I’ve made it a rule not to share videos of my own poems on Moving Poems, but I’m making an exception just this once. When the filmmaker and musician Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon heard I had a new book coming out, he offered to make a video trailer for it if I’d send him some footage, and naturally, I jumped at the chance. But the result is a new videopoem in its own right, and I think it’s worth careful study by poets and publishers who might be interested in producing videos based on poetry books. The usual approach is to select one poem to translate into video, but what Marc wanted to do was make a film based on a montage of lines and stanzas from throughout the book, which he asked me to select, giving guidance only on the maximum number of lines. That’s in the voiceover, which he had me record. Much to my surprise and delight, however, he supplemented that with additional fragments of text that he chose himself and included as text-on-screen. By the end of the film’s three minutes and 41 seconds, I think the viewer ends up with a pretty good idea of what the book is about.

For more on Ice Mountain, please see the publisher’s page (and, you know, consider pre-ordering a copy if you’d like to support the guy behind Moving Poems). It’s worth noting that it will also include visuals: original linocuts by the editor, designer and publisher Beth Adams. And if you’d like a further sample of the contents, I’ve posted a section on my author website.