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For Zachary by Mary Jo Balistreri

On 26 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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A black-and-white film by Marc Neys AKA Swoon for a poem by Mary Jo Balistreri in The Poetry Storehouse. Marc posted some process notes to his blog:

A very beautiful poem. Heartfelt.
Nic S. did a poignant reading that led to this track;

[listen on SoundCloud]

The visuals for this one are a combination of footage I shot during a hiking weekend last december (moody shots of trees, reflections, shadows…) alternated with the repetition of a boy falling (carefully edited out from a very lively action video by Justin Kauffman (under the Attribution license CC BY 3.0)

I think the ‘endless’ falling of the boy works well with the rest of the footage. Creating the right atmosphere for the poem and the soundtrack. There’s some comfort in this one I think.

A reminder, for any poets who might be reading this: the deadline for submissions to The Poetry Storehouse is coming up on February 28. After that it will transition to archive mode, adding new remixes (including videos) only up through September.

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After Love by Roger Reeves

On 25 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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https://vimeo.com/119716922

A mirrored field turns into layered images of a church interior in this new videopoem from Ruben Quesada for

A poem by Roger Reeves from his debut collection of poetry, KING ME (Copper Canyon Press, 2013).

Music: “Symphony No. 5” by Gustav Mahler

For more on Reeves, see the Poetry Foundation website. Here’s King Me.

When They Came for Us by Johanna DeBiase

On 24 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems
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It’s always great to see an author-made animation. This one has a delightfully down-home, improvisational feel, but it’s obviously very carefully thought-out; the sudden intrusion of the animator’s hands is genius. The Taos, New Mexico-based writer Johanna DiBiase specializes in fiction, but judging from her website bio is something of a Renaissance woman.

Stopping is Prohibited by Dale Wisely

On 23 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Alabama-based poet, publisher and psychologist Dale Wisely continues his experiments with videopoetry, here contributing his own text and music and using public-domain footage from Pond5. He credits a story on Radiolab for inspiring some of the text, which is not the first time a film-poet has been inspired by that show.

Lilies of the Field by Laura M Kaminski

On 19 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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Australian artist Marie Craven‘s video remix of a poem from The Poetry Storehouse by Missouri-based poet Laura M Kaminski. Craven recently blogged some process notes on three films she’s made with Kaminski’s poems, including this one:

I met Laura on social media after the first video, and our mutual membership of the Pool creative group put us in more contact after that. I sent her a message about making something new with her writing, and asked if she would be interested in responding in poetry to four pieces of royalty-free video footage I had found at VideoBlocks. She was interested in a continued collaboration and willing to write a new poem. But her first response to the images I sent was that they reminded her of a poem she had already written, ‘Lilies of the Field’. I loved the poem, agreed there was a fit, and so went to work. I decided text on screen might be the way to go for this video. To that end, I rearranged the line breaks in the poem to better suit the screen, which Laura welcomed in the final result. In response to the poem, I also found additional video images to go with the original ones I had sent Laura. One of these – the road at night shot – is by videographer, Gene Cornelius in Alaska, whose fantastic videography is featured in some of my previous videopoems. The music in the video is Slow Blizzard by Clutter (aka Shaun Blezard in Cumbria, UK). Shaun and I have been in online contact on and off for several years and this is a track I’ve loved since I first heard it in about 2010. Once the video was completed, I contacted Nic S. at The Poetry Storehouse to ask if she might be interested in publishing the poem and video at the site. They are both now there.

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Dictionary Illustrations by Sarah Sloat

On 18 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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Sarah Sloat is an American poet who works as journalist in Germany, and whose poems appear widely in print and online journals—including at The Poetry Storehouse, where Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon found the text for this film. As he notes in a recent blog post, it’s the first in a series of at least five films based on Poetry Storehouse poems that he has in the works.

I really loved the poem (the visuals) and the reading (so good) by DM.
Making a track for this reading was fun;
[listen on SoundCloud]
Broken rhythms crashing in a fleeting piano. Not much more was needed for this.
For the visuals I wanted to go back to my childhood.
As a kid I loved hanging ’round the local market. The colours, the noise, the shouting, the smell,…
I thought it might be a good idea to match this poem/soundtrack with images and footage from IICADOM.

Combining images from different market places with shots from local animals filmed at several travels. It gives the video the right amount of colour and naïve amazement I was looking for.

A reminder, for any poets who might be reading this: the deadline for submissions to The Poetry Storehouse is coming up on February 28. After that it will transition to archive mode, adding new remixes (including videos) only up through September.

