~ 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.
Poem by Alan Dugan
A videopoem about a poem called “poem” (from the collection Cross Section 1947): Stephen Ausherman brings a fresh approach to the genre of concrete videopoetry here. According to the note on Vimeo,
Camera obscura transforms a page from an anthology into visual poetry. Alan Dugan is one of several Cape Cod writers interpreted by Stephen Ausherman during his 2010 art residency at the C-Scape dune shack.
This sounds like a fascinating project, dedicated to “interpreting local literature through new media,” as Ausherman puts it on his website. The five videos completed during his residency in the shack on the National Seashore were first “screened” for visitors in and around the shack itself.
For more about Alan Dugan, see the Poetry Foundation page (and check out the PF’s slick new revamped website!).
Apocrypha by Gerard Wozek
Gerard Wozek and Mary Russell have been collaborating on videopoems for years; since the inception of this website, I’ve included on the About page a quote from, and link to, the page about poetry video on Wozek’s website (q.v. for more on both of them and the history of their collaboration). But I believe this is the first example of their work to be uploaded to a video sharing site for embedding elsewhere. It’s rather more like a video slideshow than a film, but includes just enough moving images to meet my admittedly subjective standard for inclusion here. (Also, as a nature lover, I really appreciated the content!) Here’s the description Russell included at Vimeo:
Apocrypha: What secretive inspirations nurture one’s ability to draw, sketch or write? The word “apocrypha” comes from the Greek language meaning “those having been hidden away” and this video hints at some of the esoteric mystery that is involved in the creative process—in particular, the translation of images of nature into works of art.
Apocrypha premiered at the 2010 Visible Verse Poetry Video Festival in Vancouver, and was selected for the University Film and Video Association Conference at Emerson College, Boston for a June, 2011 screening.
Sea Salt by David Mason
Amy Schmitt designed and animated this Motionpoem, with assistance from Kelly Pieklo (sound design), Emily J. Snyder (calligraphy) and Vera Mariner (reading). David Mason is the current poet laureate of Colorado. In a press release from Motion504, where she works, Schmitt says, “I was inspired by print design and other traditional media, and I wanted to create a moving illustration of the poem that was not done in a literal way.”
Motionpoems, by the way, 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.
Die unsichtbare Hand (The Invisible Hand) by Daniel Falb
http://www.vimeo.com/23368191
The last of the three collaborations between German poets and Israeli filmmakers sponsored by the 5th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. Christian Hawkey is credited as translator for the English subtitles. I was struck by how the inclusion of a song at the end, during the credits, helps unlock the meaning of the videopoem.
For more poems from Daniel Falb in English, as well as a bio, see Poetry International Web.
Teich (Pond) by Monika Rinck
Another of the three collaborations between German poets and Israeli filmmakers sponsored by the 5th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. The text seems like an especially good one for a poetry film, since it imagines multiple interpretations or applications for a central image, accentuating the synergy of the text-film combination.
For more English translations of Monika Rinck’s work, see her section on the Poetry International Web site, as well as the volume 16 Poems translated by Alistair Noon.
Christmas in Huntsville, Texas by Jan Wagner
http://www.vimeo.com/23368453
The world’s premiere poetry film festival, ZEBRA, in Berlin, has now begun sponsoring the production of new videopoems as well, as the video description on Vimeo makes clear:
The result of the Film-Workshop held during the 5th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. Three pairs of artists comprising Israeli filmmakers Emanuella Amichai, Avi Dabach and Joshua Simon and German poets Daniel Falb, Monika Rinck and Jan Wagner were working together to produce scripts and create poetry films in six days.
The poet here, Jan Wagner, is also a “translator of poetry from the English (including Charles Simic, James Tate, Simon Armitage, Jo Shapcott, Louis MacNeice, Kevin Young),” according to this online CV.
The Angel of Duluth #2 by Madelon Sprengnether
From Motionpoems, an illustration of a piece by Madelon Sprengnether in her collection of prose poems, The Angel of Duluth (White Pine Press, 2006). Design and Animation are by Angella Kassube with HDMG Post Design Audio and Effects.
Ostrich Consulation in the Culture of Snowmen by Thylias Moss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBBHVwyzmdc
If I haven’t shared more videos by the prolific and innovative Thylias Moss, A.K.A. forkergirl, it’s mostly because they were uploaded at a time when YouTube didn’t support very high-resolution films, and you kind of need that to make out the text in her videos. This more recent upload has none of those problems. There’s a lengthy gloss on the video at YouTube; I’ll just quote the opening paragraphs:
A Limited Fork Theory video poam (product of an acts of making) that investigates simultaneity through video convergence of multiple tines of information that exist in multiple forms: printed text, video, sound. The video poam reveals the moment of collision of the multiple tines, explores some of the warping and upheavals of colliding as a form of convergence.
Poam instead of poem, by the way, so as to not limit form with prescriptions of inclusion and exclusion long associated with poetry. Learn more about Limited Fork Theory at the Institute for 4orkological Studies (http://www.4orkology.com).
poetry by Laura Theobald
An homage to the Gray Lady of American poetry magazines.
Fable by Howie Good: Moving Poems contest winners (2)
1ST PLACE: Swoon
This video captures the nightmarish aura of the poem, but at the same time becomes a separate work of art. It does more than interpret the poem; it reinvents the poem in a new medium. Its propulsive imagery, editing, and soundtrack create an unnerving sense of urgency that the original never attained, but that it greatly profits from in its second life as a video.
2ND PLACE: Rachel Laine
This video gives precedence to the poem’s words, but without sacrificing or marginalizing visuals. In fact, the dense, gloomy background visuals and monotone music heighten the tragic sense of the poem, punctuating its doomsday storyline and elegiac atmosphere.
3RD PLACE: James Brush
The most visually crisp of the videos submitted, it also uses some of the most unexpected imagery, as when the word “cornfield” is blackened out in the text. And how can you not love that ukele being plinked in the background.
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Thanks again to all the entrants, congratulations to the winners, and thanks to Howie for acting as judge. (Those are his blurbs for each of the prize winners.) I’m very pleased with how this contest turned out: the goal was to showcase a diversity of approaches to the poetry-film or videopoetry genre, and I think we succeeded in doing that.
I am very open to suggestions for future contests. I don’t want to sponsor contests so often that they become a chore, but I’m not sure I want to wait a whole year before doing another one, either, so maybe in three to six months… I also don’t want to do the exact same thing next time with a different poem, unless perhaps it’s a radically different kind of poem; I’d rather come up with a novel challenge. Feel free to email me or leave comments with your ideas.
