Another in the Absent Voices series of seven filmpoems from Alastair Cook “focused on the celebration of the vast and semi-derelict Greenock Sugar Sheds,” as he put it in the description of a previous film. Scottish poet John Glenday reads his poem (which, I have to say, I absolutely adore).
All seven films will be premiered at the Scottish Poetry Library on December 6:
This performance event features music from Luca Nasciuti and Rita Bradd, along with readings from Vicki Feaver, Brian Johnstone, Sheree Mack and Jennifer Williams, each reading over their film to live accompaniment.
Another of the Dove Marine Lab poetry films from UK poet Colette Bryce and artist Kate Sweeney. (See “Ballasting the Ark” for more details on the project.) On her website, Sweeney notes:
Building upon some of the challenges I found with the earlier films, I wanted to almost ignore the text and sideline the structure of the recording. I put up a kind of mental block between me and the text and ‘drew’ the shapes of the sentences. These small drawings, or plans made the basic structures of the animated sequences.
Sweeney goes on to reflect on the project as a whole — the first venture into poetry film for either of them:
While working with Colette on visual responses to her poetry, I have increasingly realized that the three films are a response not just to the three poems, but more specifically, the recordings of the three poems. I am not only responding to the content and motifs contained in the poems (as one would if responding to a single word, an idea, or a title) but also directly to the length of the poem, the rhythm, spacing and sounds of the words as they are delivered in the recording.
The poems have been, to a greater or lesser extent, a script. We have found a lot of questions have arisen about how the task of making a film in this way is different to less time-based parameters of more abstract types of collaborations. It highlights the difference between spatial and time-based video and film work, and has sparked an interest for both of us in how this brief could work in reverse – a poet creating text to a finished film or video, for example. This collaboration feels like a starting point, and we would be keen to collaborate further in different contexts. In the present context, the response to the science was the poet’s, while in a future context, we would be interested to explore what happens when both the artist and the poet are responding to the science and somehow bringing the results together in a collaborative work.
A terrific videopoem addressing the invasive species epidemic. This is one of three Dove Marine Lab poetry films:
Three films made by artist Kate Sweeney and poet Colette Bryce in 2012 inspired by the poetry Colette produced as part of her Leverhulme residency at The Dove Marine Lab in Cullercoats, Tyne and Wear, UK.
On her website, Kate Sweeney describes her general approach to the project:
I am using photography, drawings, video and sound taken in and around the Dove Marine Laboratory to explore some of the motifs, rhythms, ideas and patterns that arise in Colette’s poems. In the poems, Colette to some extent celebrates the act of looking, for the poet and the scientist: the films take this visual thread forward into a new realm. I am trying to create a tension between the words and accentuate the rhythm and sounds of the spoken word through imagery without becoming distracting or merely illustrative.
“Ballasting the Ark,” she writes,
involves drawing, copying, inventing, imagining and re-imagining of some of the activity taking place in the poem. I wanted this film to begin as a sketch, or workings-out on paper; like a god sketching out an ‘Ark’; divine imagination, moving toward an opposing set of ideas – the science of observing ‘reality’, and of a scientist looking, counting, analysing, removing, deleting.
For more on Colette Bryce, see her Wikipedia page. And check out the Dove Marine Laboratory website.
[UPDATE] The three films were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Prize for new works in poetry in 2013.
Jane McKie reads and Rebecca Joy Scharp plays the clarsach in this filmpoem by Alastair Cook. It was commissioned by Absent Voices, “a group focused on the celebration of the vast and semi-derelict Greenock Sugar Sheds,” according to Alastair’s note on the previous film in the series, “How Well It Burns” by Brian Johnstone.
A video by John Birdsong of Panman Productions. His decision to combine audio of a reading with the poet’s still face was kind of an interesting departure from the norm, I thought.
Johnstone was a co-founder of the StAnza international poetry festival held each March in St. Andrews, Scotland.
I found this musical interpretation compelling; the accompanying kinestatic video isn’t bad, either. It’s a selection from The Winter E.P. – Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Hallam London, who is credited with composition, vocals, guitars, keyboards and all programming. The photos in the video were taken on Norderney Island in the North Sea by Nicola Moczek and Riklef Rambow. Visit the composer’s bandcamp page to hear more from the EP.
Alastair Cook writes,
How Well It Burns is the third in a series of seven Filmpoems commissioned by Alastair Cook in collaboration with Absent Voices, a group focused on the celebration of the vast and semi-derelict Greenock Sugar Sheds.
How Well It Burns is by poet Brian Johnstone, erstwhile Director of StAnza, the Scottish Poetry Festival and a widely published poet; the other poets in the series are John Glenday, Vicki Feaver, Sheree Mack, Jane McKie, Gérard Rudolf and Jennifer Lynn Williams.
The series of seven will be performed live at the Scottish Poetry Library at an event on 6th December 2012; more information and tickets here.
For more on Brian Johnstone, see his page at the Scottish Poetry Library.
Alastair Cook writes about his 24th filmpoem:
The Herring Trail was commissioned by North Light, based on the poem The Herrin’ Trail by Rita Bradd as part of my summer residency at McArthur’s Store in Dunbar. I spent 3 months there over the summer, working with the fishermen using wet plate collodion (a photographic process from 1851), 120 film and shooting with 8mm and 16mm. This film has scant relation to that, as I’ve used film given to me by the British Council, which is deliberately digitally extrapolated.
To be able to find such a wonderful poet in Rita was inspiring and I asked her to compose for the filmpoem on the Clarsach (or Lever Harp, if you’re not in Scotland) and I read the poem so that she might play. We premiered this at Sally Evan’s Callander poetry weekend in early September 2012 to a full house, with Rita playing live while i read over the film. Lovely to read in my native Scots, though not quite in my natural Galloway Irish/ Ulster Scots brogue!
Judging by North Light Dunbar’s news blog, Alastair has been very busy there indeed. They also have a page about his residency. I like the bio:
Alastair works predominantly with lens-based media as an analogue photographer concentrating on antique technologies and as a filmmaker using 8mm and 16mm film, combining these with digital technology to great effect. His award winning film and photography is driven by his knowledge, skill and experience as an architect: this mercurial work is rooted in place and the intrinsic connections between people, land and the sea. Alastair trained at the Glasgow School of Art then fled the country, returning after a dutiful spell in London and a more relaxed time in Amsterdam; he now lives and works in Edinburgh.
(Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a good webpage for Rita Bradd.)
http://vimeo.com/49758673
Pablo Lópes Jordán directed, filmed and composed the soundtrack for a text by Vangelis Skouras. Jordán noted at Vimeo:
Daily thoughts can be a form of poetry even if, or assisted by the fact that, they are not expressed face to face. Images of real life help these words gain further substance and depth.
I like the leisurely pace at which the text fragments are shared, and how well that contrasts with the more frenetic image-stream and (excellent) soundtrack.