~ Nationality: Sweden ~

Disorderlily by Charles Putschkin

On 23 September, 2022 by Marie Craven with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Videopoems
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Disorderlily is an author-made videopoem by Charles Putschkin, a Swedish-Polish artist living in Bristol, UK.

The piece is written in the form of a letter from a socially isolated man, to a woman who seems to be his support worker. The literal quality of the text and the deadpan vocal delivery are effective and affecting, conveying more than what is said.

Putschkin’s creative work also includes visual poetry, sound poetry and podcasting, all with an experimental bent. More videos from him can be found at his YouTube channel.

Disorderlily was a finalist in the 2021 Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition in Cork Ireland.

Säv, säv, susa / Sigh, Rushes, Sigh by Gustaf Fröding

On 6 March, 2018 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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A haunting Swedish poem brought to life by the German director Patrick Müller. Here’s the English portion of his Vimeo description:

SIGH, RUSHES, SIGH: In his tale of passionate love and heartbreaking grief, Swedish poet Gustaf Fröding (1860–1911) explains the drowning of the beautiful Ingalill. The words find its counterpart in black and white images, shot with an old 16mm film camera.

Film by Patrick Müller. Germany, 2018, 3 Min, 16mm.
Poem: Gustaf Fröding, Narrator: Klaus-Rüdiger Utschick, Camera: Krasnogorsk 3, Film stock: Fomapan R100, Processing: Andec Filmtechnik, Telecine 4K: Ochoypico, Madrid. Filmed at Rügen, 2018.

There was a lively discussion on the Poetry Film Live Facebook group the other day about whether and when it’s appropriate to use illustration in a poetry film. I think this film strikes the perfect balance between illustration (it wouldn’t have made sense not to begin and end with rushes on a lake shore) and suggestion (the girl’s drowning is only briefly hinted at in the visuals). The film with its black-and-white, 16mm graininess not only conveys but intensifies the melancholy mood of the text. Such illustration as it includes doesn’t tame or trivialize the poem but contributes to an over-all ostranenie.

Mor säger att det är ett minne / Mother says that it’s a memory by Eva Ström

On 8 January, 2016 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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The filmmaker Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon writes,

My last video for 2015 is also my most personal. Mor säger att det är ett minne ​is a poem by Eva Ström I found on lyrikline earlier this year. ​I decided to use it with the footage I shot during my mother’s last week. […]

I used the audio by Mechner (Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, 2005) as base for the music. Around Eva’s reading I composed a frail piece of music using only a piano and an old clock; [SoundCloud link]

The translation by Maria Freij was used as subtitles. […]

In the film you see my mother clipping her nails after bath. She had come home to die (after her decision to stop all treatment and medication). She wanted to spend her last days at home, with her children close by.

I am well aware that this video speaks to me and my family on a whole other level, but I also believe that the combination of this footage with the poem and the music works well for other people…

Thanks to Marc for his willingness to share such personal footage and go so deep.

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Snö / Snow by Marie Silkeberg

On 8 September, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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…a collection of snow figures to mourn the dead
the dead man of snow
the mourners of snow
the ground covered
while the refugee camps
are filled with freezing people
the tents bulge under the snow…

A new, multilingual videopoetry collaboration by Marie Silkeberg and Ghayath Almadhoun. Here are the credits from the YouTube description:

film by: Marie Silkeberg & Ghayath Almadhoun
poem: Snö by Marie Silkeberg, 2014
english translation: Frank Perry
arabic translation: Ghayath Almadhoun
camera: Marie Silkeberg & Ghayath Almadhoun & shared films from the internet
music: Hanna Hartman

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Your Memory is My Freedom by Marie Silkeberg

On 26 September, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Another innovative, harrowing videopoetry collaboration between Palestinian-Syrian poet Ghayath Almadhoun and Swedish poet Marie Silkeberg. This time the text and reading are Silkeberg’s, but they are both credited with the editing (“montage”) and camera work. Agneta Falk-Hirschman supplied the English translation. The music was “stolen from the Internet,” according to the credits, and the footage of the Syrian revolution is also “from the Internet.”

The City by Ghayath Almadhoun and What Gas by Marie Silkeberg

On 26 June, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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This innovative videopoem about the destruction of Damascus, The City, alternates lines from a poem by Ghayath Almadhoun, translated from Arabic by Catherine Cobham and read by female voices, and a poem by Marie Silkeberg, translated from Swedish by Frank Perry and read by male voices. The readers are people from the streets of Stockholm. Silkeberg composed the sound montage and Almadhoun the montage of found footage from the internet. He mentioned in a recent interview that the film has been screened in more than 150 festivals.

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The Celebration by Ghayath Almadhoun and Marie Silkeberg

On 6 June, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 3 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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This is of the best poems about war I’ve ever read (or heard). It’s by the Syrian-born Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun, from التفاصيل (The Details), translated by Catherine Cobhamin, in a film adaptation that he made in collaboration with the Swedish poet Marie Silkeberg—a partnership described in a recent interview in Arabic Literature (in English). The English titling floats and disappears above a bombed-out city: Berlin. As Almadhoun describes it in the interview,

The material you saw, this is Berlin, and nobody saw it before. Not even the Germans. I have thirteen minutes from July 1945, forty-five days after the war, somebody filmed it.

