~ Author-made videopoems ~
The City Inside, Part 1 by Tim Cumming
A new film from UK poet and filmmaker Tim Cumming, who notes on Vimeo:
First part of a two-part film of a London poem The City Inside. You could call it an inner city revealed.
Every metropolis dweller has their own inner city, an internal map organism that grows through space and time. This is work in progress. Status may change.
After Image by Matt Mullins
Poet Matt Mullins shows how to make an effective videopoem out of a single photo. The text, voiceover, and audio-visual composition are all his own here; the original photographer is unknown.
Without War by Gerry King
This author-made filmpoem by Gerry King in collaboration with videographer Gregory Rose is reminiscent of the most powerful political campaign ads, but with a more timeless message. The use of multiple readers, each situated in a particular place, lends additional veracity to the message—and I like the idea of a performance poet standing aside to let others take the mike. Here’s the YouTube description:
More than twenty years ago Gerry King wrote Without War and performed it to audiences across England. Now in a collaboration with his friend and Dartington College of Arts collaborator Gregory Rose the text is given a new life while the theme continues to steal lives all over the world….
Text © Gerry King, Images and soundtrack © King and Rose 2016.
Not My Home by José Orduña
An author-made videopoem by Mexican-American writer José Orduña from the Winter/Spring 2016 issue of Triquarterly (where it’s described as a video essay). This is the first issue with videos chosen and introduced by the new video editor, nonfiction writer and illustrator Kristen Radtke. Here’s what she wrote about “Not My Home”:
In “Not My Home,” José Orduña explores negation. He invites us inside intimate images of a single home—shoes by the door, a stuffed animal on an unmade bed, pencil lines up the wall marking children’s growth. These images are repeated even as the narrator tells us over and over again that the home is not his, that the memories do not belong to him and neither does this story. Yet we as viewers get the feeling he knows this house better than anyone has ever known a home before, and that perhaps that knowledge is exactly why he needs to go about negating it—it is, in a sense, a haunting. Just the slight unease of a subtle breeze, or a motion in the corner of your field of vision, is the sense of a ghost. Orduña’s very short video clips create gorgeous moving snapshots of a disembodied life: Grass twitches. Light shimmers on a teapot. His slow, melancholic images make us ache for the space as much as his narrator seems to.
Click through to watch the other two video essays Radtke chose. I’m pleased to see that the magazine still leads off with its video selections, though I hope that the absence of videos identified as “cinepoetry” is only temporary. (Perhaps they just aren’t getting enough submissions.)
Pearls by Chaucer Cameron
An author-made videopoem by Chaucer Cameron that was sparked by an image in a Swoon videopoem. Pearls was recently featured at Atticus Review, accompanied by some process notes:
Symbolically, Pearls provides a vehicle for wisdom as well as providing a mirror in which to see ourselves, giving us insight into how we appear to others.
In a more literal sense, the “Mother” in the poem is on a mission to ‘find herself’ through some pearls that she thinks are hidden in the rocks. Her son, who is watching from down below, is trying desperately to communicate, to gain her attention, her love. In fact, he is trying to tell her that she already has pearls, if only she could see them.
The first line of the poem was inspired by a poetry-film on Moving Poems site, so it seemed appropriate to explore my text further through film. I sent the poem to Voiceover Artist and Broadcaster David Wartnaby. A few weeks later, I found exactly the right footage, music and sound and the poetry-film fell into place.
Message4u by Cecelia Chapman and Jeff Crouch
https://vimeo.com/153544328
Artists Cecelia Chapman and Jeff Crouch have collaborated on a number of videos over the years, some of which — like this one — can be seen as videopoems. The soundtrack is by Halo Svevo, and Christa Hunter appears in the video along with footage from 1956 film On Guard! by IBM. There’s also a small folded book and CD.
Message4u is a video and folding book based on email conversations between myself and Jeff Crouch about knowledge, democracy, technology and the computer and oracle as repositories of knowledge and prediction.
.
Noman’s Land Common by Robert Peake
A new videopoem by Robert Peake (poem, concept) and Valerie Kampmeier (original music). With all the thousands of poetry videos I’ve watched over the years, I’ve never seen someone use footage shot through a kaleidoscope before—leave it to an endlessly inventive tech geek and poet like Peake to come up with it. I find the effect mesmerizing and an apt complement to the text. As usual, he’s posted the poem at his blog, along with some process notes:
With the tenth anniversary of the birth and death of our son James fast approaching, I find myself writing about the ongoing effects, including sudden and overpowering moments of grief. The text came first. I then shot time-lapse of clouds through an inexpensive toy kaleidoscope using a Raspberry Pi camera. I also shot real-time nature footage through the same kaleidoscope by holding it up to my smartphone camera. Valerie composed and performed the music. The title refers to a nearby patch of common land in North Hertfordshire that we frequent. One year, after extensive tilling, a field adjacent to the common erupted in red poppies, not unlike the no-man’s land of the First World War.
