~ Animation ~
The Lockless Door by Robert Frost
The graphics exist to support the soundtrack here, but I still thought it was an effective videopoem. Ryerson University film student Adin Dell advises, “Put on some headphones or turn up the volume to really hear the ‘soundscape.'”
Yes Yes by Charles Bukowski
An interesting stop-motion piece by Nicole Schmitt and Lukas Fiala.
The Poem of the Spanish Poet by Mark Strand
The latest release from Motionpoems, and the first of theirs, I think, to mix in some live footage of the poet alongside the animation (which is by Juan Delcan, who was responsible for the most popular of the Billy Collins animations, “The Dead.”). The text appears in Mark Strand’s latest book, Almost Invisible, which is a collection of prose pieces; the poem part of this video is the only lyric poem in the book.
By the way, if you join the Motionpoems free monthly email list, you get additional content which is not included on the website for some reason. This month’s installment expanded on the making of the video, and included some thoughts by Delcan and Strand:
For this motionpoem, filmmaker Juan Delcan shot live video of Mark Strand in his New York City apartment. He combined that video with drawings inspired by those of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. “I shot [Mark Strand] in 30 minutes and animated the piece in one afternoon,” Delcan told us. “Sometimes not having time to over-think it is the best.”
Delcan also spent time thinking about the purpose of the relatively new genre of poetry films. “I know there are a lot of purists that think that animating poetry is redundant and stops the reader from picturing its words in their own minds, and that the poem should be left alone. And in a lot of cases they may very well be right. But in the particular case of the poems I’ve worked on I feel they retrofeed each other, bringing it to a different genre.”
In response to the motionpoem, poet Mark Strand told us, “I liked the film’s simplicity, which is very much in keeping with the poem, or so it seems to me.”
Uncle Harry’s Tombstone by John P. Tuschen
Jordan T. Caylor writes in the video description,
I recorded my dad reciting his poem “Uncle Harry’s Tombstone” at the end of his stint as the poet laureate of Madison, Wisconsin- this is my visual interpretation of his words.
just midnight by Robert Lax
An interesting solution to the problem of how to envideo a poem whose typographical arrangement was very important to its author. Susanne Wiegner notes at Vimeo,
“just midnight” is a poem by Robert Lax that describes a temporal and spacial situation by very minimal means. For Robert Lax the composition of the letters and words on the paper was very important. And so he created one of his vertical typefaces, that was transferred for the film. The letters become spaces and actors, crossed and circled by the camera. Step by step a three-dimensional formation of words is generated and disappears again in a sheet of paper.
The film has been very widely screened — click through for a full list of festivals and awards.
Billy Collins and his animated poems at TED conference
You’ve probably seen these animations before — if not, check out the dedicated site Billy Collins Action Poetry, or watch them (and others) on Moving Poems. What I found interesting here was Collins’ explanation for why he decided to let the animators go ahead and illustrate his poems, since in general he didn’t understand why a poem would need to be animated. His remarks evince little familiarity with the genre, and in questioning why any poem would need to be illustrated in this manner, strangely echo Ron Silliman’s criticism of one of them:
Thus Billy Collins’ The Dead is animated by Juan Delcan, neither poem nor cartoon threatening to break any new ground whatsoever. … [It’s] nothing more than a reading of the piece over which a cartoon has been superimposed.
But he gave in because he says he’s always loved cartoons, and because he figured it would bring his poems to a wider audience.
Advertising Lullaby by George Carlin
Found text has played a central role in the development of videopoetry, so this montage of advertising tropes by the late comedian George Carlin becomes a full-fledged poem merely by adaptation to the kinetic-text medium. An inspired choice and execution by Jenny Lien.
Becoming Judas: five poems by Nicelle Davis
These poems are from Becoming Judas by Nicelle Davis, forthcoming from Red Hen Press. The wonderfully whimsical drawings by Cheryl Gross are animated in a fairly basic style which the description at YouTube dubs “motion graphics.”
Motionpoems at the AWP book fair
A brief interview with Todd Boss, poet and co-founder of Motionpoems — the most ambitious poetry animation project in the U.S. to date, on a par with Comma Press’ film division in the U.K.
To Learn From Each Thing by John Siddique
http://vimeo.com/28658512
This is “Vine Moon” from John Siddique‘s Thirteen Moons series, directed and supervised by Walter Santucci. For this one, Raul Torres and Britt Wallstrom are credited with the animation and concept.
The Best Cigarette by Billy Collins
One of the 11 Billy Collins animations produced by New York TV station JWT in 2007. This one was directed by Will Hyde with animation by David Vaio.