Indefinite Animals by Martha McCollough

On 13 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Massachusetts-based artist Martha McCollough shows why she’s at or near the top of many people’s lists of the most innovative videopoets out there today. Until now she’s worked mainly with animation and collage techniques, but for this film she directed a troupe of seven actors wearing masks and enlisted the help of three videographers (Katie Valovcin, Cameron Morton and Joe Nervous) and two “animal wranglers.”

Indefinite Animals is featured in Issue 147 – Winter/Spring 2015 of TriQuarterly, McCollough’s fourth videopoem to appear in that most prestigious of all journals that currently publish poetry films. Go there to watch the other three. Her bio there reads:

Martha McCollough is a member of Atlantic Works, a coop gallery in Boston. Her work has been exhibited at festivals and conferences in Greece, Canada, the U.K. and the United States, and published in Rattapallax, Gone Lawn and Small Po[r]tions. She lives in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

I Too Come From by Luisa A. Igloria

On 9 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This new poetry film by the always interesting Lori H. Ersolmaz is an adaptation of a poem from The Poetry Storehouse by Luisa A. Igloria, and includes the author’s own reading in the soundtrack. Ersolmaz incorporated archival footage from the newly available Pond5 Public Domain Project and sound effects from Freesound.org.

Read Lori’s process notes, “Beginning with the End in Mind,” at Moving Poems Magazine.

Diagnostic by Laura M Kaminski

On 4 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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A collage videopoem by Dale Wisely using a text by Laura M Kaminski from The Poetry Storehouse. The voices in the soundtrack are Nic S.’s and Eric Burke’s. The poem originally appeared in One Sentence Poems, which Wisely co-edits with Robert Scotellaro.

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Song for Awe & Dread by Tommy Becker

On 3 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Tommy Becker is “A poet trapped in a camcorder [who] continues to feed video, music and poems into his never-ending saga, ‘TAPE NUMBER ONE’. Often Becker’s single channel works are translated to live performance.” Discovering new-to-me videopoets of such originality is what makes all the work of publishing Moving Poems worthwhile. Here’s the Vimeo description:

Song for Awe & Dread is a contemporary take on the vanitas paintings of the 17th century and an investigation into the emotional duality of our existence. It is AWEsome to be human and to be alive, but the evolution of human intelligence has also burdened our species with a self-awareness of life’s impermanence. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called these two uniquely human emotions, awe and dread. Through its symbolic meditation on mortality, this work attempts to find meaning between the fleeting flavors of bubblegum and cultural programming that entrenches us in our denial of death.

Music & Text & Video: written, recorded, performed and edited by Tommy Becker ©2015
instructional poetry read by – Don Johnson
skeleton characters performed by – Billy Mark
backing vocals – Rosie Harald
public domain footage – collected from the Prelinger Archives.

A huge THANK YOU!!! to all my students for their enthusiastic participation.
soundcloud.com/tapenumberone/song-for-awe-dread

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The Imagined by Stephen Dunn

On 2 February, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Animation
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A terrific animated film by Matt Craig for Motionpoems, influenced by “a lot of really early animation films,” as he told interviewer Michael Dechane.

I knew I wanted to stay away from illustrating the words or being too literal with the imagery. I wanted to create something that would be its own thing but would be a perfect companion to the poem. I spent a lot of time making these decisions before I got into the work, and I’m glad I did it that way. I was able to steer my own direction because of the rules I had laid out for myself early on.

MOPO: What are some of the stylistic influences you saw coming to bear on the film?

CRAIG: I had been watching a lot of really early animation films, one in particular called “The Idea” by Berthold Bartosch. It was based on a woodcut graphic novel by Frans Masereel. I had been watching that kind of work coming into this project. When I start a project I tend to pull a lot of artwork, paintings and things that I can respond to in some way. That helps me get towards ideas I like.

Do read the whole interview; Craig makes a lot of interesting points. And there’s an interview with Stephen Dunn on the same page which is also worth checking out. The last question concerns the film:

MOPO: I’m wondering about the whole idea of taking a poem and making a short film out of it, and this sort of hybrid art that Motionpoems is pioneering. Is presenting a work in a different medium akin to the difficulty of linguistic translation in your opinion? What would you share with us about why you consented to be a part of this Motionpoems season and growing body of art — what were you hoping or wanting?

DUNN: I have no expectations. My poem itself is a translation of experience. I would hope that you all would try to be true to the poem’s spirit and tone, but I also know that another medium will interpret in ways I can’t foresee.

Bryan Hanna composed the score.

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Crows by Lori Lamothe

On 30 January, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
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Lori Lamothe is the latest poet to have work added to The Poetry Storehouse, which is where Australian multimedia artist Jutta Pryor found this poem (originally published in Third Coast) and the reading by Nic S.. Pryor is responsible not only for the cinematography and direction but also for the very effective soundtrack.