~ Connotation Press ~
Two Elizabeth Bishop filmpoems and the art of Heather Haley
The latest installments from our two favorite monthly columnists don’t disappoint. In his “Swoon’s View” column at Awkword Paper Cut, Marc Neys considers “Two Cinematic Approaches to the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop”: “First Death in Nova Scotia” by John Scott, and “Where are the Dolls” by Cassandra Nicolaou.
The editing is thoughtful and draws the viewer inside the story (I love the jump cuts between the introvert close-ups of the woman and the loud and intimidating girls). Nicolaou did an amazing job in translating the poem to this day and age with respect and love for the original words, accenting the power of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry. And when it’s over, I want to see it again.
And in her “Third Form” column at Connotation Press, Erica Goss mixes interview with analysis for an in-depth portrait of Heather Haley, organizer of the long-running Visible Verse Festival in Vancouver and a talented filmmaker in her own right.
Heather Haley’s videos take risks. They deal with domestic violence, eating disorders, prostitution, and other serious issues that affect society. “I don’t set out to deliver a message. I don’t like being preached at and I don’t want to preach. My work comes from my experience, but it’s also universal. I don’t theorize,” Heather told me. “There’s not enough time for that.”
New essays on videopoetry at Awkword Paper Cut and Connotation Press
Just a reminder to check out the new posts from Marc Neys and Erica Goss in their respective monthly videopoetry columns at Awkword Paper Cut and Connotation Press. Most of the films shared in the columns have yet to appear at Moving Poems, so that’s an additional bonus for me as well as for readers. In “Swoon’s View” this month, Marc looks at two cinematic-style videopoems from the Bokeh Yeah! collective in Manchester, made in association with Comma Press, by Adele Myers, Ra Page, and James Starkey. November’s installment of The Third Form with Erica Goss focuses on the poetry filmmaking of Michael Dickes, who is, among other things, the editor of Awkword Paper Cut.
Erica Goss looks at poetry filmmakers under forty and “12 Moons”
Erica Goss’s latest “Third Form” column at Connotation Press takes a look at “Three Video Poems from Artists Under Forty,” interviewing Jack Wake-Walker, Annie Ferguson and Jesse Russell Brooks about how they’ve approached their respective projects.
Goss is directly involved in another project still under development, a collaboration with Swoon (Marc Neys), Nic S. and Kathy McTavish called 12 Moons. Several things interest me about this: the sheer scope of it (twelve videos in twelve months), its collaborative nature, and the different media venues in which it will appear (web, DVD, print chapbook, festivals). It has real potential to break new ground for filmmaker-poets. Here’s how Erica describes the project.
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.
Review of The Body Electric Poetry Film Festival in The Third Form
For her June “Third Form” column at Connotation Press, Erica Goss reports on the first Body Electric Poetry Film Festival. I’m continually frustrated by the paucity of reviews of poetry film festivals, so I was especially glad to get Erica’s impressions of this one (and of the city of Fort Collins, Colorado, which I’ve never visited). One thing I didn’t realize was that the festival organizer, R.W. Perkins, played a crucial role in keeping open the venue in which it was held:
A town that values culture should have an independent theater, but the Lyric Cinema was in danger of closing is doors last year. They needed a digital projector, which costs approximately $150,000, a steep price for a small business. Enter Kickstarter, with a high-energy video by R.W. Perkins. The Lyric raised the money for its projector, remaining a favorite place for movies and off-beat events (like The Body Electric).
I was also cheered to hear how well attended the festival was. Perkins obviously really knows how design and promote a popular event, even if it includes the dreaded word “poetry” in its description.
