~ 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.

Better Days by Kevin Cadwallender

On 2 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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I’ve been reading interviews collected around the U.S. during the Great Depression by the Federal Writer’s Project, and this poem perfectly captures my reaction to that heritage of hard times and lives cut short by poverty and dangerous work. This is Alastair Cook‘s 19th filmpoem, with a sound composition by Mark Walters.

Monarchs by Carlin M. Wragg

On 1 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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This is a section from a longer poem, “Found Letters: Jack and Matilda.” The video is not the final product, but a documentation video of a sculpture, as Carlin M. Wragg explains in her description at Vimeo:

As part of my thesis for ITP, I’d like to create a system of expressive techniques that bring poems off the page in a way that is not quite theater, not quite art installation, and not quite public reading, but which incorporate elements of all of these. With this in mind, I’m collaborating with Kevin Bleich to identify and customize adaptive technologies that bring visual, aural, and environmental experiences together with poetry. As we iterate through a sequence of video sculptures that interpret elements of my novel-in-verse, Found Letters: Jack & Matilda, we are documenting our discoveries on a Tumblr called the Creative Tech Toolkit (creativetechtoolkit.tumblr.com). We hope this shared body of knowledge will serve as the technical foundation for our individual thesis projects.

For our first piece, Kevin and I extended the work we did in April and May of 2011 when we used a Kinect sensor, projection mapping, sound and video to animate a collection of fictional letters through readers’ interactions with an antique rolltop desk. This time we wanted to work on a smaller scale, so we projected video into a Kosta Boda snowball candleholder designed by Ann Warff. We hoped the candleholder’s rippled glass would diffuse the video imagery into the kind of flickering light one might find on a table set for a romantic dinner, as it is in the poem at the core of this piece.

(ITP, by the way, is the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University.)

Advert for Clinic 5 Psych Ward Poetry Circle (All Welcome) by Mikey Fatboy Delgado

On 29 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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http://youtu.be/7NRW-sAZx78

London writer and long-time blogger Mikey Fatboy Delgado has just begun to make videopoems. This is, I think, his second.

Bells of Atlantis by Anaïs Nin

On 28 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
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I just discovered that someone had uploaded a copy of this landmark film from 1952. Anaïs Nin’s husband Ian Hugo directed, with text from Nin’s novella House of Incest recited by the author over an electronic score by Louise and Bebe Barron. While the text may not be poetry per se, the form and style of the film anticipates modern filmpoetry/videopoetry by decades.

The Best Cigarette by Billy Collins

On 27 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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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.

Vocation by Sandra Beasley

On 24 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Video and poem by Sandra Beasley, using a text from I Was the Jukebox.

Baggage Claim by Regis McKenna

On 23 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This jazzy “video poem of New York City” by Jarrett Robertson, with music by Gaeland McKenna, has racked up more than 19,000 views on YouTube and close to 14,000 views on Dailymotion. I’m guessing that the Regis McKenna credited with the text is not the same as the Silicon Valley marketing expert.

Cephalo by Leah Silvieus

On 21 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Performance Poetry, Videopoems
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A live-reading-with-video – videopoem hybrid, part of an interesting (and sadly under-watched) series on YouTube by Homestead MediaJive TV called “Poets of the Unreeled,” featuring poets from the Miami area. Leah Silvieus is an MFA candidate at the University of Miami.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

On 20 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
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Swoon‘s very abstract take on the Frost poem, with a reading by Nic S. from Pizzicati of Hosanna.

As you might imagine, there are more than a few videos for this poem on the internet, most of them depressingly void of originality. So often, it seems, this is the fate of the most popular poems — to be badly read. Apparently it takes a filmmaker for whom English is a second language to hear the poem with a more open mind. Of course, Nic S.’s reading may have had something to do with that, too.

Leper Window, St Mary the Virgin by Jane McKie

On 17 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Alastair Cook’s 18th filmpoem incorporates a text by Scottish poet Jane McKie which “won the inaugural Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition in 2011 and was praised by the judges as ‘spare, musical and wonderfully imagined,'” Alastair tells us. Luca Nasciuti was the composer.

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Men by the Lips of Women by Amy King

On 16 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Barbie’s Ken reads a poem from Amy King‘s latest book, I Want to Make You Safe.

To do list by Keith Turner

On 15 February, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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Animation by the London graphic design firm Why Not Associates: “Our Smile for London poem, broadcast on London Underground platforms over the coming weeks.”