Latest video reviews
The Confession: poetry and conversation with Yehia Jaber
Lebanese poet Yehia Jaber discusses his beliefs about war and peace, God and poetry, and recites one example of his work in Arabic (with English in subtitles). The British/Iranian filmmaker Roxana Vilk got help from Maryam Ghorbankarimi (editing) and Pete Vilk (music and sound design).
Yehia Jaber is also a visual poet — see Everitte.org for a beautiful and easily comprehensible example of vispo/concrete poetry in Arabic calligraphy.
The Polish Language by Alice Lyons
This is just about the most inventive typographic animation I’ve even seen — a gorgeous and moving tribute to the power of Polish poetry by American-Irish poet and artist Alice Lyons and Irish artist Orla Mc Hardy. The film has its own website at thepolishlanguage.com, whence the following description:
The Polish Language is an animated film-poem about the subversive force of art and the renewal of poetry in the whispery language of Polish.
Based on the poem of the same title, the film pays homage to the revitalization of poetry in the Polish language in the 20th century. Using hand-drawn, stop-motion and time-lapse animation techniques, the poem unfolds onscreen, with typography as a key visual element. It visual style is loosely based on underground publications in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s, known as Bibula. A chorus of voices sampling poems in Polish, woven together with original music by sound designer Justin Spooner, combine to create a powerful score in a film of ’emotional depth and technical sophistication’ (Jury, Galway Film Fleadh 2009, award for Best Animation).
The Polish Language is at once a playful and solemn journey into the sensuality, beauty and power of language.
Lyons wrote the poem, while Mc Hardy took the lead on the animation. For full credits and a list of screenings, see the website’s About page. The poets sampled in the soundtrack are Tadeusz Różewicz, Zbigniew Herbert and Wisława Szymborska.
Jaguar: poems by Ryan W. Bradley and David Tomaloff
Swoon notes,
Jaguar is a journey through a city. Underground and in the open air.
Imminent danger, a city full of people, unaware.
The poems are read by the authors. They include, in order of presentation, “You Are Jaguar,” by David Tomaloff; “Surfacing,” by Ryan W. Bradley; “You are the sound of sleepwalk waking,” by Tomaloff; and “You Are Jaguar” by Bradley. The poems are found in a recent book from Artistically Declined Press, You Are Jaguar.
Swoon blogged a bit about the film. He quotes Tomaloff on the making of the chapbook:
We wrote the poems 2 lines at a time without exception and very little discussion on where it was going. Then we edited all of the work separately, putting our own personal touches to work that was not wholly our own. Then we set the book up something like a bi-lingual book (side to side), signifying that each poem (left and right) are, in very real ways, translations of each other. In the end, I feel the reader makes the two manuscripts one. It’s one of those collaborations where NONE of it would have happened without two people; I know I couldn’t have written it myself!
Embroidery sample poems as e-textiles from the Lace Sensor Project
Each of the three dresses in the Lace Sensor Dress collection is embroidered with a different poem, sourced from an antique embroidery sampler. Each poem evokes a different emotion, which corresponds to a gesture that triggers a recording of the poem to be played through tiny speakers crocheted into the dress. The sensors are created from custom-made conductive lace and the harder they are pressed, the louder the poem will play.
Artists Anja Hertenberger and Meg Grant work in “the field of e-textiles and wearable electronics,” according to the Lace Sensor Project website. (Thanks to Pamela Hart for the find.)
there is about half a white moon tonight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpwahVK9QCg
The poem by London writer Mikey Fatboy Delgado is performed by Foy Migado and Kemoe Hopscotch. See YouTube for the text of the poem.
