A new author-made videopoem from Matt Mullins. Poet as Godzilla (rather than poet as god, à la Vicente Huidobro) is definitely a concept I can get behind. For the first couple of minutes, I was puzzled by all the different screen arrangements, but it eventually made sense… in fact, using videopoetry to critique movie making and movie watching is something that should happen more often, I think.

Brilliant video remix of an Oral Roberts sermon by Matt Mullins. (For the text, see the description at Vimeo.)

A terrific new video from Matt Mullins. I’ll just quote his emailed description of how this came about:

This evolved from a video loop that is one facet of a piece of electronic/interactive literature currently under development (also titled “I Will Make an Exquisite Corpse”). This piece of e-lit will be the third installment in a triptych of pieces I’m creating for lit-digital.com. (The first two are already up there.) The poem and this particular video both play off the concept of the surrealist exquisite corpse [see the Wikipedia article —ed.]. As such, I’m working with the notion of three sections/elements that flow together while remaining singular/disconnected. The poem strives to do this on the page with three sections that stand alone while also flowing together to create a larger whole. Those who want to see the poem in its original form can find it here: http://killauthor.com/issueeight/matt-mullins-2/

The poem and video mean that title line in two ways (i.e., the speaker of the poem is about to create, before your eyes, the surrealist idea of an exquisite corpse; and, the speaker, treading the self-destructive path of the poem, is telling the reader “I know where I’m headed and I’m gonna look damn good dead”).

The motionpoem seeks to do the same through repetition/evolution of its primary elements and its three image specific sections. It’s all footage I shot myself, with the exception of two stills I found online (the anatomy mannequin and the doll’s leg). I did my visual and audio edits/effects/etc in iMovie and Garage Band.

This piece began life as “a multi-faceted, collaborative project consisting of a prose poem, an experimental film, a musical composition, and an interactive interface” — see the lit-digital site for more. Matt Mullins specializes in what he calls script poems, and this semester will be teaching a creative writing course on “Book Trailers and Visual Adaptations of Literature” at Ball State University.