~ News and Views ~
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.
Call for entries: OLE International Festival of Electronic Literature
A month-long International Festival of Electronic Literature—OLE—will be held in Naples and its environs in October. There is of course some overlap between videopoetry/filmpoetry and electronic literature; here’s how the festival website describes the latter:
Electronic Literature, also known as eLiterature or digital literature, includes a wide genre of works that make use of digital media (from the computer to the Internet to single software) to be created and / or to be used. It is therefore not about traditional works subsequently digitized, but born digital works that generate real new languages and, therefore, new literatures.
The festival is divided into two sections, one “made up of internationally renowned artists from all over the world,” and the other for younger artists. The call for proposals targets the latter group:
Present Call is addressed to young people of any nationality who are under 35 years of age. The theme of the Festival is “Memory of the future: to know ours roots to plan a common future”. The other sub themes are: “conditions for peace, sustainable development, knowledge and cultural diversity,” in parallel with the theme of Universal Forum of Cultures.
The works they’re seeking include:
2. ELECTRONIC POEMS
- videopoetry
- kinetic poetry
- interactive poetry
- 3D poetry
- multimedia poetry
- hypertext poetry
- flash poetry
- generative poetry
- code poetry
The deadline is May 15. Refer to the website for the rather complex submission procedures (which may be more comprehensible in Italian).
Visual, film, and sound artists sought for collaborative project with Minnesota poet
Duluth, Minnesota’s Prøve Collective (which counts among its members the cellist/composer and videopoem maker Kathy McTavish, whose work I’ve featured on Moving Poems) recently issued a rather unique call for artists to collaborate on multimedia projects with poet Kathleen Roberts, culminating in a two-week exhibition in August. Here’s the call as it appears on mnartists.org:
Accepting submissions of visual, film, and sound art for With Sirens Blaring. Deadline: July 1
Duluth’s Prøve Collective announces an open call to filmmakers and artists for its upcoming show, “With Sirens Blaring”.
Deadline: 1 July, 2014.
Prøve Gallery, Duluth, Minnesota’s independent and artist run contemporary gallery, is proud to announce “With Sirens Blaring”, opening 8 August, 2014.
Show Description: Poetry is, above all things, an attempt to view the world through language. This summer, Prøve Collective will display a body of work linking poetry to visual, film, and sound art. Pursuant to a grant from the McKnight Foundation, award-winning Duluth poet Kathleen Roberts is creating an assembly of films and artwork by local and regional artists based on her words. These works will be displayed permanently on her website and in Prøve’s August exhibition, “With Sirens Blaring”. Artists in all disciplines are encouraged to inquire.
Mission Statement: Prøve Collective is a cultural organization dedicated to the role of art exhibition as a conduit of powerful ideas and diverse viewpoints. Our mission is to foster a greater appreciation of the contemporary arts, to bridge cultures, to create and expand community, and to provide cultural exchange, networking opportunities, and educational outreach through regular interaction with the contemporary arts. It is the goal of Prøve Collective to present monthly gallery shows, collaborate with like- minded arts organizations, and provide an arts retail environment.
Submission guidelines:
Interested parties may contact Kathleen via e-mail at kathleen@provegallery.com. Please include a brief statement of purpose and Curriculum Vitae. These will be works of collaboration, and we are interested in sharing in your ideas about poetry and its intersection with other art forms.All submission materials must be written in English. Prøve Collective will provide publicity, exhibition invitations, mailings, and an opening reception. All work resulting from this project will be under Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY), which requires that anyone distributing this work or making derivative work must give attribution to the original artists.
Submission does not guarantee that your work will be displayed.
Please e-mail kathleen@provegallery.com if you are interested in participating in this moving poetry project.
Deadlines:
• Submissions are due by 1 July. As this collaboration will take time and communication, it will be necessary for artists to initiate contact well in advance of the deadline for submission.
• The opening reception for “With Sirens Blaring” will be 8 August from 7-11pm.
• The show will run for two weeks and conclude on 23 August.
• Pick up will be August 28-30 from 3-7pm.Please direct any questions to Kathleen Roberts, kathleen@provegallery.com.
PRØVE Gallery 21 North Lake Avenue Duluth, MN 55802 info@provegallery.com www.facebook.com/provecollective www.provegallery.com
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.
