~ Nationality: United States ~
Weighing In by Rhina Espaillat
An uplifting animation about age, gravity and being human, Weighing In is from a poem by Dominican-American writer Rhina Espaillat. The film was directed by Casey McIntyre for MPC Creative in Los Angeles in partnership with Motionpoems. It was especially designed as a film for children. The poem can be read on the page here.
Childhood’s End by Howie Good
I LOVE this new videopoem! Belgian artist-composer Marc Neys (aka Swoon) is of course a Moving Poems regular, as is retired journalism professor Howie Good — one of the most productive poets I know. The fit of images to words hits that sweet spot half-way between random and literal, and the font seems chosen for maximum contrast in feeling with the dark content of the text.
The video does double duty as a trailer for Good’s new collection, a chapbook/pamphlet from Laughing Ronin Press called Heart-Shaped Hole.
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
There is balm to be found in this poetry film from Wendell Berry‘s deep and enduring poem, The Peace of Wild Things. Berry has a close connection to rural Kentucky USA, where he was born in 1934 and has maintained a farm for over 40 years. It is his own voice in the soundtrack.
The animation is touchingly childlike, directed by UK artists Charlotte Ager and Katy Wang. The project was produced by The On Being Project, a non-profit initiative. Music and sound is credited to David Camp. In-depth process notes on the making of the film can be found here.
I found The Peace of Wild Things among a fine Top Ten of films from classic poems published recently on the magazine side of our site. These films were selected by Paul Casey and Colm Scully, organisers and judges of the Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer poetry festival and poetry film competition in Ireland.
blue jay by Anthony Matos
A poem accompanied by a visual story, blue jay is written and directed by Anthony Matos in Maine, USA. He describes the film as “a story about three strangers trying to overcome different forms of grief and loneliness.”
From his bio at FilmFreeway:
My love for film grew from my love of poetry and the Walt Whitman and Mary Oliver collections I read in high school. I lived through these poets and craved to be able to appreciate life and the moment around me as they did.
Poetry films are most often very short and small-scale in production. By contrast, Blue Jay is over 12 minutes and involved a substantial cast and crew. In these ways it more closely resembles a well-produced narrative short.
The combination of poem and story is an interesting approach, and I find this touching film well worth the time in watching.
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
Belgian artist Marc Neys adapts Sylvia Plath’s Mirror for this videopoem from mid-2022. He narrates the poem from a Dutch translation by Lucienne Stassaert, giving the video the bilingual title Spiegel/Mirror. As with most of his other films, he composed the ambient music as well.
Regular readers of Moving Poems will know the work of Marc Neys very well from the large number of posts of his work over the past decade. This video from Plath’s poem appears in some ways to be an updated version of one he made in 2014.
Plath’s writing has been adapted for film by other artists here.
Gray-Headed Schoolchildren by Charles Simic
Charles Simic has died. Word broke on Twitter a few hours ago, and I’ve been thinking about Simic’s impact as a poet and as a translator—I wouldn’t know Vasko Popa, Ivan Lalic or even the great Novica Tadic had Simic not introduced them to the Anglophone world.
I’m not sure that Simic’s interest in translation extended to videopoetry, however; I don’t believe he ever collaborated with a filmmaker. I found a few unofficial videos back in the early years of this site, and another search today turned up a couple more good ones. Gray-Headed Schoolchildren is a 2011 film by Tess Masero Brioso with voiceover by Victor Feldman, who also stars (along with Zach Donnelly). I’m torn about the soundtrack: Adagio for Strings is kind of a cliché at this point, but it’s also not a bad fit. Regardless, as someone getting on years myself, the poem and film hit me right in the feels.
Prodigal Daughters by Vasiliki Katsarou
A film by New Jersey-based poet Vasiliki Katsarou, using text from William Gass’s translation of Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and images by Andrew David King. There wasn’t any description on Vimeo, so I contacted Katsarou to ask if she might have an artist’s statement. Here’s what she shared:
Prodigal Daughters is a collage video poem I made with Andrew David King. I’m a poet, teaching artist and publisher who holds an MFA in filmmaking, and who made a 35mm film back in the 20th century. My collaborator Andrew, whose footage this is, is a journalist, poet and book artist based in San Francisco. Our mission was to make two (one minute) cellphone films combining image and text. Prodigal Daughters was put together in serendipitous fashion, when I came across a striking passage (that I read in voiceover) from William Gass’ introduction to Rilke’s classic novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Gass is writing about Rilke, who’s writing about young women standing in awe before hanging tapestries in a medieval museum. For me, something about this film poem seems to vault generations and art forms. It answers a question I had about how a film poem can exist independently of my own poetry and celluloid film work. It has the potential to serve as a dream instance, where meaning lies not solely in visual image nor words, but in their spontaneous combustion.
Prodigal Daughters was made during a workshop led by experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs for the Flowchart Foundation. For more on my current work at Solitude Hill Press, please see solitudehill.com.
“Hunger” and “What I Did” from The Echo Chamber by Michael Bazzett
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From filmmaker Sherng-Lee Huang and actress Veronika Nowag-Jones, whom Huang calls “a stalwart of German cinema and stage,” these two trailers for The Echo Chamber by Michael Bazzett each feature a complete, short poem from the collection. US independent literary publisher Milkweed Editions has been producing video trailers off and on for the better part of a decade. As anecdotal evidence for their effectiveness, I ordered a copy of The Echo Chamber before I even finished posting this! Here’s the publisher’s page for it.
Hat-tip: Sean Thomas Dougherty on Twitter.