The thirty-four video poems that appeared in The Body Electric ranged from sensitive, emotional stories such as “Writer’s Block,” “The Barking Horse,” and “Husniyah” to edgy, animated videos (“Anna Blume”) to the tragically comic (“Portugal.”) Some featured exquisite, hand-made drawings (“Afterlight,” “Becoming Judas.”) I cannot emphasize enough how much these beautifully crafted videos benefit from seeing them on the big screen; for example, details of Cheryl Gross’s drawings for “Becoming Judas,” done in archival ball-point pen, are simply not visible on a tiny computer screen, and the complex layering of text, still images, photographs and rapid film clips of “The Mantis Shrimp” gain strength and power when viewed in the theater.
Read the rest of Erica’s review, which also includes examples of six of her favorite films from the festival.
Videopoems of place featured at Connotation Press
This month in her Third Form column at Connotation Press, Erica Goss presents “nine poetry films using the following criteria: first, the native language of the poet or filmmaker had to be the language used in narration, and second, the country of the poet or filmmaker had to be prominent in the video.” Her choices are all films I remember with fondness, and it’s interesting to see them presented side by side. I’ve shared so many videopoems at Moving Poems now, it’s easy to lose track of the outstanding ones, so further acts of curation like Erica’s are invaluable. Go look.
Nic S. profiled at “The Third Form”
I was very pleased to see to my friend Nic S.‘s contributions to videopoetry, audiopoetry, and online publishing in general profiled this month at “The Third Form,” Erica Goss’s column at Connotation Press. As Erica writes, “Nic S.’s work … deserves a wider audience. She is a well-published poet, makes video poems, and has a wonderful speaking voice for poetry.” Included in the profile are several of my personal favorites of Nic’s own videos, as well as videos some of the rest of us have made using Nic’s readings of other people’s poetry and her own, a varied and growing collection.
One of those videos is by Swoon, and in fact the column begins with a review of Swoon’s most ambitious project to date — Cirkel/Circle, featuring eleven poems by eleven different Belgian poets. I’ve also been privileged to see the full-length film, which isn’t publicly available on the web yet pending its screening in some upcoming festivals. In the meantime, you can watch the preview and read Erica’s description to whet your appetite.
Kate Greenstreet’s videopoetry featured at Connotation Press
Kate Greenstreet is one of my favorite videopoets, so I was pleased to see that Erica Goss had chosen to interview Greenstreet and analyze some of her films in her “Third Form” column at Connotation Press this month. Poet-filmmakers occupy a central place in the evolution of videopoetry, and Kate’s work is especially instructive in that regard since, as Goss points out, she comes from a visual arts background (and didn’t publish her first book of poetry until the age of 57).
It’s difficult to discuss the elements of Kate’s art separately from each other. To quote her from My Own Eyes, a short film by Max Greenstreet, Kate’s husband and frequent collaborator, “it’s made of pieces.” Kate’s work mixes up and layers the senses: you can hear the landscape and see the poems. “I think my work on the page is difficult for people,” she told me. “I don’t explain it.” The poems benefit from multiple readings, just as the videos stand up to multiple viewings. […]
Kate is the sole creator of the visual as well as the written parts of her work; therefore, her aesthetic is consistent throughout. From paintings to photographs to film to words, she maintains her sensitivity to the highly specific, suggestive detail, leaving the interpretation of a connected whole to the reader or viewer.
Erica Goss on how poets experience videopoems
This month in her Third Form column at Connotation Press, Erica Goss takes a look at how videopoems made by others are seen by the poets whose texts they use.
“Sometimes I feel like I have to watch the videos between my fingers,” says Howie Good. “I don’t feel like it’s my poem anymore.” Howie is a professor of journalism at SUNY New Paltz, and the author of four poetry collections, most recently Dreaming in Red from Right Hand Pointing. “It’s flattering, and brings recognition for the poet, but the poem is a creation in itself. I want it to generate its own pictures in the reader’s mind.”
Howie told me that “the poet and the filmmaker have different goals. The video is a separate object. It’s good that a poem inspires the filmmaker, but then it’s not my poem. Now it’s out in the world, away from me.” Howie doesn’t feel that videos diminish poetry. “They don’t enhance poems either. They are simply different things.” The worst thing that might happen would be if the video “pre-empted the imagination. We need our consciousness liberated. Poetry does that.”
