~ Nationality: U.K. ~
Mirror by Sally Evans
Alastair Cook‘s 23rd filmpoem uses a text and reading by Sally Evans, an English poet living in Scotland.
Plasticman by Mark Gwynne Jones
http://vimeo.com/37756338
A great spoken-word performance in a supermarket by Mark Gwynne Jones, filmed by Andy Lawrence, as part of their psychicbread series of poetry films. It’s fun to see how the other shoppers react (or don’t react, as the case may be).
Kata by Lavinia Greenlaw
Another in the Winning Words series of poetry videos filmed by Andy Hutch. “Here professional parkour athlete Jolade Olusanya reads Lavinia Greenlaw’s ‘Kata’ in Stockwell.” I don’t have a category for parkour, but this seems close enough to some of the poetry dance videos to include in that category.
The text of the poem, which appeared in the 2011 collection The Casual Perfect from Faber & Faber, is here. For more on Greenlaw, see her website.
The Grass is Greener by Ivor Cutler
An Orla Mc Hardy film based on a short piece by Scottish poet and radio performer Ivor Cutler — an evocative, dream-like interpretation that takes the poem to a whole new level, I think.
Talent by Carol Ann Duffy
One of a series of films from Winning Words, an Olympics-related public poetry project in the U.K. As with the 11 other videos in the series, it features the reader as a performer — kind of an interesting wrinkle on the usual (wo)man-on-the-street-reads-poem video, making it more of a filmpoem. “Here Strategic Planner Angella Tapé reads Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Talent’ in her office at McCann Erickson,” says the description at YouTube. Andy Hutch is the filmmaker.
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be by John Keats
Video by Louise Dautheribes McKerl, who notes that she has borrowed the narration from the BBC and the music, “Entendre la fôret pousser,” from Chapelier Fou.
Twenty Second Filmpoem: 20 poets, 20 seconds each
Alastair Cook‘s 22nd filmpoem is both playful and profound, a lovely demonstration of the magic that can happen when poets write ekphrastically in response to film clips.
Twenty Second Filmpoem (the 22nd Filmpoem) is twenty 20 second Filmpoems; it was conceived when I was asked to do a pecha-kucha.org night. An interesting concept, you present 20 slides for 20 seconds; I thought I’d do something a little different, actually create some work for the event. I commissioned 20 writers, all listed below, to write flash fiction against some 1960s found footage I’d edited. It’s ambitious and inevitably some bits work much better than others, but for me it is imperative to push this a little, to leave my comfort zone. And invariable, all the writing is superb, and for that I am thankful.
I also took the opportunity of using Vladimir Kryutchev’s binaural field recordings, for which I thank him. His amazing binaural map of Sergiyev Posad in Russia is here: oontz.ru/en
See the rest of the description on Vimeo to read all 20 short poems. The poets are: Andrew McCallum Crawford, Mary McDonough Clark, Al Innes, Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown, Elspeth Murray, Janette Ayachi, Jane McCance, Donna Campbell, Ewan Morrison, Angela Readman, Gérard Rudolf, Zoe Venditozzi, Jo Bell, Sally Evans, Pippa Little, Tony Williams, Robert Peake, Stevie Ronnie, Sheree Mack and Emily Dodd. Dodd blogged about her part in the production. A couple of excerpts:
I received a link with a password for my film, it was number twenty (password twenty). The film was 1960s found footage and it was beautiful. Alastair had edited it to tell a 1 minute story.
I watched a woman in a white dress on her wedding day. She kept looking at the Best Man. I wrote my initial thoughts down and came back to watch it again, two days later.
My brief was to respond with a piece of flash fiction that could be read aloud within 10 seconds. Alastair wanted it to be short, two or three lines maximum, he said just a haiku in length.
[…]
When I was first commissioned I’d thought along the same lines as the bride… is this really me?
- What if I watch the film and have no emotional response?
- What if I can’t do flash fiction?
- What if my piece ruins the whole presentation?
And all of this ran through my head while waiting for a response from Alastair.
Thankfully, I had this reply within a couple of minutes:
No it’s bloody perfect x Baci x
Saffron by Kate Ruse
A striking animation by Zhiyu Zhao for a piece by UK poet Kate Ruse.
I Lost You by Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown
Alastair Cook says about his 21st filmpoem:
Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown’s I Lost You is a letter to her father, who was killed when he was 29. This film is for our fathers, and yours.
Cook continues to surprise, eschewing his usual abstraction for an extreme simplicity, which, for me, enhances the emotional appeal of the text.
Nijinsky – Echopraxia by Kate Ruse
http://vimeo.com/40766091
The “dance” category here at Moving Poems, though small, includes some of the most interesting and watchable poetry videos on the site, and this is a very worthy addition to their number. The filming, editing and soundtrack are all the work of Kish Patel, “a 20 year old graphic, web and sound designer from London, UK.”
This is one of several video interpretations of Kate Ruse’s poems about the dancer Nijinsky to have been made into a video, according to her website. Annie Robinson is both dancer and choreographer. See the description at Vimeo for the text of the poem.
Days by Philip Larkin
An interesting contrast with the Dave Lee film posted yesterday. Yes, this is nothing but a YouTube mash-up of a Philip Larkin reading with footage of soldiers on LSD (presumably in the public domain), posted in 2006. The maker, David Quantrick, didn’t even bother to add credits — he apparently just viewed it as an expeditious way to share the poem. And yes, the video quality is low. But I find the combination of footage and text inspired and delightful. Unlike Bridge for the Living, this video is greater than the sum of its parts.
