~ Filmmaker: Kevin Simmonds ~

Seeing the Pope on TV by Maria Jastrzȩbska

This four-year-old video by Kevin Simmonds for a Maria Jastrzȩbska poem about Pope John Paul II seems, sadly, as relevant as ever. The description at Vimeo:

A poem by Maria Jastrzȩbska from Syrena (Redbeck Press, 2004) that appears in Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality, from Sibling Rivalry Press and edited by Kevin Simmonds.

That anthology has its own website, including a videos page where you can watch this and 28 other videopoems! Kudos to Simmonds. It’s rare for a poetry editor to take video seriously at all, let alone make the videos himself.

Invisible Man by Amir Rabiyah

Kevin Simmonds’ brief film is part interview, part reading. Simmonds is the editor of the forthcoming anthology Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality, which includes this poem by Amir Rabiyah.