~ Nationality: United States ~
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.
Oir by Luisa A. Igloria
This new videopoem by Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon, is one of his best, I think. Somehow the poem and reading by Luisa A. Igloria are just a perfect fit with the images and music.
As with his previous collaboration with Luisa, Mortal Ghazal, Marc has blogged some process notes incorporating remarks from Luisa. I’ll just quote from the first part of his post:
Some weeks ago we’ve had a thunderstorm at night. I recorded it, added some sounds and improvised piano…
For some reason I thought about the recording of ‘Oir’ Luisa sent me earlier. I combined them all and forwarded the result to Luisa.I very much love the broody thunderstorm background and the improvised piano. I like the sound of rain very much. A hard rain on tin roofs is a particularly strong memory trace I have from my growing up in a tropical country. Anyway, for me rain has the capacity for both amplifying and muffling/softening the atmosphere. It’s full of emotional portent,
she replied.
Luisa also gave me the idea of using ‘café-ambient’ noises and provided me with some insights about the poem;
…but in part the poem is partly triggered by a conversation I had in a cafe. We talked about work, creative nonfiction essays, family…
As usual the cafe was crowded and noisy. it struck me then but perhaps more afterward, when I was writing the poem, that in the spaces that teem with so much everyday life, activity, business as usual, we strive to hollow out spaces for the intimate to be enacted and reenacted.
Kiss the Cobra by Michael Annis
A Swoon (Marc Neys) film for a text by U.S. poet Michael Annis, translated into Spanish with the help of Gabriela Perez and recited by Sitara Monica Perez, with music by Sonologyst. I am deeply impressed by Swoon’s choice of imagery to accompany the sexual, conjugal language of the poem. The whole story of how this videopoem came to be made is interesting, but I’ll just quote the latter part of Swoon’s blog post about it:
Michael then gave me ‘Kiss the Cobra’, in his own words:
“It’s a passionate piece written from the perspective of a woman’s desires. It’s not overtly sentimental; rather, bold and lusty with unbridled passions.”
The poem was recorded in Spanish. I loved the sound and the melody of the Spanish version and I immediately got an idea for the images.
Sonologyst, again, delivered a fantastic soundtrack to curl around the reading of Sitara Monica Perez.The images I used and edited came from an Russian ASMR-Artist called Air Light.
I took a few samples of her scratching and tapping with bright red nails and started working with that.
The video ended up like an abstract cascade of colour and movement, giving the voice and the words enough room to crawl in and out of the piece. Something to stare at…
The video premiered at ‘1.000 poets for change’ in Denver (28/09/2013)
The Fortune Teller by Robert Krut
Another videopoem by Nick Paonessa of lowercase productions in support of Robert Krut‘s new collection This is the Ocean.
Psalm 42 by Jina Davidovich
From G-dcast:
G-dcast held a competition, The Psalms Project, inviting Jewish artists and poets to reinterpret a Psalm of their choice. We picked four winners from all of the brilliant entries. This piece was written and performed by Jina Davidovich and animated by Jeremy Shuback. It looks into Psalm 42, which poses the question ‘Where is your G-d?’. This was made possible with the generous support of The Koret Foundation, as part of an initiative to cultivate Jewish peoplehood.
Via Velveteen Rabbi.
