Based in New York and Philadelphia, El Aleph Press aims to produce “hand-bound editions of poetry, short stories, and artistic graphic novels,” but despite this emphasis on artisanal print publication, for their first anthology they are open to digital submissions of short film and interactive media as well as poetry, fiction, art, comics, and reviews. Here are the guidelines.
(Thanks to Martha McCollough for the heads-up. See also our full list of journals where videopoets can submit work.)
As a fan primarily of mainstream, “page” poetry I don’t necessarily seek out spoken-word poetry, but I am enlivened and inspired by poets like Benjamin Zephaniah — not that there are too many other poets like him. Just as certain avant-garde poets challenge us to take language more seriously and to invent a new universe for every poem, brilliant performance poets like Zephaniah remind us that poetry is first and foremost an oral, embodied medium. Zephaniah’s example challenges us to take living more seriously, and to question whether our words and actions and politics are truly aligned as they should be. And needless to say, for a type of poetry that so emphasizes the physicality of language, film/video is the ideal medium.
Bloodaxe Books were kind enough to send me a review copy of the DVD-book for which this is the trailer, and I loved it. I’d already known from watching her films on Vimeo that Pamela Robertson-Pearce is a good director who knows how to get out of the way and let the poems and the poet speak for themselves, and this talent is very much on display here. I watched the DVD in two long sittings and was entranced. The readings and interviews are artfully blended, with earlier sequences anticipating later explanations by the poet. For example, a series of delightful readings for, and exchanges with, schoolchildren were filmed in what turns out to be the Keats House next to Hampstead Heath, which prepares the viewer not only to hear about the poet’s own childhood and difficult time at school, but also eventually to hear how and why he came to love Keats, Shelley and Byron despite his original aversion to dead white male poets. And footage of Zephaniah in a track suit practicing taiqi in his yard is first used as a backdrop for several segments, arousing one’s curiosity — eventually satisfied — about his exercise and martial arts regime and its influence on him as a performance poet and musician.
The footage of various readings before live audiences varies in quality (the sound is slightly muffled in a couple of them), but one thing I really appreciated was that the director did not attempt to jazz things up by jumping frenetically between two or more different perspectives, as so many slick poetry filmmakers like to do. I generally find that distracting, and with a performer as expressive as Zephaniah, there’s no need to add any more kinesis!
The film is playful and serious by turns, just as Zephaniah’s poems are, and gave me a lot to think about, especially on the role of performance in poetry, the social responsibility of artists, and the various ways in which oral and literary traditions intersect. My favorite interview sections were actually those with the poet’s mother, Valerie Wright, clearly the single biggest influence on his life, who sat beside him on a couch and helped answer questions about his upbringing and the family traits and customs that helped to produce a poet. I should add that all the poems are presented in full, and the film also incorporates a highly entertaining music video by his rap-reggae group, The Beta Brothers (with four more videos included as bonus tracks). Neil Astley’s Foreword in the book offers a more comprehensive biography than any I’ve seen online, and people who already own some or all of Zephaniah’s earlier books with Bloodaxe and Penguin will want this one, too, since it includes different versions of many poems, updated to reflect how they have evolved as he continues to perform them on stage.
The DVD is in PAL format, which means it won’t play on most North American DVD players, but should play just fine on most computers (as it did on my laptop). As the note about this on the last page of the book says, “In an ideal world we’d produce our DVD-book with DVDs in either format and give overseas readers the choice, but unfortunately that would be much too costly.” Check out the publisher’s detailed description at Vimeo or on the Bloodaxe website. Let me close with Zephaniah’s own description at his blog:
Yes, that’s right, I’ve got a new DVD and book out. It’s a kind of Zephaniah on the road jam, and it features my mum and my nephew, Zayn. He’s a good boy, but he can’t play football as good as me. The DVD has live performances of some previously published and unpublished poems, with interviews and lots of messing around by me. What I really love about it is the mix of my children’s poetry, my work for adults, and my music, which most publishers usually like to keep separate. Publisher, writer, and all round good guy Neil Astley has written an introduction for it, and Pamela Robertson-Pearce did the filming. We’ve tried to do something which stands up as both entertaining and educational, so it could be used in schools and other funky places. I’m pleased with it.
