Gran mosaico / Large mosaic by Juan Manuel González Zapatero
A brand new videopoem by Dutch artist Pat van Boeckel, who was in northern Spain for an installation with Karin van der Molen at EspacioArteVACA. For this videopoem, he used footage from the installation and collaborated with Spanish poet Juan Manuel González Zapatero. The text resonates with the theme of the installation; here’s what Google Translate makes of the opening paragraphs from Pat and Karin’s joint artist statement:
Can two plus two add up to five? Are there mysterious tools at our fingertips to help us change the course of the world? Can walls tell us stories?
The Dutch couple of artists formed by Karin van der Molen and Patrick van Boeckel try to liberate history and the future from its linear course with their exhibition project at EspacioArteVACA. The vernacular stables of the once self-sufficient mountain mansion located in Viniegra de Abajo invite you to create a poetic dialogue with the history of the place.
Documentary filmmaker and video artist Patrick van Boeckel breathes new life into everyday objects with subtle video interventions. Faces emerging from soapy waters or disappearing behind veils of mourning. A horse that seems to snort behind the blurry bars of his trough. Slaughter pieces that seem to rock on the sea. A wedding dress hangs in the old municipal laundry; the bride’s gloves still dripping onto the water. What will happen to him for the rest of his life? These small installations do not configure a closed history. They are simple ingredients of an amalgam with possible meanings that each visitor must compose.
There’s also a version without English subtitles. The music is by Erland Cooper.
Lac du Saint Sacrament by Marilyn McCabe
Some delicious-looking wintry images in this collaboration between videopoet Marilyn McCabe and photographer Dan Scott. It was featured last February in Atticus Review, with this artist statement:
Photographer Dan Scott and poet Marilyn McCabe are old friends who share an obsession with beautiful Lake George (once known as Lac du Saint Sacrament) in upstate New York, their old stomping ground. With this collaboration, they built on each other’s visions and creative exploration. For more on Dan’s art: https://www.danscott-photography.com/ For more on Marilyn’s poetry and video: MarilynOnaRoll.wordpress.com
Morning Walk by Joyce Sutphen
A new film from Motionpoems—the first in a couple of years—underwritten by the Center for the Art of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. My elderly mother takes a morning walk every day, so Joyce Sutphen‘s poem really resonated—especially as embodied by the actor here, Debra Magid. Zack Grant directs.
The text on the front page of Motionpoems suggests that while the nonprofit organization has shut down, we can expect more occasional films like this one:
Motionpoems Inc., was a 12-year initiative known for turning contemporary poems into short films, while also producing educational programs, public installations, and events. Founded by filmmaker Angella Kassube and poet Todd Boss in 2008, and officially dissolved in 2020 after having made 150+ shorts, today Motionpoems is a project of Todd Boss Originals.
The Life Breath Songs: toward a nature poem, written by the people of Scotland
In her first project as Makar (Scotland’s national poet), Kathleen Jamie invited Scots to submit lines for a trio of crowd-sourced film-poems with a clear rewilding theme, to coincide with the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. As filmmaker Alastair Cook explains on the project’s page at Filmpoem:
The Life Breath Songs (Òrain Beò-analach) is a three film cycle from the #PeoplesPoem project supported by the Scottish Government and driven by the Makar, Kathleen Jamie –
The Life Breath Song
The Shivering River
Are We Listening?Commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library from Alastair Cook, the triptych is called “The Life Breath Songs – toward a nature poem, written by the people of Scotland”, and is curated and arranged by Scotland’s Makar Kathleen Jamie and read by Eilidh Cormack. The cycle was directed and edited by Alastair with sound by Luca Nasciuti and cinematography by James William Norton.
For the texts of the poems, go to the Scottish Poetry Library. From the same source, here’s a good bio of Kathleen Jamie.
