~ Nationality: United States ~
The Lovers by Dorianne Laux
A wonderful interpretation of the Laux poem that takes one, crucial liberty with the text, turning it from a third-person into a first-person poem in the woman’s voice. Here’s the director’s description on Vimeo:
The Lovers is performance piece based on the poem by Dorianne Laux. It examines the ecstasy, complexity and contradiction of female sexual experience.
This performance was developed as a collaboration between The Kelman Group (UK) and The Tuesday Group (Portland, OR, USA) in July and August 2009.
Performers : Juli Gun, Anet Ris-Kelman and Taru Sinclair
Director : Bob LockwoodThis edit is an amalgam of takes of two rehearsal runs of the piece at Hipbone Studio on E.Burnside, Portland.
She is Overheard Singing by Edna St. Vincent Millay
A music-video-style film titled Overheard by composer Briareus (Clayton Corrello). Millay’s poetry doesn’t do much for me by itself, but put to music and envideoed, it’s really quite compelling, I think.
Lunch Poem by Tracey K. Smith
Andrew Kamp claims this is the first video he ever made — seems hard to believe. Tracey K. Smith appears to have let her website’s domain expire, but there’s a good selection of her poems at the audio poetry site From the Fishouse. (Hat-tip: Cloudy Day Art)
Poem by e. e. cummings (“Buffalo Bill’s defunct”)
“An e.e. cummings poem I interpreted for my film production class. Shot on a dvx100b. Cut on Final Cut Pro,” says Jean-Paul Huang. Somewhat melodramatic, but so’s the poem. (An animation of the same poem by a different filmmaker that I posted a couple months ago has been removed from Vimeo.)
Lullaby by Anne Sexton
http://www.vimeo.com/8540818
Filmmaker TJ ODonnell says, “I added some effects to the soundtrack (whales) to further the feeling that one was slipping slowly under water.” I like the classical piano here, too, which is unusual — many times I’ve decided not to post an otherwise pretty good videopoem because of just such a soundtrack.
Hunter’s Green by Lauren Eddy
Though I’ve seen online documentaries about erasure poetry, this is the first videopoem I’ve seen that actually uses the technique as part of a stop-motion animation. It’s the result of a collaboration between the poet, Lauren Eddy and the animator and sound editor, Anne Duquennois, which Eddy clarified via email:
We came up with the concept and various visual aspects of the film together, and the animation was a collaborative process, so we credited the film with both of us as “co-creators.” The idea was to use film as a medium for commentary on the processual nature of erasure poetry and collage. We were inspired by the ways that one medium can re-interpret and re-invent another.
Anne’s production company is Broken Bike Productions — no website yet, but the address is brokenbikeproductions [at] gmail [dot] com.
Old Astronauts by Tim Nolan
Emma Burghardt is the animator; the voice is the poet’s. Another fine production from MotionPoems.com.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
I like the gritty take on Oliver’s most famous poem. I’m sure this won’t be the last filmic word on it, but there are so many ways this could’ve been done wrong — I’m glad Justin DeWaard steered clear of them.
Shot with a Canon 7D and edited on Final Cut. HD was lost in the compression. Filmed on location in Holland MI and at Gyxo Studio.
The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins
Lindsey Butler directed, with narration by Nicholas Chichirda. Nice to see such a fine videopoem of Collins’ work that isn’t one of the canonical (and authorized) animations.
Prodigy by Charles Simic
This is noteworthy in part because it aired on a major television network, but it’s also an effective poetry video, I think. It’s been up on YouTube for a while, so it’s probably safe to assume that ABC isn’t going to ask for it to be taken down.
Names I’d Forgotten by Joseph Millar
Directed by David Hambridge and David Sherrill. The poem appears in Millar’s book Overtime.