Close readings/viewings at The Third Form
This month’s “Third Form” column by Erica Goss features close readings of three videopoems: Profile by R.W. Perkins, The City by Marie Silkeberg and Ghayath Almadhoun, and I-poem 6 by Pablo Lopez Jordan. A couple of snippets:
Jordan is a filmmaker, not a poet, but he states that “to use a poem as a script for a video is a great exercise of liberation. When you work with a poem, the structure is more open and increases the chances of experimentation.”
[…]
“I wanted to show little things from ordinary life; words make those insignificant things grow in importance,” Jordan said. The poem appears as text on fragments of torn paper at the bottom of the screen, where it becomes part of the visual collage of shadows, graffiti, trees and sky. Jordan writes that he stayed away from high definition for this video, preferring what he calls a “domestic camera.” This gives the video a handmade look, like that of a very well-done home movie. This was to honor the poem, which Jordan describes as “very emotional, bright and totally real.”
New reviews of recent poetry film festivals
Shannon Raye at reviewVancouver shared some impressions of the Visible Verse Festival of Video Poetry, which was held on October 13 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
I have attended the last five years of the video poem festival, and this was my favorite year because of the diversity and quality of the work presented. Curator Heather Haley did a remarkable job bringing a full roster of culturally and artistically diverse video poems to the festival, which made for a fun and eclectic evening. Videos ranged from quirky anime and sci-fi fantasy to beautifully filmed short films with a narrative structure. I enjoyed the way the 38 video poems were presented, with funnier work following sentimental pieces, and experimental images following work that had more of a short-film feel.
One of the highlights for me was the number of international video poems. This year had a very global feel, with many European countries represented. In addition, there was a sizable selection of video poems exchanged from Argentina’s Video Bardo Festival.
Erica Goss travelled to Berlin for the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival held October 18-21, and this month in her Third Form column at Connotation Press offers the first of a two-part review of the event.
Watching poetry films as part of an audience is a new experience for me. Before the festival, I had only watched them at home on my computer, and usually alone. Sitting with other people in a dark theater while a series of intense, image-rich films rolled by on the big screen allowed me to examine them critically; for every film, I asked myself these questions: was it interesting? Did it create an alternative world? Was there a social, cultural, emotional, or intellectual message? Did the video enhance or detract from the poem? Was I startled, amazed, frightened or bored?
Swoon interview and the upcoming ZEBRA festival
Erica Goss’ Third Form column for October features an interview with the amazing Marc Neys (a.k.a. Swoon) and a look ahead to the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival this month in Berlin.
I enjoyed getting a bit more of Marc’s backstory than I knew before:
Although his work has the look of a seasoned professional, Swoon started making his distinctive videos only two years ago. “I watched a lot of movies when I was a kid,” he told me when we talked in August. “When I was fourteen, I told myself I would make a film someday. I watch movies with an eye to the way they’re made. It drives my wife crazy, but I’m always pointing things out to her when we watch films together, especially if the film isn’t very good.” Swoon’s experience – from running “the smallest theater company in Belgium” – just he and his wife – to playing in a band and singing in English when he was sixteen – come together in his poetry videos.
His remarks on craft and technique were also interesting:
Craft is very important in Swoon’s work. “I spend a lot of time looking at footage, but I have an eye for what I want. A bad film can make a great video poem – it’s in the editing.”
He’s made most of his videos with “a cheap DV camera and some cheap German editing software. I need to upgrade my equipment, but I’m worried that better equipment will make me lazy. With my old equipment, I’m forced to be a better filmmaker. I want people to be impressed with my eye, not the camera’s.”
As far as what the video shows, Swoon advises, “Videos should not just show what’s going on in the poem – as in, the poem mentions a leaf falling and sure enough, you see a leaf falling. I want something that takes more imagination.”
Be sure to read the whole thing and watch the embedded videos.
