~ Videopoems ~
Videopoetry, filmpoetry, cinepoetry, poetry-film… the label doesn’t matter. What matters is that text and images enter into dialogue, creating a new, poetic whole.
Unseen by Sjaan Flikweert
Director Helmie Stil calls this “A poetry film about the feeling of isolation, struggle and being unseen.” A woman holds, releases and inhabits her breath underwater until she begins to seem less substantial than her suit of bubbles. The often-eerie similarity between Dutch and English is exploited to full effect, as the words on the screen meet their whispered counterparts for an effect at once intimate and menacing, especially as violence is described but not shown, and the viewer struggles to interpret the actress’s struggle: Is she swimming or drowning?
The poem is by Dutch spoken-word artist Sjaan Flikweert, and a final line of text, which appears after the poem seems to be done, reads, “1 in every 5 women endures domestic violence.” Then the title appears, this time to translate not a spoken Dutch word but only a sharply indrawn breath. A stand-out videopoem.
ÎÏÎźÎœÎżÏ/Lament by Miltos Sachtouris
A 2018 film animated and directed by Afroditi Bitzouni with music and sound design by Kyriakos Charalampides and Giuliano Anzani, featuring the voice of the Greek poet Miltos Sachtouris (1919-2005) and an English translation by Danai Daska in subtitles. Here’s Bitzouni’s description:
ÎÏÎźÎœÎżÏ (Lament) is a short animated film based on the poem, that was crafted by Miltos Sachtouris and was included in the collection ΣΊΥÎÎÎÎÎ Îź Î ÎÎÎÎÎ ÎŁÎÎÎÎÎ.
This short animated piece aspires to narrate a transition from the present world to a better one. The story line includes incidents that are strongly related to war and lead to the end of the present; recreating a future imaginary world. That way, we emphasize on the diachronic character of the poem.
The visual part is composed of an illustrated sequence inspired by the poem and crafted with textures from books and old images. Words are translated into characters and abstract environments floating into blank or vivid colors, reflecting the poemâs rhythm and creating a storyline. The various materials are connected through motion events that separate the poem in two main sections; the section referring to the present and the one referring to the future.
The sound is composed using recordings of flute, foley and analog synthesizers that were later digitally processed. Through this method we attempt to provide a backbone to the poet’s narration, amplifying the textural motion of the video.
Aiming to combine the existed material with alternative and contemporary mediums, we invite the audience to preserve and experience the poem through multiple senses.
ÎÏÎźÎœÎżÏ/Lament (click through and scroll down for the text of the poem in Greek and English)
We’ve shared two of Bitzouni’s other animations over the years, but missed some good ones. Catch up on them all on Vimeo.
Extract from ‘Hellseason’ (‘Une Saison en Enfer’ by Arthur Rimbaud as a custom Broforce level) by Jon Stone
British writer, editor and researcher Jon Stone has just uploaded this experiment, created as part of his research for Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Video Games (De Gruyter, 2022: Volume 3 in the series Video Games and the Humanities), noting in the description that “I wanted to see if I could rewrite the opening of this long Rimbaud poem as a playable action sequence. In the end, I decided it wasn’t working — but it makes for a fun video.” He has a new essay in The Conversation going into more detail about the project: “Can a poem be adapted into a video game? Hereâs what I learned from trying.”
Perhaps the most longstanding case of existing poetry being used as the basis for a game is Hyakunin Isshu Karuta, a competitive Japanese card game in which players match the different parts of poems from the Hyakunin Isshu haiku anthology. The actions of the players here embody the principle of âtwo worlds in one breathâ, which some have argued is central to haiku.
But with the plethora of digital game-making tools now available to poets, as well as the enduring literary penchant for modernising classical texts â see Alice Oswaldâs Memorial (2011), or Simon Armitageâs Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2000) â itâs likely that weâll begin to see more efforts to convert classical poems into video games.
One example is Danteâs Inferno (2010) by Visceral Games. This third-person adventure re-imagines Danteâs circles of hell as battle arenas, honouring some of the poemâs more memorable imagery, such as âthe infernal hurricane that never restsâ. Inevitably, though, in the case of violent action games, itâs the narrative arc of the story which is the focus.
On the more experimental end, Gotta Eat the Plums! with William Carlos Williams by Calum Rodger remakes Williamsâ poem This Is Just To Say (1934) as a miniature role playing game for the Game Boy. The original poem can be interpreted as concerned with the everyday perversity of human desires, about which we are simultaneously apologetic and boastful (plums, like all juicy fruit, being symbolically linked to forbidden knowledge and sex).
But Rodger adds subtle commentary to this symbolism. He gives the player the option to refrain from eating the plums three times, using up their willpower gauge until they are eventually compelled to consume them.
In a Minute There is Time (2023) by Aster Fialla, meanwhile, is a short text-based game using T.S. Eliotâs The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) as its springboard. It plays specifically on the theme of time, forcing the player down various avenues using a countdown timer. This puts them physically in the position of Prufrock, who is haunted and vexed by the inevitability of death.
Read the rest. Discussing the Rimbaud video, he says:
This attempt uses a flaming tropical jungle, replete with machine guns and exploding barrels, as a metaphysical representation of Rimbaudâs psychological turmoil, with the player battling toward self-understanding. It ran aground, however, due to the difficulty of following the poem alongside the colourful action sequences.
Video game adaptations of poems are not impossible. They do, however, need to leave space for readers to engage with the specific effects of language.