Yes, National Geographic maybe they bought five seconds, and I think in the BBC documentary they bought around seven seconds, because it’s so expensive. Nobody knows how I got it, and I think if they saw it, they will take me to court. Because the owner of this material is one of the biggest companies in Hollywood. But still, I want the people to see this. No one has seen Berlin like this.

I use eight minutes of it in this film.

AL: And the poem?

GM: The poem is written about Damascus. But it has in the beginning something about Berlin. And I feel that there is no difference between destruction and destruction. Yes, the story of Berlin is different — they attacked the world, the world attacked them.

What’s happening in Syria is different. The destruction in Syria is more. If you look at the suburbs of Damascus, you will find that most of the buildings have fallen down. While in Berlin it was only the roofs. So I can compare the situation in Syria for example with Hiroshima or Dresden, only.

Do read the rest of the interview, which was especially interesting to me for its defense of poet-made films, as opposed to some of the very slick animations that are appearing online and at poetry film festivals these days:

Why should I only write my poem and wait until a professional can make a video? He always chooses classic and simple things because he’s not a poet.

I want the poets to make poetry films, and I and I want the focus to be on the poem. If the focus is on the film, then go to the short film.

The quality of the poem should be added to the question. The animations are really beautiful, and some of them are really expensive. I remember one of the films cost maybe one million dollars. They got a prize. For me, if I was on the jury, I would not give them a prize. Because the poem was really bad.

Almadhoun gets to say this, in my opinion, because he is both a masterful poet and a good filmmaker. I’m also grateful to him for making his YouTube channel public and the videos shareable. You can expect to see his other collaborations with Silkeberg here soon.

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Meek by Harry Martinson

On 25 November, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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A poem by the 20th-century Swedish poet Harry Martinson, one of three recently animated by Ana Perez Lopez, who writes:

Olofström is nature: tall trees, infinite lakes and the echoing voice of Harry Martinson. But Olofström grew with a factory, a building where everything from pots, bullets and cars can be made.
After spending a month as an art resident in Nabbeboda Skola I tried to combine this three elements in one project. I interview Johnny Carlson and wondered around the town. I stuck my nose into Harry Martinson’s poems and left pen be taken by his imagination.
I illustrated three of his poems and brought them to life with animation. I hope you enjoy these bits of Olofström through the penetrating voice of Johnny Carlson.

Kliniken (The Clinic) by Annelie Axén

On 5 February, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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A newly subtitled animation by Kristian Pedersen for Gasspedal Animert. Words and voice are by Annelie Axén. There’s also an unsubtitled version.

According to the Gasspedal website (with the help of Google Translate), Annelie Axén was born in 1975 and is an author and critic. Raised in Falun, Sweden, she graduated from the Author Program at Telemark University College in Bø, Norway, and went on to the University of Copenhagen where she studied journalism. Her book Langz was published by Gasspedal in 2005.

From the Hill-Top by Tomas Tranströmer

On 8 November, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Musical settings
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Belgian musician S.A. Barstow, A.K.A. Teun De Voeght, has just released an album of adaptations of Tomas Tranströmer poems as translated by Robin Fulton. This is one of the ten tracks from that album. You can listen to the others on his Bandcamp page.

Tomas Tranströmer

On 20 October, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Documentary, interviews, Performance Poetry
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This new film from Bloodaxe Books, one of Tranströmer’s English-language publishers, incorporates footage of the Nobel Prize announcement and the Tranströmers’ reaction, as well as footage of Tranströmer playing the piano which Pamela Robertson-Pearce had just shot in August. Robin Fulton’s translations appear as subtitles for the Swedish-language readings, which include “The Nightingale in Badelunda,” “Allegro,” “From the Thaw on 1966,” “The Half-Finished Heaven,” “April and Silence,” “From March 1979,” and “Tracks.” This is of course something that the film/video medium is particularly well suited for: it’s wonderful to hear the poet reading in Swedish and know (more or less) what he is saying.

Do read the extensive notes on the Vimeo page. The detail that “Swedish composers have written several left-hand piano pieces especially for him to play” speaks volumes about his status in his homeland. (Hat-tip: Teju Cole on Twitter)

Schubertiana by Tomas Tranströmer

On 12 October, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This is A Galaxy Over There — a lavishly produced film by British director Martin Earle, illustrating excerpts from Tranströmer’s poem “Schubertiana,” as translated by Jöns Mellgren and narrated by Graham Sharpe in a kind of bedtime-stories voice. Though much of it is rather too literal for my taste, it’s hard to find fault with such beautiful filmmaking. The flying household objects in the first part seem in keeping with the spirit of Tranströmer’s “miracle speech,” and I love the scene where the landscape turns into a bed quilt. It’s also hard to see how they could’ve used anything other than a Schubert string quartet for the soundtrack!