Ressacs / Backwashes by Jean Coulombe
A gorgeous, author-made videopoem from Quebecois poet Jean Coulombe and videographer Gilbert Sévigny, “Réalisé pour le blogue de création poétique CLS Poésie.” The text (shown via type on screen) is only in French, but at my request, Coulombe sent along an English translation:
RESSACS / BACKWASHES
À pelleter devant soi / Shovelling forward
des phrases-chocs / shocking sentences
que personne n’écoute / that nobody listens to
à clamer dans le vide / shouting in the emptiness
notre stupeur de vivre / our amazement to liveon désapprend le feu / we unlearn fire
on tressaille sans faire d’ombres / we flinch without casting shadowsil ne faudrait surtout pas / we certainly should not
bloquer le trottoir / block the sidewalk
ramener les illusions / bring back illusions
trop près des braises / too close to the embers
CLS Poésie is a group literary blog after my own heart, and makes me wish I knew French. The three poets behind it even have a joint Blogger/Google account, which reads:
Les poètes Jean Coulombe, Alain Larose et Denis Samson ont ouvert cet espace , libre et sans prétention, en juin 2009, pour partager leur poésie sous toutes ses formes. Cette grande aventure a débuté à Saint-Benjamin dans la région des Etchemins au Québec.
The poets Jean Coulombe, Alain Samson and Denis Larose opened this space, free and unpretentious, in June 2009, to share their poetry in all its forms. This great adventure began in Saint-Benjamin Etchemins in the region in Québec. (via Google Translate)
National Service (with added talky bits) by Luke Wright
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CItv206HE_Q
British performance poet Luke Wright notes on YouTube,
Four months into my six month driving ban I’m getting nostalgic about motorway service stations. I miss rating my toilet experience.
This very basic video shot with a stationary camera is rendered thoroughly engrossing by Wright’s entertaining performance and the innovative (though deliberately not seamless) co-mingling of rhyming poetry and explication.
Abschied / Parting by Sophie Reyer
A videopoetry collaboration between Austrian writer Sophie Reyer and Belgian artist Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon, who writes:
Last summer I was invited to give a workshop at the dotdotdot Kurzfilmfestival in Vienna. During that weekend I met Sophie Reyer.
We decided to collaborate on a video for one of her poems, Abschied.
[…]
Spohie is also a composer and a filmmaker. In our mailing back and forth I received some of her compositions and a short film she made a few years ago.
I decided to take pieces of her music and a short sequence of her film ‘Die Erfahrung’ and re-mix and build a new work on those pieces.A soundtrack came first; [Soundcloud link]
Most sounds and noises you hear in this track (except for the clicks, the birds, and the piano) are all made out of samples of Sophie’s music and voice.
She also provided me with a subdued reading and an English translation for the subtitles.I used the tempo (and clicks) in the soundtrack as a guide to edit the chosen film sequences. Using a lot of repetition to create a form of visual rhythm.
Once the videopoem was done I asked Sophie to do a small write up;
Image and sound. Words and pictures. In “Abschied” i try to talk about letting go and starting a new. In my work with marc neys we focused on sound- and picture- material that i associate with the subject of death. we used it as a playground. mark re- arranged and composed the material, put it into rhythm, added new layers, used filters and interpreted the fragments in a very intelligent way.
We both like what came out of this and might collaborate again in the future, but then with newly created sounds and film…
For now, enjoy Abschied!
Break and Remake by Martha McCollough
A new videopoem by artist and poet Martha McCollough always makes me do a little dance of pure delight. Break and Remake debuted on Atticus Review a week ago, and I’ve held off on sharing it till now (not wanting to steal their thunder) only with great difficulty. Here’s how McCollough introduced it:
Break and Remake came out of thinking about the recombined creatures in myths and in the margins of medieval manuscripts. The whole video is broken and reassembled, as are the griffins, chimeras, and other monsters within the video. The text is also a hybrid, combining overheard remarks, a line from a song by Son House and computer-generated text from spam.
Tiny Machine by Dave Malone
An author-made videopoem by Dave Malone that also functions as a trailer for his book O: Love Poems from the Ozarks (TS Poetry Press, 2015). The music is by Wayne Blinne. (H/t: tweetspeak.)
Don’t miss a post
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy