~ 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.
Large Red Man Reading by Wallace Stevens
http://www.vimeo.com/28855678
This has to be one of my favorite found footage-poem match-ups ever. It’s one of Nic S.’s first solo efforts at videopoem-making (though she doesn’t appear to have blogged it). Here’s the text of the poem.
When I Don’t Love You Anymore is a Wasp by Donna Vorreyer
This comprises the first panel of Propolis, the videopoem triptych produced by Swoon Bildos, Whale Sound (Nic S.) and Cello Dreams (Kathy McTavish). According to the extremely interesting process notes for the project, Swoon took the lead in determining the artistic direction (inspired by Turner, Goya and Bacon, he says) and finding and getting permission for the footage to fit that vision, but his two collaborators took an active role in shaping it, in addition to providing the soundtrack, so I’ve listed all three of them together as filmmakers. I’m departing from tradition and putting up three posts today, because the three videos in the triptych belong together (but the poet-centric format here prevents me from putting them all in one post). Please visit the Propolis website for the full experience, which includes a special mashup of all three videos which I won’t share here, plus the aforementioned process notes and a paragraph on each of the contributors, including this one about Donna Vorreyer:
Donna Vorreyer spends her days convincing middle-schoolers that words matter. Her work has appeared in many journals including Weave, Cider Press Review, qaartsiluni, and Rhino. She is the author of the chapbooks, Womb/Seed/Fruit (Finishing Line Press) and Come Out, Virginia (Naked Mannekin Press) and a contributor to the blog Voice Alpha. You can visit her online at her blog Put Words Together; Make Meaning or her website www.donnavorreyer.com
The site also includes the text of the poem.
The Lights Are On In The Museum by David Tomaloff
This comprises the second panel of Propolis, the videopoem triptych produced by Swoon Bildos, Whale Sound (Nic S.) and Cello Dreams (Kathy McTavish). Here’s the contributor’s note about David Tomaloff:
David Tomaloff (b. 1972) is a writer, photographer, musician, and all around bad influence. His work has appeared in fine publications such as Mud Luscious, >kill author, Thunderclap!, HOUSEFIRE, Prick of the Spindle, DOGZPLOT, elimae, and many more. He is the author of the chapbooks, A SOFT THAT TOUCHES DOWN &REMOVES ITSELF (NAP) Olifaunt (The Red Ceilings Press), EXIT STRATEGIES (Gold Wake Press) and MESCAL NON-PALINDROME CINEMA (Ten Pages Press). He resides in the form of ones and zeros here.
Visit the Propolis site for the text of the poem.
Sunday Services by Lisa J. Cihlar
This comprises the third panel of Propolis, the videopoem triptych produced by Swoon Bildos, Whale Sound (Nic S.) and Cello Dreams (Kathy McTavish). Here’s their contributor’s note about Lisa Cihlar:
Lisa J. Cihlar‘s poems have been published in The Pedestal Magazine, Green Mountains Review, In Posse Review, Bluestem, and The Prose-Poem Project. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in rural Southern Wisconsin.
Visit Propolis to read the text of the poem.
Matters by Hannah Stephenson
Starting back in March, blogger-poet Hannah Stephenson has been cutting back on her previous pattern of a new poem every weekday to share a multimedia presentation on Fridays (which is actually, I’m sure, more work — I don’t mean to imply she’s been slacking!). Last Friday, she posted this video, which incorporates the text of a previously blogged poem.
“Wild nights…” by Emily Dickinson
Thanks to CreatureCast for licensing this wonderful undersea footage under a Creative Commons license, permitting this repurposing. I blogged about the making of it at Via Negativa. Due to the format of the original film, I was forced to learn how to make a widescreen (16:9) video, which turned out not be difficult at all (thought the standardized dimensions of videos here at Moving Poems give it an extra-wide top and bottom border).
For a very different audio interpretation of the poem, listen to videopoet Brenda Clews‘ reading on the Woodrat Podcast, Episode 31: Emily Dickinson at 180. Brenda’s reading starts just past the four-minute mark.
What Remains by Gareth Sion Jenkins
Jason Lam directs. Other credits (since they aren’t given in the film) include performers Tara Robertson and Stuart Warren, and composer and sound designer Adam Synnott — this according to the description for another version of the film on Vimeo.
What Remains explores the uneasy zone between pleasure and pain; love and possession; connection and abandonment. We open up and another infiltrates virus-like, gets beneath our skin, modifies our form, redirects our blood stream.
Gareth Sion Jenkins is an Australian poet — see the bio at Mascara Literary Review.
Tom Kessler, Stockton Island, 1887 by Kenneth Pobo
A videopoem made to double as a video trailer for the winner of qarrtsiluni magazine’s 2011 chapbook contest: Ice and Gaywings, by Kenneth Pobo, forthcoming from Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal. See our post about the video at the magazine for more. (I was responsible for commissioning this film from Swoon in my capacity as qarrtsiluni co-Managing Editor, and helped shape the content a little, but the main ideas and final decisions were Swoon’s.)
Qué se ama cuando se ama (What do we love when we love) by Gonzalo Rojas
http://vimeo.com/1871573
“A tribute to the poet and to love,” says Cristián Tàpies, the maker of this widely screened photomotion film. English subtitles are the work of Pedro Donoso. Gonzalo Rojas was a major Chilean poet who lived much of his life in exile, and died this past April.