ReVersed Poetry Film Festival 2014 set for first weekend in April
Working at break-neck speed, the organizers of the brand-new ReVersed Poetry Film Festival slated for April 4-6 in Amsterdam have scheduled a full program of screenings and events — it looks great. They even found time to make the above trailer. Timo Geschwill is the filmmaker, with text and voiceover by Daniel Vorthuys and sound design by Sinan Guven.
In other poetry festival-related news, Filmpoem has a slick new website — check it out.
Free, three-hour screening of filmpoems at Hidden Door Festival in Edinburgh, April 5
Hidden Door is a nine-day festival of art, music and poetry beginning on March 28 at Market Street Vaults, Edinburgh. It offers “FREE ENTRY to Exhibition Spaces, Project Space, Bars, Cinema” every day from noon to 6:00 PM, and this includes three, 40-minute screenings of filmpoems on the last day of the festival, April 5. Here are the details, according to the event listing on Facebook:
3pm -6pm: Alastair Cook and Luca Nasciuti are introducing, performing and talking about Filmpoem in the afternoon from 3pm – come and see previews of this year’s festivals, watch some beautiful films and enjoy the rest of the Hidden Door experience at a leisurely Saturday afternoon pace.
Filmpoem is dedicated to the filming of words and is a collaborative venture committed to attracting new audiences to new writing. Filmpoem at Hidden Door is a match made in filmic festival heaven – on Saturday April 5th, we will be bringing poets, films and performance to these great Edinburgh arches, running three forty-minute screenings:
3pm: Filmpoem Felix Screening – Curation from our archive mixed with sneak peaks at some of the work for Filmpoem in Antwerp on June 14th this year, in partnership with Felix Poetry Festival.
4pm: Filmpoem Live with Luca Nasciuti. Luca explores and performs filmic soundscapes with poetry film, with live readings.
5pm: Filmpoem Poetry Society, an exclusive curation in partnership with The Poetry Society
It’s part of a larger programme of films at the festival called Hidden Cinema — an enticing mix of animation, shorts and experimental film.
“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!
“Even the fluffiest piece can have a flip side”: an interview with filmmaker Paul Broderick
This is the seventh 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.” Paul Broderick is a filmmaker. His recent short poetry film “CATS” by H.P Lovecraft will make its debut at the Peak Film Forum “Show Us Your Shorts” Short Film Screening in Colorado on March 11th 2014. Paul and his wife Arlene reside in Queens New York with their three cats Max, Cali and Sammy. He can be reached at gumppaul@aol.com and can be found on Facebook.
1. Would you briefly describe the remix work you have done based on poems from The Poetry Storehouse?
PB: I have remixed two pieces thus far from The Poetry Storehouse, poems by Dustin Luke Nelson (“A Short Film For Today About What Happened Yesterday“) and Lennart Lundh (“Elegy“). Both poems caught my eye and I had to give them a visual voice.
2. How is The Poetry Storehouse different from or similar to other resources you have used for your remix work?
PB: The closest I have come to anything resembling The Poetry Storehouse would have be the website archive.org, the difference being the amount of contemporary poems at the Storehouse with readings attached. This I have affectionately begun to call “shake & bake productions” or one-stop shopping… everything the film maker needs is right here. When I found out that there was a sub-genre of film production called poetry-film, it was off to the races.
3. What specific elements do you look for when you browse offerings at The Storehouse (or, what is your advice to poets submitting to The Storehouse)?
PB: I am a very big fan of horror and the supernatural. I will first look for the elements in a poem that I can translate visually with an emphasis on things that are dark. Even the fluffiest piece can have a flip side. Collaborative is the keyword. As an author, the poet is taking a leap of faith by allowing their work to be interpreted by someone they have never met, and this is the beauty of the creative process.
4. Talk about how the remixing process comes together for you. For example, does your inspiration start with a poem, or with specific footage for which you then seek a poem?
PB: I will read a poem and immediately start tossing some ideas around in my head and then the creative process will begin. For me it all begins with the author’s work.
5. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
PB: The poetry storehouse is a wonderful place. When a poem, reading and visual style come together, it is a sight to behold…
6. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience (or anything else)?
