~ Nationality: United States ~
Giacometti’s Pears by Donna Vorreyer
I couldn’t resist making a video for one of Donna Vorreyer‘s poems at The Poetry Storehouse myself. “Giacometti’s Pears” was originally published in Weave magazine. I blogged about my process a bit at Via Negativa last week.
Trauermantel by Luisa A. Igloria
Along with Mortal Ghazal and Oir, this forms the third in what has turned out to be a triptych of Luisa A. Igloria videopoems, says its maker Swoon (Marc Neys).
People who have been following my works a bit, know I have a thing with artworks in a triptych.
When Luisa approached me to make a video for one of the poems in her book ‘The Saints of Streets‘, I was not thinking triptych.
Yet Luisa sent me several recordings and as it happens I liked her poems (and her readings for that matter) a lot. So in the end I made three videopoems […] and because of her voice and her style these do belong together. To me anyway.
The trauermantel is the same species of butterfly known as mourning cloak in North American and Camberwell beauty in the U.K. Swoon writes,
I wanted light, colours and an abstract spirit-like feel for this one.
Only at the end of the video (after the poem) I come up with a concrete image.
These images are also my first attempt to create something of an animated sequence. The image of the butterfly was made by Katrijn Clemer using the outlines of a real Trauermantel and one of the faces of the video for Oir.
Sweet Tea by Eric Blanchard
https://vimeo.com/79032004
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Another pair of video remixes for a poem in The Poetry Storehouse. This time, the poem is by Eric Blanchard, and what’s especially interesting is that they employ the very same soundtrack, with a reading by Nic S. and a soundscape composed by Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon. The first video is by Nic and the second is by Swoon, and as you’ll see, they take very different approaches. Nic uses images and animation by Donna Kuhn, while Marc worked with four still photos, as he describes in a blog post:
I started from 4 pictures: that I took in my series ‘Dust of time‘; pictures of wood, rotten, wet,… Colours golden brown (like tea).
First I merged those pictures together, creating a short 10 second film showing those merged pictures. What followed was a stream of re-editing and layering of those 10 seconds… Until there was nothing recognisable left. Only a constant moving stream of psychedelic forms…
These two videopoems are an excellent demonstration of the fun to be had working with material at The Poetry Storehouse. Keep ’em coming, folks.
Playing Duets with Heisenberg’s Ghost by Peg Duthie
Othniel Smith used images from the Internet Archive featuring Martha Davis to accompany a reading (by Nic S.) from The Poetry Storehouse, where the author, Peg Duthie, has five poems. Sebastian herself had also earlier made a video remix of the same poem, and it’s interesting to compare her approach with Smith’s:
https://vimeo.com/77778283
According to a note at the site, the poem appears in a collection called From Measured Extravagance (Upper Rubber Boot, 2012), and was first published in The 3rd Annual SFPA Poetry Contest in 2008: Energy (Spec House of Poetry). So it’s definitely been getting around!
Today is your advocate by Peter Ciccariello
I’m featuring videos based on poems in The Poetry Storehouse this week. Artist and poet Peter Ciccariello has three texts on the site. This one was read by Nic S. and made into a film by Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon. Marc shared some process notes at his blog.
This soundtrack/reading led me to images I shot over a year ago. Footage of someone looking back, remembering the past, someone watching life gliding by her… Just a few long shots (in and out of focus), nothing else…just the gaze.
The Whole Place is Dark by Nick Sturm
Video by DJ Berndt for a poem by Nick Sturm that originally appeared in Ink Node. (Hat-tip: “The dA-Zed guide to Alt Lit.”)
“I like a look of agony…” by Emily Dickinson
Othniel Smith repurposes public-domain imagery from the Internet Archive to accompany Dickinson’s text, which was written in 1862, during the American Civil War.
Hold Me, the Walls are Falling by Robert Krut
Another videopoem-trailer for the new collection by Robert Krut, This is the Ocean. As with the other two, it was directed by Nick Paonessa of lowercase productions.
Lark, from the autobiography of John Muir
A passage from the autobiography of Scottish-American conservationist John Muir is treated as found poetry in a filmpoem by the Dutch photographer and filmmaker Judith Dekker. She writes:
Made as a part of my residency in Dunbar, Scotland for North Light. For this film I’ve used John Muir’s words as a starting point: my film is an interpretation and carries these words to a different place. All footage was shot during my time there; the poet John Glenday was kind enough to read a passage from John Muir’s autobiography and composer Luca Nasciuti created a soundtrack which fits like a glove.
Thanks to Creative Scotland.
Discharged into Clouds by Dean Young
The November selection from Motionpoems is by their co-founder Angella Kassube, and I think it’s one of the best they’ve ever made. The minimalism here really works for me, in part perhaps because I like Dean Young‘s poem so much. The soundtrack (by Carly Zuckweiler) is a perfect match to Tim Nolan’s reading.
Kassube’s process notes are worth a read (scroll down past the poem text). The poem is from Young’s new book, Bender.
Good to see a major player in American poetry film use a reading from someone other than the author. It’s kind of surprising to me that poetry film makers rely so heavily on poets’ own readings, given that all too often we are the least inspired oral interpreters of our own words.
Fallow Field by Scott Edward Anderson
This is Filmpoem 34 by Alastair Cook, who writes:
Fallow Field is a poem by Scott Edward Anderson, from his brand new eponymous collection. It’s been a pleasure to make a Filmpoem for a friend and this harks back to my earlier work, motifs I explored and delighted in a number of years ago which suit Scott’s incredible words.
Scott’s collection Fallow Field is available from Aldrich Press, Amazon and scottedwardanderson.com.
Of the various blurbs on the website, I particularly liked this one:
“Wow, Pop, I had no idea you wrote so many poems!” – Walker Anderson, the author’s 10-year-old son
Anderson blogs at The Green Skeptic and Scott Edward Anderson’s Poetry Blog.
