From Marc Neys AKA Swoon, this is his first new videopoem after a year-long break from filmmaking. It was created in collaboration with the Vancouver-based writers Carrie Jenkins and Ray Hsu for the Metaphysics of Love project’s first interdisciplinary workshop. Marc included footage from Dementia 13 (Coppola), Lodewijk van Eekhout and IICADOM, in addition to his own camera work, and composed the music for the soundtrack.

I would encourage all poets to read and think about the Metaphysics of Love’s project summary. An excerpt:

As regards contemporary North American poetry in English, romantic love has fallen out of favour to the extent that attempts to pursue it in professionalized contexts are now somewhat isolated, though it remains a popular topic among poets working outside such contexts. This trend can be traced back to “Modernism”, and to the institutionalization of poetic practice (and Creative Writing as a discipline) in the twentieth century. Canonical love poetries tend to be derived from Early Modern works and, to a lesser extent, eighteenth and nineteenth century poetry. Students of poetic accounts of love are these days more likely to encounter “courtly love” themes in Geoffrey Chaucer, or the sonnets of Shakespeare, than contemporary romantic love poetry.

Read the rest.