PB: My experience here has been wonderful. I would however, like to take a moment to thank some of the people that have inspired me along the way: my beautiful wife Arlene, who puts up with my endless hours and obsession with film making; an old friend of more than 30 years, Ralph Giordano, director/filmmaker who first introduced me to film poetry; another old friend, Robin Taylor-Southern—a voice-over artist who has generously lent her voice and time to my projects; and a special nod to Erik J. Nielsen, comic book illustrator (Amphibimen Comics) and an old friend… thank you, Erik.
Two calls for submissions: Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival and Art Visuals & Poetry Festival
A new poetry film festival is slated for Worcester, Massachusetts, USA: the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival, sponsored by Doublebunny Press. The screening is in September, submissions are open until June 1, and — unusually for a poetry film festival — there’s a $25 submissions fee, and six winners will get cash prizes: “Best Overall Picture will win $200, and there will be $100 prizes in categories for Best Animation, Best Music in a Video, Phone Shot, Under 1 Minute, and Valentine.”
Two other unique features of this contest and festival: they want only what I would call videopoetry or filmpoetry — no footage of the poet herself reading her work, and they’re looking for author-made films, requiring the poet to be “directly involved in the process of making the video.” Also, judging is blind, so the film can’t contain any credits. All in all, this is definitely one of the most unique poetry film festival call-outs I’ve seen. Check it out.
Another poetry film festival is scheduled for November in Vienna, Austria. The Art Visuals & Poetry Festival has been going on for several years now, and its website is a good source for information on various film festivals and poetry film-related activities, especially for those who read German. The 2014 festival includes an international competition using a recording of a poem by Georg Trakl as well as a competition for Austrian filmmakers. The deadline is September 30.
The Austria-specific contest is for what they call a textfilm. In contrast to the Rabbit Heart folks, they cast a pretty wide net:
Whether abstract, classic, animation, narrative or cinematographic : the genre of poetry film is colorful and varied. There are also many definitions. The Scottish photographer and filmmaker Alistair Cook defined the poetry film recently with the following words: “A poetry film is… a single entwined entity, a melting, a cleaving together of words, sound and vision. It is an attempt to take a poem and present it through a medium that will create a new artwork, separate from the original poem.” In contrast to the Anglo-American world, we accept all kinds of literary art works, that meet the predicate literary. It can be abstract sound poem or poetic prose or naughty poetry slam. Therefore we sometimes use the word “textfilm” as a synonym for the word “poetry film”.
Anyway, do read their call for entries.
Don’t forget that the main Moving Poems links page includes, as its last category, a nearly complete list of international poetry film festivals. For recent festival news and call-outs, browse the “festivals and other screening events” topic here at the forum.
Introducing Silicon Valley to the world of videopoetry
In her “Third Form” column in Connotation Press this month, Erica Goss reports on her experience introducing an audience of book-lovers to videopoetry. A number of towns and cities around the United States now have community book clubs. Silicon Valley Reads is one such program, and their theme for 2014 is “Books & Technology: Friends or Foes?” So Goss, as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos as well as videopoetry critic and connoisseur, gave a presentation one evening last month called “Off the Page.”
I selected nine video poems that I felt represented the art form well, but kept in mind the fact that most, if not all of the audience had never seen anything like this before. I wanted videos that were accessible, not too challenging, visually stunning, and that showed a variety of approaches: animation, archival film, and documentary-style, to name a few.
Goss also created a kinestatic video using a crowd-sourced collage poem with 100 lines contributed by local residents describing the changes in the Santa Clara Valley/Silicon Valley landscape. She showed that first, followed by the nine videos:
Some were newer and some were old favorites. The album is on Vimeo. In selecting these videos, I wanted them to flow from familiar film style (The Barking Horse) through archival film (Need) to animation (The Trees) and end on a high note (Danatum Passu). I added brief commentary to each video.
Many of the audience members wanted more information about making their own video poems, and wondered if there was a class they could take. This made me think that there might be a need for instruction outside of video poetry festivals. (Anyone want to help me design a video poetry course?)
It was gratifying to hear how well this program was received. There is of course no such thing as a typical audience, and residents of Silicon Valley might be especially atypical in some respects, but I think one of the great promises of videopoetry and animated poetry has always been this perceived potential to reach literate audiences who are not necessarily hardcore fans of contemporary poetry. That seems to have have happened in at least one American community last month. Check it out.
