~ 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.
The Letters by Sigurd Tenningen
Another of Kristian Pedersen’s excellent animations for Gasspedal Animert. The sound effects are nearly are crucial as the images here. In some ways this is closer to a concrete poetry experiment than a kinetic type film.
Odds and Ends by Joseph Harker
Joseph Harker‘s poem appeared in qarrtsiluni back in October (whence the recording of his reading). Swoon blogged (in Dutch) about the making of the video here.
For a long time, I’ve wanted to make a film for my father, who died last year. Plenty of ideas. Especially ideas about how things are definitely not allowed to look. Or sound. The epitaph could not be more than a tribute to his own simplicity.
In the poem “Odds and Ends” (Qarrtsiluni Podcast 28.10.2011) by Joseph Harker, I found the words summoned up the right atmosphere for me. I was even more excited when Joseph gave permission to use his poem.
[…]
For the images I wanted a split. 2 tracks of images. Two streams of thought.
I used footage from “And So They Live,” a documentary from 1940 by John Ferno and Julian Roffman. Simplicity and warmth were the central concepts that I was looking at in these images. I also used (self-filmed) images from the train to my hometown. The contrast of the warmth and tranquility in the nostalgic images with the blurred images of the train rushing forward to my roots is, for me, successful evocation.
(Translation by Google and guesswork)
What Draws Us To The Sea? by John Siddique
http://vimeo.com/26261699
This is “Holly Moon” from John Siddique‘s Thirteen Moons series. The paintings are by Dania Strong, Clarpupia Hernandez did the animation, and credit for direction and supervision is given to Walter Santucci. As with the others in the series, the original music was composed by Katie Chatburn in response to the video.
Song for a Towerblock by Michelle Green
A collaboration between filmmaker Glenn-emlyn Richards and Manchester-based poet Michelle Green for Comma Film. For more on Green, see her section on Poetry International Web (which includes the text of this poem).
Alone by Yvor Winters
http://vimeo.com/33484094
A recent video by Nic S. for a poem included in her online audio collection Pizzicati of Hosanna.
Sandpiper by Elizabeth Bishop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZyj3gXEUis
Filmmaker and television producer John Scott is working on a feature-length documentary called Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing, which will include a number of videos like this one illustrating her poems. He wrote about the project at length for the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary blog.
Each scene will end on a poem whose inspiration comes from the tensions of the time period being described. And thus the poetry will not only be an aesthetically pleasing and rewarding study of genius, it will deepen the emotional content of her life-story.
I learned about the project from a feature at VidPoFilm back on Nov. 18. Brenda Clews sent Scott a couple questions via email. Quoting from his answers:
I am not interested solely in being illustrative — I am interested in at times being playful with the way the visuals/sounds and the words come together in an effort to use the expressive powers of visuals and sounds. There’s lots of potential in the medium itself that I think might otherwise be lost if it is simply slaved word for word to the text. […]
I believe the beauty of Bishop’s poetry is that it is so loaded with the spirit of the moment, in the fragmentary, in the lush, in the juxtaposition of contrasting images and in the point of view of its subjects.
Do read the rest. About this videopoem in particular, Scott noted on YouTube:
“Sandpiper” is a poem that was written by Elizabeth Bishop in 1965 and it is believed that it was based on observations she made on a trip she made as an adult back to Nova Scotia. Bishop’s adult life took her in many directions and places, and she has explicitly compared herself to the sandpiper and (presumably) both of their quests to endlessly seek (enlightenment?) through careful observation.
PROOF triptych: three poems by David Tomaloff
Swoon Bildos and David Tomaloff collaborated on a videopoetry triptych called PROOF, which has its own website. I didn’t want to split it into three posts since I think the videos are best watched together and in the intended sequence:
_object{-ions in the mirror
Thespianic Mythology No. 4
Proof
The first two poems were originally published (in text form) in the online magazine >kill author (here and here) while the third was written especially for this triptych.
Update (1/5/12): Swoon and Tomaloff are the featured artists of the month at CoronationPress.com for their creation of this triptych. The accompanying interview is full of fascinating details about their collaboration and methodology.
Andrew Wyeth, Painter, Dies at 91 by L.S. Klatt
Tom Jacobsen made this latest animation for Motionpoems, illustrating a poem by L.S. Klatt which was included in his collection Cloud of Ink as well as in Best American Poems 2011. According to a blog post from Pixel Farm, the production studio where he works, Jacobsen based his animation on a series of photos of landscapes reminiscent of Wyeth paintings: “On a 9-day Dakota road trip with his son, Jacobsen snapped photos of the Midwest landscape that were inspired by the painter and then incorporated into the finished piece.”
Let it be dark, and it was dark by John Siddique
http://vimeo.com/30260208
This is from a series of animations called Thirteen Moons. I’ll let the author, bestselling U.K. poet John Siddique, explain:
A series of 13 animated films based on a sequence of poems from Recital — An Almanac (Salt). The poems are based on the Full Moons of the year and the Celtic mythology which names each moon after a letter in the ancient tree alphabet.
The films were created when I was British Council Poet in Residence at California State University in Los Angeles. Made with determination, love, and goodwill. Animation director Walter Santucci, his students, friends and myself set to work before passing the pieces to composer Katie Chatburn. My aim was to gave each artist a free hand in what they came up with in response to the poems, interjecting as lightly as possible.
The paintings in this one are by Dania Strong. I’ll be sharing more of these in the coming weeks, but if you’re impatient, you can browse them all — or twelve of them, at any rate — at the album Siddique has set up for them on Vimeo (whence the above quote).
