~ Concrete and visual poetry ~

The Polish Language by Alice Lyons

On 27 July, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems, Concrete and visual poetry
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This is just about the most inventive typographic animation I’ve even seen — a gorgeous and moving tribute to the power of Polish poetry by American-Irish poet and artist Alice Lyons and Irish artist Orla Mc Hardy. The film has its own website at thepolishlanguage.com, whence the following description:

The Polish Language is an animated film-poem about the subversive force of art and the renewal of poetry in the whispery language of Polish.

Based on the poem of the same title, the film pays homage to the revitalization of poetry in the Polish language in the 20th century. Using hand-drawn, stop-motion and time-lapse animation techniques, the poem unfolds onscreen, with typography as a key visual element. It visual style is loosely based on underground publications in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s, known as Bibula. A chorus of voices sampling poems in Polish, woven together with original music by sound designer Justin Spooner, combine to create a powerful score in a film of ’emotional depth and technical sophistication’ (Jury, Galway Film Fleadh 2009, award for Best Animation).

The Polish Language is at once a playful and solemn journey into the sensuality, beauty and power of language.

Lyons wrote the poem, while Mc Hardy took the lead on the animation. For full credits and a list of screenings, see the website’s About page. The poets sampled in the soundtrack are Tadeusz Różewicz, Zbigniew Herbert and Wisława Szymborska.

Written in My Dream by William Carlos Williams

On 7 May, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Concrete and visual poetry
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This kinetic text poetry animation by Nikolaus Lesnik uses a reading by Allen Ginsberg.

innocent beat by Martha McCollough

On 25 April, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems, Concrete and visual poetry
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An interesting kinetic-text animation by Martha McCollough, a painter and animator from Boston, who notes in the description that it it is “Based on a page from my erasure project Grey Vacation. The wrongest thing ever said.”

IO game over by Sergio Garau

On 12 April, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry, Musical settings, Performance Poetry
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http://youtu.be/EXIjgZ7yafM

This videopoem by Angelo Saccu, performed by Sergio Garau to music by Antonio Marra, betrays influences from all over: it’s equal parts concert video, sound poem and concrete/kinetic-text poem. I ran the YouTube description through Google Translate:

The violent encounter between political identities, economic, cultural, language here is staged through an ironic game of opposites. The ‘I’, translated into machine language 1 0 (zero), cut into pieces for binary digital misunderstood as grotesque chaos of contradictory slogans of contemporary power, explodes in a syncopated rhythm outside of himself. For tris doubly impossible breaks down the end of his world.

Lenora de Barros: the challenge of working with sound in a society of images

On 27 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry, interviews
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Lenora de Barros is a genre-crosser, a concrete poet and visual artist also working in film and audio. I was impressed that someone with such a strong background in the visual aspect of poetry would become so seduced by sound.

I searched for an example of her work on YouTube and found Encorpa (Embodies), a video made for an exhibition called The Overexited Body — Art and Sports. Lenora de Barros is credited with the sound on this piece along with Cid Campos. Brazilian filmmaker Grima Grimaldi directs.

Abecedario Poético / Found Footage Mix by Raúl Calderón Gordillo and Mariano Rentería Garnica

On 20 June, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry
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Must be expanded to full screen. Mariano Rentería Garnica made the film in collaboration with his fellow Mexican artist Raúl Calderón Gordillo, who supplied the text. The Spanish/English title as given above is what he wrote in Vimeo, where he also supplied this explanation:

Este remix visual trata de crear una impresión rítmica de la mirada poética en el cine, mostrándola como imágenes aleatorias. Este Abecedario Poético es la búsqueda de una relación del cuerpo humano en el cine, apoyado con algunos textos del artista visual michoacano Raúl Calderon Gordillo.

This visual remix tries to make a rhythmic impression of the poetic glance in cinema by showing random images of beauty. The Poetic Alphabet, tries to make a relation in between the human body in cinema and the poems of the mexican visual artist Raúl Calderon Gordillo.

Poem by Alan Dugan

On 2 June, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry
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A videopoem about a poem called “poem” (from the collection Cross Section 1947): Stephen Ausherman brings a fresh approach to the genre of concrete videopoetry here. According to the note on Vimeo,

Camera obscura transforms a page from an anthology into visual poetry. Alan Dugan is one of several Cape Cod writers interpreted by Stephen Ausherman during his 2010 art residency at the C-Scape dune shack.

This sounds like a fascinating project, dedicated to “interpreting local literature through new media,” as Ausherman puts it on his website. The five videos completed during his residency in the shack on the National Seashore were first “screened” for visitors in and around the shack itself.

For more about Alan Dugan, see the Poetry Foundation page (and check out the PF’s slick new revamped website!).

poetry by Laura Theobald

On 27 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry, Miscellaneous
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An homage to the Gray Lady of American poetry magazines.

A Fire in Ice by Marly Youmans

On 29 March, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 3 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry
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Paul Digby designed and created this video, which I am slotting into the “concrete poetry” category (even though the text is in rhyming couplets) on the strength of its last few seconds, which to me also perform the essential function of suggesting additional meanings beyond those immediately obvious in the text itself. Marly Youmans reads her poem, which is from her new collection The Throne of Psyche.

In Earth Dreams by Daniela Elza

On 24 January, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Concrete and visual poetry
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Interesting kinetic text animation by Daniela Elza’s husband Dethe, “programmed in NodeBox, final video produced using QuickTime and iMovie.” To me, this kind of fits in the “concrete poetry” category (though I admit that’s subjective, and I should probably just merge it into a kinetic text category).

Kinetic type poem by Zach Lieberman

On 6 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Concrete and visual poetry
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Self-referential in the grand tradition of concrete poetry. The music is also a perfect fit, I thought.

Poem by Zach Lieberman. Code by Zach Lieberman & Kimmo Kallio. Performed live by Kimmo Kallio. Built with Processing. processing.org

Soundtrack: Caveman lament by Chris Clark.

Window Interplay by Francisco José Blanco

On 22 October, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry
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I don’t entirely understand Josephine Gustavsson’s explanation for the method here, but it sounds highly imaginative:

Every day, trains scrape off iron filings from the rails of the tube network. These filings are regularly removed by staff, since they can otherwise interfere with the signaling system. The procedure is carried out using a machine that contains a magnetic force.

The visualisation of the poem ‘Window Interplay’ is made for the moving image screens of the London Underground, to inspire Monday morning commuters. It is made through a series of explorations, making use of iron powder and magnetic fields.


Francisco José Blanco is a Venezuelan artist resident in Sweden.