~ 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.
Abecedario Poético / Found Footage Mix by Raúl Calderón Gordillo and Mariano Rentería Garnica
Must be expanded to full screen. Mariano Rentería Garnica made the film in collaboration with his fellow Mexican artist Raúl Calderón Gordillo, who supplied the text. The Spanish/English title as given above is what he wrote in Vimeo, where he also supplied this explanation:
Este remix visual trata de crear una impresión rítmica de la mirada poética en el cine, mostrándola como imágenes aleatorias. Este Abecedario Poético es la búsqueda de una relación del cuerpo humano en el cine, apoyado con algunos textos del artista visual michoacano Raúl Calderon Gordillo.
This visual remix tries to make a rhythmic impression of the poetic glance in cinema by showing random images of beauty. The Poetic Alphabet, tries to make a relation in between the human body in cinema and the poems of the mexican visual artist Raúl Calderon Gordillo.
Dog Star Man by Howie Good
Update: Video has been made private.
Swoon‘s second film for a poem by Howie Good (look for the third here next week). I think the fugal structure works really well with this poem, especially in light of the last sentence:
You can hear if you really listen
the common names for things
weeping noisily beneath the music.
The poem appears in Lovesick from Press Americana (2009). Here’s a review.
Viva Zombatista by Simen Hagerup
Norwegian writer Simen Hagerup‘s poem is brought to life by Kristian Pedersen of Gasspedal Animert. (You might have to expand it to full-screen to read the English subtitles.)
tour de trance by Monika Rinck
Argentinian-born artist and composer Mario Verandi directed and wrote the music for this “audiovisual composition,” as he calls it, which appears to have benefitted from a very active collaboration with the poet: that’s Monika Rinck’s face in the film and her voice reciting the German text. I was also interested by the fully bilingual nature of the compostion, the German in the soundtrack alternating with English in a different voice (that of Douglas Hendenson). The film premiered at the 2008 ZEBRA International Poetry Film Festival in Berlin.
For more on poet, essayist and actress Monika Rinck, including English translations of some of her poems, see her page at Poetry International Web.
Cold Poem by Mary Oliver
Some lines of Mary Oliver’s get what I like to think of as the film equivalent of the illuminated manuscript treatment from artist Stephen Ausherman — another in his “e-scape” series made during a residency at the C-Scape dune shack on the Cape Cod National Seashore.
the wanderer’s blessing by Nic S.
This new Moving Poems production features a poem and reading by Nic S. from her collection Forever Will End on Thursday. She blogged her reaction to the video here. “The wanderer’s blessing” originally appeared in the online journal Escape Into Life.
For more about Nic, including links to a number of her poems online, see the bio page at her blog.
Why I Collect the Hair by Tara Betts
Director Nilja Mu’min’s “cine-poem” for a piece from Tara Betts‘ debut collection, Arc & Hue. Betts recently wrote about the collaboration on her blog.
The Albatross (L’Albatros) by Charles Baudelaire
A nicely non-literal interpretation that feels true to the spirit of Baudelaire. This is a Catalan film of a great French poem with an English translation in the soundtrack — specifically, the English of Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974). That and several other translations may be read at fleursdumal.org. Here’s the original French:
L’Albatros
Souvent, pour s’amuser, les hommes d’équipage
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,
Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.À peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,
Que ces rois de l’azur, maladroits et honteux,
Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches
Comme des avirons traîner à côté d’eux.Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule!
Lui, naguère si beau, qu’il est comique et laid!
L’un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,
L’autre mime, en boitant, l’infirme qui volait!Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.
Mountain High by Tal Nitzan
Avi Dabach directs. The original music and soundtrack are by Anat Gutman, and the reading is from the poet herself. A recent online publication of two poems by Tal Nitzan in English translation, at Writestuff, includes this bio:
Tal Nitzan has published four collections of poetry: Domestica, An Ordinary Evening, Café Soleil Bleu, [and] The First to Forget and won many awards. Nitzan is the editor of the anthology With an Iron Pen: Hebrew Protest Poetry 1984 – 2004.
The Green Man by Dick Jones
A Moving Poems production by yours truly. The text and reading are by the English poet and blogger Dick Jones. Thanks are also due to the blog carnival The Festival of the Trees, edition #60, which reprinted Dick’s poem, and featured as well a number of videos, helping to inspire this effort.
Help Motionpoems animate some “Best American Poetry”
In case you missed the note to “Sea Salt” by David Motion on Monday (or the Kickstarter widget in the main site’s sidebar) let me repeat what I wrote there:
Motionpoems has some pretty exciting news: they’ve partnered with David Lehman and Scribner’s Best American Poetry 2011, and are lining up animators to produce videos for poems in the anthology. If this is the kind of thing you’d like to help support, please consider making a donation to their Kickstarter campaign. With 15 days to go, they’ve raised more than $10,000 in pledges toward the $15,000 needed. Click through for the details, including a video that tells the story of how they got started.
Here are Angella and Todd to tell their story and give their pitch:
Please note that I am not connected with Motionpoems in any way other than that I like Angella and Todd and believe they are advancing poetry animation enormously in this country, comparable to, but more ambitious than, the efforts of Comma Press in northwest England. Of course, there is some enlightened self-interest at work here: I’m eager for more quality poetry videos! But I would also encourage other poetry video makers to consider following Angella and Todd’s example and get more aggressive about fundraising — and let me know if you do, so I can promote your efforts here.
Once again, here’s the link to help Motionpoems meet their $15,000 goal. The deadline is June 15.