Memoir in Bone & Ink (#1) by Kristy Bowen
The first in a projected series of author-made videopoems for Kristy Bowen’s upcoming collection Memoir in Bone & Ink. As a publisher herself (dancing girl press), Bowen’s relationship with books is more hands-on than the average poet’s, and that’s what drew me to this videopoem: the bibliocentric images and text come from a place of deep knowledge. The result is a poetry book trailer that feels like a commentary on book promotion generally, the author trying to coax a book out from under the covers.
Here’s the bio Bowen used for the YouTube description:
A writer and book artist working in both text and image, Kristy Bowen creates a regular series of chapbook, zine, and artist book projects. Since 2005, she has blogged about writing, art, and other creative pursuits at dulcetly: notes on a bookish life. She is the author of eleven full-length collections of poetry/prose/hybrid work, including the recent SEX & VIOLENCE (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and the self-issued ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MONSTER; DARK COUNTRY; and FEED.
The Gone Missing by Joseph Aversano (EnD)
Selected for the 2023 Haiku North America Haibun Film Festival. Browse the other selections.
From Australian director EnD, AKA Nigel Wells.
Director’s statement: “Produce, Produce, Produce!”
Judges’ statement: “A colorful film with some great changes of pace and use of speeded-up footage. Though rather literal at times, there was an interesting mix of images that worked to not feel too obvious overall.”
Joseph Salvatore Aversano is a native New Yorker currently living on the Central Anatolian steppe with his wife Asu. His poems have been published in numerous journals and some have been awarded or anthologized. He is the founding curator of Half Day Moon Press and editor of Half Day Moon Journal. We chose five different films that used his haibun, “The Gone Missing,” intrigued that so many filmmakers chose to work with it, and eager to show the variety of approaches that poetry filmmakers can take.
Au jardin bleu (In the Blue Garden) by Jean Coulombe
A 2020 videopoem by regular collaborators Jean Coulombe (text, images) and Gilbert Sévigny (images, editing, sound). I’d meant to share it at the time, but I do enjoy looking at wintry shots in the middle of summer: a natural surrealism. As a long-time blogger, I also love the fact that Coulombe and Sévigny make their videopoems primarily to provide content for a group blog called CLS Poésie, which has been around since 2009 — as long as Moving Poems. They describe their collective as a
Free association of unclassifiable poets, broadcasting via a blog (which never sleeps) texts, photos and video-poems of a poetry on edge, with blues, neo-country and urban trash accents… (Association libre de poètes inclassables, diffusant par le biais d’un blogue (qui ne dort jamais) des textes, photos et vidéo-poèmes d’une poésie à fleur de peau, aux accents blues, néo-country autant que trash-urbains…)
This is only the sixth videopoem of theirs we’ve shared. Check out the others, but be sure to spend some time on their Vimeo page and discover your own favorites.
Flush by Luisa A. Igloria
This recent videopoem by Marc Neys may be one of my favorites of his to date, exploring each line of a text as one might explore a new beach on holiday, with several lovely and joyous surprises amid the contemplative flow. The text is from Night Willow, a 2012 collection of prose poetry by Fil-Am poet Luisa A. Igloria, who just concluded her second term as the Commonwealth of Virginia’s poet laureate. (The poem originally appeared at Via Negativa, a daily poetry blog that Luisa and I both contribute to.)
This is, by my count, Marc’s sixth film with Luisa’s poetry, though I may be forgetting about one or two. Nor is Marc the only filmmaker to work with Luisa; here’s her page at Moving Poems. So many brilliant films there (plus two of mine).
Orée du désastre (Edge of Disaster) by Sylvain Campeau
A videopoem by Montréal-based filmmaker Mériol Lehmann with text by Sylvain Campeau. Click on the CC icon for subtitles in English or Spanish. I found the English translation by Peter Schulman rather too reliant on cognates for my taste, but was seduced nonetheless by the juxtaposition of landscape and domestic spaces, as well as the contrast between the fast-flowing recitation (by Pierre C. Girard) and the slow panning shots and glacial music.
