~ Author-made videopoems ~
At Freeman’s Farm by Marilyn McCabe
An author-made videopoem by Marilyn McCabe which incorporates voices of war veterans and videography by Peter Verardi. There’s a long and fascinating essay on McCabe’s website about the making of this videopoem, her first. Here’s a more succinct description from an email she sent me:
I gave my poem to some local vets then interviewed them about whether it made them think of anything particular in their experience, and asked particularly about the landscapes of the wars they’d experienced. I then wove some of their words into the stanzas of my poem, and set them to images from the Saratoga National Battlefield park, and the French art song, which is about men who are leaving for the far horizon feeling held back by the souls in the cradles they leave behind.
And here’s a brief excerpt from her essay:
I think the most important thing I learned as an artist from this project is to let go and just wait and see, to try things out without fear. So I tried things and took one step at a time and things began to come together.
I began to learn that images too have rhythm, have silence; that speech – with its rhythms and stutters – is rich and complicated and that voices are a kind of text; landscape is a kind of text and has movement and emotion. That I could create a kind of lineation and space by manipulating the movement of sound and picture. In the end, the whole thing felt more like a creating dance than anything else.
One of the ways I dealt with time was in the movement from image to image. I felt a kind of rise in energy in the third stanza where they’re talking about ordnance and the mechanisms of war, so I used faster flashes, and used the rise of the music here.
Silent Scene by J.P. Sipilä
Themes of alienation and belonging percolate through this experimental videopoem by the Finnish artist and poet J.P. Sipilä. The music is by Machifabriek and Samuli Sailo, and Roomet Jakapi contributed what Sipilä calls sound poems.
This is a featured video at London Poetry Systems, where Henry Stead wrote: “The balance and subtlety of the non-verbal’s relationship with the verbal is extremely powerful — a truly cross-media palette in the hands of a fine artist.” On his website, Sipilä observes: “In poetry there’s something left unsaid. In music there’s something left unheard. In film there’s something left unseen.”
The lyricline.org blog posted “Poetry & Film: statement by J.P. Sipilä” last year, which is worth quoting for additional context here:
What I do is videopoetry. It has a somewhat different approach to film and poetry than poetry film. I see poetry films as visual and kinetic illustrations of certain poems. But as far as videopoetry is concerned, video and sound are not mere reflections of certain poems, but a puzzle or juxtaposition of the three elements (video, sound and text). As videopoet Tom Konyves says: “Videopoetry is a genre of poetry displayed on a screen, distinguished by its time-based, poetic juxtaposition of text with images and sound. In the measured blending of these 3 elements, it produces in the viewer the realization of a poetic experience.”
A good videopoem creates a new overall poetic experience from the three elements used. For me the video is the paper and screen is the mouth of my poetry.
Sound and visual aspects have always had a huge effect on my poetry. I usually read poetry while listening music and when I see a piece of art I somehow automatically start thinking a story or a feeling behind it. Using video as a medium for my poetry was a step that was just waiting to be taken.
Day by Dylan Townsend
A videopoem “following the rhythm of a day… shots from Dublin, Ireland and New York,” according to Irish filmmaker-poet Dylan Townsend. This is an excerpt from a longer, not-yet-released film called Shadowsmiths. See Townsend’s videos on Vimeo for more excerpts.
Flowers by Tim Cumming
Tim Cumming‘s description at Vimeo is worth quoting in full:
A new film poem by Tim Cumming written on a walk from Hampstead Heath station to the Steeles in Belsize Park where he was offered snuff laced with cocaine and heard the story of Moll King, good mixer of Georgian London, a famous bawd and the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. Includes footage of witch dolls, amulets, mandrakes and more from the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, birds on the wire at Bodmin, Lord Byron and the waters of the Thames from Woolwich Dockyard, the paintings of Austin Osman Spare from the 2010 exhibition at the Cuming Museum in south London, 8mm archive film of The Towers in Corfe Mullen in the 1960s and wooden figurines carved in the 1980s by the hand of Peter Cumming.
La Ferita (The Cut) by Elena Chiesa
Another brilliant animation by Elena Chiesa, this one with her own text.
Right Through the Earth by Al Rempel
An intriguing, experimental videopoem filmed and directed by the author, Canadian poet Al Rempel. From the description on YouTube:
Right Through the Earth is a video-poem taken from the poem in my book, This Isn’t the Apocalypse We Hoped For. Steph St. Laurent of VideoNexus helped with post-production work & Isaac Smeele composed the original music for the sound-track.
This Isn’t the Apocalypse We Hoped For is due to be published this month by Caitlin Press.
What I Say Sometimes But Then Stop Myself by Peter Davis
Featured at The Volta: Medium, Issue #56,. Peter Davis “writes, draws, and makes music in Muncie, Indiana,” according to his bio. This poem is from his third book of poems, TINA, forthcoming from Bloof Books. Author-made poetry animations are a relative rarity for obvious reasons: animation is hard. But when poets do possess the skills to animate their own poems, very interesting things can happen, as this video demonstrates.
Traversate by Elena Chiesa
Italian videoartist Elena Chiesa says about her videopoetry:
These animations are the result of many metamorphosis of frames worked one by one “melting the pixels” as oil paint. The sum of many transformations creates this fluid…
Listening to poetry, as to a mantra or a song, always brings our mind to create a flow of images, stimulating the creation of visions provoked in our mind and memory by the words or sounds. What I try to produce is this flow. My personal flow. In animation.
Though she sometimes animates others’ poems, she doesn’t credit anyone else for “Traversate,” so I’m assuming she’s the author of both the poem and the translation.
Hearing Your Voice for the First Time by Raymond Luczak
Raymond Luczak has made a number of compelling poetry videos in American Sign Language, but this may be my favorite to date. It’s in support of his new book Mute. (See his YouTube channel for a few others.) Luczak writes:
In this clip, I recall what it was like to use my hearing aids when calling a prospective date for the first time. This happened back in the late 1980s, way before the Internet thing came along. The talented songwriter Seth Pennington performs his song “Want” as a guitar instrumental.
(As with the other Luczak videos I’ve posted, I’m putting this in the Spoken Word category even though that’s obviously not a perfect fit.)
Danebury Ring by Tim Cumming
Another video from U.K. poet-filmmaker Tim Cumming, this one uploaded to YouTube, whence the following description:
A film poem shot by poet Tim Cumming at Danebury Ring on the Hampshire-Wiltshire-Dorset borders. Danebury Ring is a stunning Iron Age hill fort where sheep graze in the centre of the rings, and the rings are circled by huge old trees. Tim Cumming’s poem, Danebury Ring, appears in the forthcoming anthology of British and Irish poetry, Identity Parade from Bloodaxe Books.
That anthology is now available (scroll down for a well-produced video of the launch reading).
Our Bodies (A Sinner’s Prayer) by Matt Mullins
Brilliant video remix of an Oral Roberts sermon by Matt Mullins. (For the text, see the description at Vimeo.)
fugue: forget you by Martha McCollough
Martha McCollough used footage by Kris Rodammer for this contrapuntal videopoem.
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