If you’ve ever wanted to start your own video hosting site, it’s about to get easier. WordPress 3.6, currently in beta and due out soon, supports video and audio in core — it’s no longer necessary to use a plugin to generate media players for files uploaded to one’s own or another site.
At the core of the experience is the fantastic library, MediaElement.js. MediaElement is the facade layer that gives us maximum file support and cross-browser compatibility. While some libraries require a Flash-only solution to make your media work cross-environment, MediaElement lets you use HTML5 audio / video tags in every browser, and, only when necessary, will use a Flash or Silverlight plugin in the background to make incompatible media work. […]
MediaElement uses the same HTML markup, regardless of playback implementation, and you can use CSS to skin the players.
This provides a great deal of security for publishers, who will no longer have to rely on someone keeping an essential plugin updated. I would caution however that this new ease of use should not lure cash-strapped bloggers on cheap, shared hosting accounts (ahem, like me) to think that they can become the next Poetry Visualized. Hosting and reliably streaming a lot of videos, or videos that become too popular, will remain a high-resource enterprise. But for bigger organizations and institutions who want to retain full control of branding, and whose editorial staff aren’t highly tech-y, it should make video hosting a bit easier. Another use-case I can think of is the video artist who wants to share her work only on her own site and prevent others from embedding it, something that requires a paid membership at Vimeo.
In general, I think YouTube and Vimeo will remain preferable for most filmmakers and videopoets (and embedding such third-party videos in WordPress posts couldn’t be easier with the oEmbed functionality they added a couple of years ago), but it’s good to have this option in case the corporations decide to screw us.
Annie Ferguson, curator of The Fluid Raven, sent along an interesting question:
Could you help me out with an appropriation dilemma? How are artists using recordings of poets like Plath and Oliver in their videos without being illegitimate? Is there a place where these poems are free to grab and use?
I’m a filmmaker/poet and wanted to create cinepoems with the words of famous poets, but I ran into copyright infringement. Yikes. I’d love to know more about it though, because I think it’s important for filmmakers to share poets’ work in a new way.
I asked Annie’s permission to share her question here. My off-the-cuff response was that if we’re not getting permission from the copyright holders, we are leaving themselves open to being sued for copyright infringement. (Or at least getting a take-down notice under the DMCA). That said, a liberal interpretation of the Fair Use provision in U.S. copyright law might find that envideoing a poem is sufficiently transformative to pass muster. The Center for Social Media’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video suggests, for example:
Unlike many traditional creator groups, nonprofessional and personal video makers often create and circulate their videos outside the marketplace. Such works, especially if they are circulated within a delimited network, do enjoy certain copyright advantages. Not only are they less likely to attract the attention of rights holders, but if noticed they are more likely to receive special consideration under the fair use doctrine. That said, our goal here is to define the widely accepted contours of fair use that apply with equal force across a range of commercial and noncommercial activities, without regard to how video maker communities’ markets may evolve. Thus, the principles articulated below are rooted squarely in the concept of “transformativeness.”
In fact, a transformative purpose often underlies an individual creator’s investment of substantial time and creative energy in producing a mashup, a personal video, or other new work. Images and sounds can be building blocks for new meaning, just as quotations of written texts can be. Emerging cultural expression deserves recognition for transformative value as much as more established expression.
More professional filmmakers will of course make an effort to contact rights holders. In some cases, they may be asked to pay quite a lot of money. But an even more insurmountable difficulty may be finding out who holds the rights in the case of poets who are long dead and out-of-print. If you’re using a translation, you need permission from both the translator and (I think) the original author. I’ve gotten around that on a couple of occasions by doing my own translations and hoping the poets’ heirs weren’t litigious. (Needless to say, the Fair Use provision only applies to poets who were U.S. citizens.)
Another way out of this dilemma might be to forget about the big names and look for poets who apply Creative Commons licenses to their work (the kind that don’t include the phrase “no derivative works,” abbreviated “ND” in the short form of the license), or simply work with living, web-active poets who are quick to respond and unlikely to ask for money. And of course an ever-growing number of classic poems enter the public domain every year. But fortunately (from my perspective as a reader and viewer) there are good filmmakers with a bit of an outlaw mentality who shoot first and ask questions later. Without them, we might not have any good videopoems for poets like Plath and Oliver.
Have you ever broken copyright to make a filmpoem, cinepoem or videopoem? Are there any circumstances under which you think it might be permissible?
I was very pleased to see to my friend Nic S.‘s contributions to videopoetry, audiopoetry, and online publishing in general profiled this month at “The Third Form,” Erica Goss’s column at Connotation Press. As Erica writes, “Nic S.’s work … deserves a wider audience. She is a well-published poet, makes video poems, and has a wonderful speaking voice for poetry.” Included in the profile are several of my personal favorites of Nic’s own videos, as well as videos some of the rest of us have made using Nic’s readings of other people’s poetry and her own, a varied and growing collection.
One of those videos is by Swoon, and in fact the column begins with a review of Swoon’s most ambitious project to date — Cirkel/Circle, featuring eleven poems by eleven different Belgian poets. I’ve also been privileged to see the full-length film, which isn’t publicly available on the web yet pending its screening in some upcoming festivals. In the meantime, you can watch the preview and read Erica’s description to whet your appetite.
Kate Greenstreet is one of my favorite videopoets, so I was pleased to see that Erica Goss had chosen to interview Greenstreet and analyze some of her films in her “Third Form” column at Connotation Press this month. Poet-filmmakers occupy a central place in the evolution of videopoetry, and Kate’s work is especially instructive in that regard since, as Goss points out, she comes from a visual arts background (and didn’t publish her first book of poetry until the age of 57).
It’s difficult to discuss the elements of Kate’s art separately from each other. To quote her from My Own Eyes, a short film by Max Greenstreet, Kate’s husband and frequent collaborator, “it’s made of pieces.” Kate’s work mixes up and layers the senses: you can hear the landscape and see the poems. “I think my work on the page is difficult for people,” she told me. “I don’t explain it.” The poems benefit from multiple readings, just as the videos stand up to multiple viewings. […]
Kate is the sole creator of the visual as well as the written parts of her work; therefore, her aesthetic is consistent throughout. From paintings to photographs to film to words, she maintains her sensitivity to the highly specific, suggestive detail, leaving the interpretation of a connected whole to the reader or viewer.
[press release — feel free to reproduce in whole or in part]
How to make a film based on 11 Dutch-language poems? A fair question. Video artist Swoon has made the poetry short ‘Circle’, in which poems by Leonard Nolens, Stefan Hertmans, Delphine Lecompte, Charles Ducal, Michaël Vandebril, Lies Van Gasse, Xavier Roelens, Jan Lauwereyns, Marleen de Crée, Stijn Vranken and Yannick Dangre tell the story of someone’s life. The poems were recorded by three well-known Flemish actors: Vic De Wachter, Michaël Pas and Karlijn Sileghem.
An extended trailer can be seen on Vimeo.
The Flemish poetry film will premiere on Sunday 10 March at the Scottish international poetry festival StAnza. With this international presentation in mind, all poems were translated by professional poetry translator Willem Groenewegen.
The Belgian premiere will be held on 13 June at the Felix Poetry Festival in Antwerp.
‘Circle’ is a Vonk & Zonen production and was realised with the support of the Flemish Literature Fund and the City of Antwerp. Vonk & Zonen is a new literary organisation focusing on new ways to showcase literature. Recent projects include the ‘Lonely Funeral’ programme, ‘NewsPoem’ in the De Morgen newspaper and the ‘Working Title’ evenings. The poetry film ‘Circle’ is an excellent way to familiarise a wider audience with poetry in an innovative and accessible way.
Swoon (a.k.a. Marc Neys, *1968) has more than 90 videopoems to his name, based on texts by, amongst others, Bernard Dewulf, Johan de Boose, Michaël Vandebril and Jan Lauwereyns. His videopoems were shown at a lot of international festivals, such as those in Berlin (ZEBRA), Vancouver (Visible Verse) and New York (International Literary Filmfestival). This year, Swoon has been asked to co-curate the first Filmpoem Festival (2-4/8/13, Dunbar, Scotland) alongside Alastair Cook, Luca Nasciuti and Dave Bonta.
Editor’s note: We will share the full-length film on Moving Poems as soon as it becomes available. In the meantime, enjoy the trailer (and attend StAnza or the Felix Poetry Festival if you can). See also Swoon’s post mortem of last year’s Felix Poetry Festival here at the forum.
First, a reminder that at least FIVE festivals devoted to poetry films are currently open for submission: Trevigliopoesia Festival (deadline: March 1), The Body Electric Poetry Film Festival (deadline: March 21), Filmpoem Festival (deadline: May 1), DOCtorCLIP Roma Poetry Film Festival (deadline: May 15) and Visible Verse Festival (deadline: August 1).
In addition, for those who missed the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin last fall, there will be a reprise showing of some of the best films at the Kosmopolis International Literature Fest, March 14-16 in Barcelona. The blog post announcing this includes a good thumbnail history of ZEBRA and of poetry-film generally. Here’s a snippet:
In the early 20th century poets were as much inspired by the cinema as filmmakers by poetry. The first film adaptation of the poem ‘Twas the Night before Christmas’ (1822) by Clement Clark Moore was made in 1905 in the studios of Thomas Alva Edison. Another very early testimony to the influence of poetry on the great directors is the film The Unchanging Sea (1910) by D. W. Griffith after the poem of the same title by Charles Kingsley. Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, with their futuristic adaptation of Walt Whitman’s city melancholia in their film Manhatta (1921), set standards which still apply today. L’invitation au voyage (F 1927) by Germaine Dulac is a timeless interpretation of Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ or Combat de Boxe (B 1927) by Charles Dekeukeleire after a poem by Paul Werrie. In L’Etoile de Mer (F 1928) by Man Ray lines from Robert Desnos’ 1928 poem »La place de l’etoile« are faded in on boards. And of course Un chien andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí with its poetic system. These are only some examples of the early poetry adaptations.
The constantly rising number of entries demonstrates the growing worldwide popularity of the genre and the necessity of this festival. Of all the programmes organised by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is the most-booked, receiving invitations from throughout the world. It is regularly invited to take part in festivals from Buenos Aires to Taipei. In 2010–2012 alone it has been a guest in many countries including Algeria, Dubai, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Lithuania, Malta, India, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Colombia, Ireland, Norway and Ukraine.
It’s definitely an exciting time for directors and fans of videopoetry/filmpoetry. Needless to say, there are a myriad other film festivals held annually around the world, and many if not most may be open to submissions of at least some types of poetry films.
I have been doing much thinking about Visual Text in a videopoem. Unfortunately, at the rate that my fingers touch the keyboard, I haven’t had much to show for it. But Litlive just posted my essay, Visual Text/2 Case Studies, in which I comment on two of my favourites from the finalists for their VidLit Contest, both in the Visual Text category: “24” by Susan Cormier and “Profile” by R.W. Perkins.
This past year I was also invited to participate in the Zebra Poetry Film Festival Colloquium in Berlin, but had to cancel the visit due a family emergency. A few days before the event, it was suggested I write something to contribute to the discussion. My good friend and former Vehicule poet, Endre Farkas, read it aloud at the Colloquium. It’s now been posted at http://www.academia.edu/3474487/Address_to_the_Colloquium_Berlin_Zebra_Poetry_Film_Festival_2012. In it, I argue that, among other things,
A good videopoem is not predetermined from a script juxtaposed with illustrative elements – it is produced during the editing stage, when the elements are brought together, positioning and duration of text are determined, images and their duration are selected, and sound is chosen, the work is constructed segment by segment, as if they were raw materials in a cauldron. The role of “chance” in this process should not be underestimated or absent.
Editor’s note: For more on Tom and his work, go to TomKonyves.com.
VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL Oct. 2013, Vancouver, BC
DEADLINE: Aug. 1, 2013
See the website for more, including a postmortem on Visible Verse 2012. To view more videopoems by various artists, visit Visible Verse on Facebook.