~ Nationality: United States ~
Uncle Harry’s Tombstone by John P. Tuschen
Jordan T. Caylor writes in the video description,
I recorded my dad reciting his poem “Uncle Harry’s Tombstone” at the end of his stint as the poet laureate of Madison, Wisconsin- this is my visual interpretation of his words.
Moth by Katie Frank
http://vimeo.com/39317127
Film by Jessica Bass; poem and performance by Katie Frank.
may i feel said he by e.e. cummings
This is You and Me by Karsten Krause, which uses footage of her taken by Hans Krause. As the description at Vimeo puts it: “A woman is walking towards her husband’s camera for four decades. A love story on small gauge film.”
See here for the text of the poem.
Precious Are The Feet of Those… by Kwame Dawes
Another in the Voices from Haiti series produced by the Pulitzer Center, exploring life after the earthquake and focusing on the lives of those affected by HIV/AIDS, with poetry by Kwame Dawes, images by photographer Andre Lambertson, editing by Robin Bell and music by Kevin Simmonds. See YouTube for the text.
just midnight by Robert Lax
An interesting solution to the problem of how to envideo a poem whose typographical arrangement was very important to its author. Susanne Wiegner notes at Vimeo,
“just midnight” is a poem by Robert Lax that describes a temporal and spacial situation by very minimal means. For Robert Lax the composition of the letters and words on the paper was very important. And so he created one of his vertical typefaces, that was transferred for the film. The letters become spaces and actors, crossed and circled by the camera. Step by step a three-dimensional formation of words is generated and disappears again in a sheet of paper.
The film has been very widely screened — click through for a full list of festivals and awards.
Advertising Lullaby by George Carlin
Found text has played a central role in the development of videopoetry, so this montage of advertising tropes by the late comedian George Carlin becomes a full-fledged poem merely by adaptation to the kinetic-text medium. An inspired choice and execution by Jenny Lien.
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond by e.e. cummings
“People and places from a recent trip to San Diego, CA,” says documentary photojournalist and filmmaker Kristyn Ulanday in the description at Vimeo. I think she rather understates the awesomeness of this videopoem. (For the text of the poem, see Poets.org.)
“Subcutaneous”: Three poems by Dan Godston
http://vimeo.com/38687396
Three poems in one video by the indefatigible Swoon. The poems are: “Spread Out,” “Trash” and “A Sonnet for Edgar Allan Poe.” For the texts, see Swoon’s blog post about the video.
Becoming Judas: five poems by Nicelle Davis
These poems are from Becoming Judas by Nicelle Davis, forthcoming from Red Hen Press. The wonderfully whimsical drawings by Cheryl Gross are animated in a fairly basic style which the description at YouTube dubs “motion graphics.”
Voices from Haiti: Boy in Blue by Kwame Dawes
This is the English version of the “visual poem” Boy in Blue with poetry by Kwame Dawes, images by photographer Andre Lambertson, editing by Robin Bell and music by Kevin Simmonds. See YouTube for the text.
I’ve decided to change course here and begin occasionally posting films that consist entirely of still images so I can feature projects like this. The technical term for a film montage of still images (often found in documentary films) is kinestasis, so that’s the name of this newest category at Moving Poems.
I previously shared Dawes’ kinestases with photographer Joshua Cogan, Live Hope Love, which was about living with HIV in Jamaica. Voices from Haiti is a newer series, also produced by the Pulitzer Center, which explores life after the earthquake in Haiti, focusing on the lives of those affected by HIV/AIDS.
At the AWP conference in Chicago the week before last, I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Dawes speak about the collaborative process involved in making these videos, and was impressed by the extent to which he and the other artists involved in these projects seem to have stumbled upon some of the same principles that make regular videopoems or filmpoems work: the importance of the soundtrack and the need for juxtaposition rather than simple illustration to created multiple narratives in the listener’s head — “reportages in dialogue,” as he put it. These visual poems are creations in their own right, different from purely textual poems, and would not have happened without collaboration between poet, photographer and composer, he said.
