The Woods by Aina Villanger

Another of Kristian Pedersen’s abstract animations, this time with words and voice by Aina Villanger. (There’s also a version without the subtitles.)

Winner of the Bergen Public Librarys poetry competition.
Produced by Gasspedal for Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek

La Ferita (The Cut) by Elena Chiesa

Another brilliant animation by Elena Chiesa, this one with her own text.

Right Through the Earth by Al Rempel

An intriguing, experimental videopoem filmed and directed by the author, Canadian poet Al Rempel. From the description on YouTube:

Right Through the Earth is a video-poem taken from the poem in my book, This Isn’t the Apocalypse We Hoped For. Steph St. Laurent of VideoNexus helped with post-production work & Isaac Smeele composed the original music for the sound-track.

This Isn’t the Apocalypse We Hoped For is due to be published this month by Caitlin Press.

To This Day by Shane Koyczan

Canadian performance poet Shane Koyczan headed up this collaborative project, which has its own website. The YouTube version has gone viral, with more than 5 million views in the first week. Quoting the website:

To This Day Project is a project based on a spoken word poem written by Shane Koyczan called “To This Day”, to further explore the profound and lasting impact that bullying can have on an individual.

Schools and families are in desperate need of proper tools to confront this problem. We can give them a starting point… A message that will have a far reaching and long lasting effect in confronting bullying.

Animators and motion artists brought their unique styles to 20 second segments that will thread into one fluid voice.

This collaborative volunteer effort will demonstrate what a community of caring individuals are capable of when they come together.

This was produced by Leah Nelson, Jorge R. Canedo Estrada and Alicia Katz at Giant Ant. The component 20-second clips were each posted to Vimeo by their creators, if you’d like to investigate any of them further. I’ll just reproduce the list of 86 animators and motion artists from the credits page of the website: Ryan Kothe, Mike Healey, Will Fortanbary, Brian San, Diego De la Rocha, Gizelle Manalo, Adam Plouff, Mike Wolfram, Hyun Min Bae, Oliver Sin, Viraj Ajmeri, Vishnu Ganti, Yun Wang, Boris Wilmot, Cameron Spencer, DeAndria Mackey, Matt Choi, Reimo Õun, Samantha Bjalek, Eli Treviño, Ariel Costa, Caleb Coppock, James Mabery, Samir Hamiche, Waref Abu Quba, Deo Mareza and Clara, Josh Parker, Scott Cannon, Thomas McKeen, Kaine Asika, Marcel Krumbiegel, Teresa del Pozo, Eric Paoli Infanzón, Maxwell Hathaway, Rebecca Berdel, Zach Ogilvie, Anand Mistry, Dominik Grejc, Gideon Prins, Lucy Chen, Mercedes Testa, Rickard Bengtsson, Stina Seppel, Daniel Göttling, Julio C. Kurokodile, Marilyn Cherenko, Tim Darragh, Jaime Ugarte, Joe Donaldson, Josh Beaton, Margaret Schiefer, Rodrigo Ribeiro, Ryan Kaplan, Yeimi Salazar, Daniel Bartels, Joe Donaldson, Daniel Molina, Sitji Chou, Tong Zhang, Luc Journot, Vincent Bilodeau, Amy Schmitt, Bert Beltran, Daniel Moreno Cordero, Marie Owona, Mateusz Kukla, Sean Procter, Steven Fraser, Aparajita R, Ben Chwirka, Cale Oglesby, Igor Komolov, Markus Magnusson, Remington McElhaney, Tim Howe, Agil Pandri, Jessie Tully, Sander Joon, Kumphol Ponpisute, James Waters, Chris Koelsch, Ronald Rabideau, Alessandro & Manfredi, Andrea López, and Howey Mitsakos.

So Be It by Kenneth Patchen

This experimental film, Sperma Mundi III Introduction by Wild Worm Web, includes a recording of Patchen reciting his poem in the soundtrack. (To read the text, see Google Books.)

Found Footage :
Jack Smith + Paul Sharits + Hy Hirsh + Otto Mühl
Poem by Kenneth Patchen
Music Vivid Tribe Of Psychics (Yoshiwaku + Parrhesia Sound System)
soundcloud.com/vivid-tribe-of-psychics

from Tabacaria (The Tobacconist’s) by Álvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa)

This is Azulejo ou l’illusion visuelle, an “animated film by Kolja Saksida made in the two week workshop in Lisbon, Portugal,” according to the description on Vimeo from ZVVIKS, the Slovenian Institute for Film and Audiovisual Production. A note at the end of the film adds that it was inspired by a painting on tiles representing Lisbon before the great earthquake of 1755.

The film includes just the first four lines of the poem in the soundtrack, with a French translation in titling. Here’s the English translation given in the description:

I am nothing.
I’ll never be anything.
I can not want to be anything.
Apart from this, I have in me all the dreams of the world.

This is one of the poems Pessoa wrote under the “heteronym” of Álvaro de Campos. Here’s the complete, much longer text and here’s one blogger’s attempt at a translation.

Things That Have No Name by the Psychiatric Intensive Outpatient Therapy Group

An outstanding collaborative poem credited to the Psychiatric Intensive Outpatient Therapy Group, Summa Health Systems. Alex McClelland made this film based on a poster design by fellow Kent State University student Nate Mucha. Poster and animation are part of the Healing Stanzas project. (Here are the poster and the text.)

best parts of you by Kathleen Roberts

This hypnotic combination of kinetic text, video and sound art represents a collaboration between Duluth, Minnesota-based poet Kathleen Roberts (text, reading) and musician/artist Kathy McTavish (music and images) for the Wildwood River micropress.

What I Say Sometimes But Then Stop Myself by Peter Davis

Featured at The Volta: Medium, Issue #56,. Peter Davis “writes, draws, and makes music in Muncie, Indiana,” according to his bio. This poem is from his third book of poems, TINA, forthcoming from Bloof Books. Author-made poetry animations are a relative rarity for obvious reasons: animation is hard. But when poets do possess the skills to animate their own poems, very interesting things can happen, as this video demonstrates.

I Have a Secret Servant by Felix Dennis

A “melting painting animation” by Italian video artist Elena Chiesa. For more of Felix Dennis’ poetry, see his website.

Another Slow Day by Henry Stead

http://vimeo.com/57190458

London-based poet, translator and classicist Henry Stead supplied the words and voice for this videopoem by Swoon, who has blogged some process notes:

To go with the almost languid reading I wanted images that expressed some kind of restlessness, boredom and even sulk. Once I had those, the video practically made itself…

They met for a live performance (Stead reading while the film was projected) last week at the London Poetry Systems 5th anniversary celebration.

Bir Küvet Hikâyesi (The Tale of a Tub) by Nazim Hikmet

A very fine dramatization of a narrative poem by the great Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet. The translation in the subtitles leaves a bit to be desired, but the actors help carry the meaning through. Here’s the Vimeo description:

Nâzım Hikmet’in “Bir Küvet Hikâyesi” isimli şiirinden uyarlanan kısa film.

This movie which is adapted from a poem by Nazim Hikmet, recreates the tensions provoked by the ‘other woman’ through the voices of a couple named Suleyman and Fahire.

Yönetmen – Senaryo/Directed by: Orçun Baş
Eser/Poem By: Nâzım Hikmet
Oyuncular/Cast: Filiz Baş, Coşkun Baş
Kamera/Camera: Orçun Baş
Ses/Sound: Öner S. Biberkökü
Işık/Light: Orçun Baş, Öner S. Biberkökü
Görsel Efekt/Visual Effects: Öner S. Biberkökü
Kurgu/Editing: Orçun Baş