Experimenting further, I found the video game genres which admit the presence of poetry most readily are those which require careful calibration and thoughtful probing from the player. For example, puzzle games, story-rich role playing games, games of exploration and visual novels. Where the two mediums can be integrated, there is great potential for a doubling up of their powers â video gamesâ ability to draw us into alternative worlds and poetryâs propensity to speak lasting truths.
Water for Canaries by Doyali Islam
the last singing descendants of a burning world
the first heirs of a new
So often, the poems most effective at making a political statement are not overtly political at all. Here’s a 2019 animation by Suzie Hanna, an Emerita Professor of Animation at Norwich University of the Arts whose “current personal focus in research and practice is poetry animation made in collaboration,” according to her website. I found a good micro-review on the Palestine Cinema website:
How can we witness a world in which the moon and the drone hang in the same sky? What can the evolution of dinosaur into bird tell us about human survival? In âwater for canariesâ, award-winning Toronto poet Doyali Islam contemplates an Associated Press photograph taken during a ceasefire within the July 2014 bombing of Beit Hanoun. Islamâs poem acts as solemn witness but also achieves a moment of lift-off in which Palestinians reveal their extraordinary courage, resilience, and mercy. UK animator Suzie Hanna has collaborated to create a short poetry film using hand-cut stencils and paint to emphasize the chaotic atmosphere and to celebrate the fragility of life amid destruction. doyali-islam.com & suziehanna.com
The poem âwater for canariesâ is from Doyali Islamâs 2019 poetry book, heft, published by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada.
Here’s the link to heft. Doyali Islam’s website seems to be offline, but here’s a good bio. “Water for Canaries” wasn’t the only poem from heft to get adapted into a poetry film; “Letter” had three different adaptations for the online Visible Poetry Project in 2019, including one by Moving Poems’ own Jane Glennie: see here. And we’ve shared a number of Suzie Hanna’s animations over the years.
scrambled transmission #3 by Matt Mullins
This month, American writer and poetry film artist Matt Mullins released a new author-made video poem on his Vimeo channel, titled “scrambled transmission #3.â Itâs the most recent work from Mullins, who took second place at this yearâs Filmetry 24: The Poetics of Cinema with his film, âJanet Leigh is Afraid of Jazz,â which is based on a poem by Marsha de la O and was previously profiled by Moving Poems.
âscrambled transmission #3â leads with an interesting soundscape, one which reflects the poemâs title, by way of a fuzzy, mechanical, radio-out-of-tune loop. It pairs well with the black and white found footage. The filmâs opening image highlights a compelling fusion of insect and machine, and its following frames continue riffing on this same visual theme, which often make use of repetition. This piece also uses intertitles, so between the footage and its filter and the text on screen, âscrambled transmission #3â makes direct connections with the silent film era.
The poem itself, voice-overed by Mullins, evokes something of Hunter S. Thompson in its themes and tone: a third-person narrative in fragments highlighting mundane acts of violence and estrangement on a âtypical atypical day,â mind-altering substances, memory, and American underground art subculture. Overall, the links between the insect world and the human psyche are made quite clear through the poemâs intertitles, voice-over, and found footage. I also thought that the delivery of the poem, particularly its cadence and sense of addled urgency, vaguely recalled the Beat Poets.
As for the filmmaker himself, Mullins’ description of his latest poetry film is refreshingly simple, as he writes: âSome things, one hopes, are self-explanatory.â
View the videopoem here.
Endlings by Angela France
UK poet Angela France reads her poem “Endlings” in a film directed by Helen Dewbery for Nine Arches Press. “Endlings” was nearly the title poem for France’s latest collection, Terminarchy (2021), as she noted in an interview:
I came across the word âendlingâ, which means the last of any species, a while ago. For a long time this collection was going to be titled âEndlingâ but then a poet in the USA brought out a collection with that title and there is also a series of fantasy books and a computer game called endling. The other word for the last of a species is âterminarchâ. I didnât like terminarch as much at first, it had an ugly sound to my ear. Adding a âyâ softened the sound and suggested a different direction; we are used to talking about patriarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, perhaps we should think about whether we are heading for terminarchy.
I liked the sound of the word endling but also thought a lot about what it means to be the last. The strongest, most urgent drive in nature is to reproduce so an endling is driven into hopelessness. The endlings in the poem ignore their prey because of that âolder, greater needâ and only find release, and peace, in death.
I suspect most of us could name at least a couple of extinct animals, such as the Tasmanian Tiger (the thylacine) but when I started researching the species lost in the last few years, I was astonished, and saddened, at the number of them. Some of the names were just wonderful, such as the âGloomy tube-nosed batâ and the âDarling Downs hopping mouseâ. They didnât find their way into this poem but they have remained in my memory, perhaps for another time. There is a very particular grief, for me, in discovering these things after they have left us.
The form of the poem is a loose terza rima, with slant rhyme. I like this form because of its subtle music and also because the interlocking rhyme scheme can have the effect of looking back while stepping forward. I usually prefer slant rhyme because I find full rhyme can fall very heavily on the end of the line unless it is used with great skill.
I feel I should explain something about Sparrow who appears at the end of this poem. William Sparrow was a historical character in my last book, The Hill. He was one of the ringleaders of the local riots over the closure of rights of way on the hill, in 1902. He was a road-sweeper and was literate, witty, and furious, writing daily letters to the newspapers. He has insisted on having a voice in this book but he is not now William Sparrow. He is not Sparrow the man, nor is he sparrow the bird, but something else entirely and he speaks up in a few poems through the book. I am not sure what he is except that he seems to take the role of an ecological conscience. Here, he weeps for all we have lost and are losing, the hopelessness of not having an ark.
In Conversation – Angela France
