organic response from the film makers. Each poem takes on new life when we hear someone else read it, or watch another’s video of the poem.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
SO: My first experience with video poetry was when Marc Neys approached me a few years ago seeking permission to turn my poem, “This Was Supposed to Be About Karl…” into a moving poem. I had no idea what he felt about the poem and was curious to see what he would do. It was a great experience. The poem had specific meaning to me, but through his film the poem allowed for many layers to be explored and experienced.
Film production is labor intensive and yet I hope more and more of us find the time to explore a poem through musical and visual portraits. If 12 videos were produced for one poem, we’d have 12 different experiences and this is what interests me. So: many thanks to the crew at TPS for making this possible. I appreciate what you are doing.
Ó Bhéal poetry-film competition is open for submissions
I’ve just learned that the 2nd Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition 2014 is open for submissions. I’m sure they won’t mind if I reproduce their call.
Ó Bhéal is pleased to continue its association with the IndieCork festival of independent cinema (www.indiecork.com). This is Ó Bhéal’s fifth year of screening poetry-films (or video-poems), and the second year featuring an International competition.
Thirty films will be shortlisted and screened during the festival from 12th-19th October 2014. One winner will be selected by the Ó Bhéal jury.
Deadline for submissions is the 15th of September 2014.
Guidelines
Entry is free to anyone, and should be made via email (after May 12th 2014) to poetryfilm [at] obheal.ie – including the following in an attached word document:
- Name and duration of Film
- Name of director
- Country of origin
- Contact details
- Name of Poet
- Name of Poem
- Synopsis
- Filmmaker biography
- and a Link to download a high-resolution version of the film.
Films must interpret or be based on a poem, and have been completed no earlier than the 1st August 2012. They may not exceed 10 minutes in duration. Non-English language films will require subtitles.
The final programme (shortlist) will be available via both the Ó Bhéal and IndieCork websites as of the 30th of September 2014.
Hope to see you there!
OLE festival extends deadline, age limit for youth prize
OLE.01 International Festival of Electronic Literature organizer Roberta Iadevaia wrote to inform me of two major changes in their call for submissions: “deadline is now July 15 (instead of May) and the limit of age is 40 (instead of 35).”
Poetry Storehouse videos featured at BluePrintReview blog
Thanks to the BluePrintReview book+lit blog for a kind feature on a project I’m tangentially involved with, The Poetry Storehouse. Moving Poems regulars would be forgiven for assuming that all Storehouse poetry videos eventually get re-posted here, since I try to share at least one of them a week. But even if I posted one a day, I’d still have trouble keeping up. So as the BluePrintReview post suggests, the Poetry Storehouse Vimeo group is the best page to bookmark if you don’t want to miss anything. (Poetry Storehouse videos on Moving Poems do have their own archive, too.)
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!
