Roadtrip by Joshua Stewart
http://vimeo.com/67852968
A Vimeo find. The description reads:
Poem by Joshua Stewart.
Video by Fraser Jones.
Scenic views by The United States of America.
Sometimes by Tony Walsh/Longfella
http://vimeo.com/37075020
David Wharton directed this film for a poem by UK performance poet Tony Walsh, A.K.A. Longfella. Videopoetry critic Erica Goss writes,
Actor James Foster delivers an emotional punch you won’t forget: This is one of the few video poems I’ve seen that features the talents of a professional actor, and the results are striking. Foster tells the story of the devastation of divorce with his facial expressions and body language, increasing the tension with repetitions of the word, “Sometimes:” “When I’m eating it cold from a tin in the kitchen / and sometimes, when I’ve stood in a line to collect my prescription.” Watching him break apart is at once humbling and terrifying.
from the Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones by Matsuo Basho
http://vimeo.com/67875626
This is Basho by Babak Gray, starring Yoshi Oida and Dai Tabuchi, with haiga-style illustrations by Graham High (who also, believe it or not, built the animatronics for Aliens). It’s actually one of the first things I ever posted to this site, but the original upload was taken down, so I unpublished the post. Let’s hope the film stays online this time.
The English translation of the travelogue and haiku included in the film is mostly from Sam Hamill. Here’s the description at Vimeo (minus the credits):
The legacy of Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), famous Japanese poet, is his elevation of haiku to the realm of high poetry. This film, an adaptation of Basho’s ‘Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones’, reveals a glimpse into an account of one of Basho’s journeys in the company of confidante and disciple, Chiri.
An interview with director, Babak Gray is available here.
My favorite quote from that interview:
It’s the lightness and ease with which [Basho] treated a subject which we would imagine could only be treated by recourse to tragedy, or something altogether darker and heavier than the language of haiku. That’s what I find so striking—and ultimately so brave. It produces an effect which is at once beautiful, noble and serene. At times more than that, the effect seems deliberately, teasingly ironic, or provocative at least, something like a koan.
That’s the effect I wanted to reproduce in this film.
But do read the whole interview. Fascinating stuff.
Nozarashi Kikô, also translated as Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton, was published in 1684, the first of four haibun travelogues Basho wrote (the most famous being Oku no Hosomichi — The Narrow Road to the Far North). As the Wikipedia puts it,
Traveling in medieval Japan was immensely dangerous, and at first Bashô expected to simply die in the middle of nowhere or be killed by bandits. As the trip progressed, his mood improved and he became comfortable on the road. He met many friends and grew to enjoy the changing scenery and the seasons. His poems took on a less introspective and more striking tone as he observed the world around him. […] The trip took him from Edo to Mount Fuji, Ueno, and Kyoto.
Ve znaku (In the Sign) by Jaromír Typlt
Swoon‘s latest videopoem is a testimony to the way the web can break down differences of geography and language. He writes,
If there’s one thing I really like about the internet, it got to be the possibility and speed in how we can ‘meet’ and collaborate with people everywhere.
Throught the fiber I ‘met’ Jaromír Typlt.
At a certain point we started to write about poetry and videopoems and the possibility of working together.
On his website there were English translations of some of his poems.
We decided on one of them …
The translator is David Vichnar, and the poem is dedicated to the late poet and translator Ludvík Kundera. See Swoon’s blog post for the complete text in Czech and English, as well as the rest of his process notes.
De Dentro / From Within by Ruth Ministro
Nilson Muniz performs a work by the young Portuguese poet Ruth Ministro. Alexandre Braga directs.
Exposure by Gaia Holmes
Rob Lycett made this beautiful film for a poem by the young British poet Gaia Holmes, whose work has attracted a number of filmmakers and animators in recent years. This is one of six films featured in the latest Third Form column on videopoetry at Connotation Press, a review of The Body Electric film festival. Erica Goss writes:
With an eerie precision, the mash-up of flickering images captures the awkwardness of strangers fingering other strangers’ used things. This video poem shows how public access film footage, reimagined and reassembled, can create a compelling story.
Grassy Grayson by Grayson Cahal
Grayson Cahal was in the 3rd grade (in Chatham Elementary School, Lodi, Ohio), so 8 or 9 years old, when he wrote this astonishing poem. Ruth Turner did the animation, and the accompanying poster was designed by Ryan Sprowl.
This video is one in a series – part of the second Healing Edition of the Traveling Stanzas project which is a collaborative effort between the Wick Poetry Center‘s outreach program and the Glyphix design studio at Kent State University.
Shame by Richard Wilbur
http://vimeo.com/66795826
This film is called drawing, and its maker, Paul Mounsey, notes only that it was shot on 16mm film. The text may be found online here. The Poetry Foundation has a very good page on Richard Wilbur, along with a generous selection of his poems.
