~ Erica Goss ~
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.
Moving Poems and Motionpoems profiled in Connotation Press
I was pleased and honored to have been interviewed by Erica Goss for her second column on videopoetry at Connotation Press, along with poet Todd Boss, the founder of Motionpoems. Todd and I do have some differences in perspective, but Erica highlights our areas of agreement — especially our interest in widening the audience for poetry.
It’s always useful to see one’s work through another’s eyes. What struck me in Erica’s description of Moving Poems was her quite reasonable analogy between author-made videopoetry and self-publshing, which had for some reason never occurred to me before.
Since the site focuses on poets and poetry, the videos Dave shows must include the poem’s text, whether spoken or as a visual element. This is a site for DIY, creative types, and therefore Dave features many poet-made videos. (Poets are well-known for self-publishing; Walt Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass at his own expense, and gave away more copies than he sold.)
I guess I am so focused on the creative side of things, and so accustomed to looking at the web through a blogger’s eyes, that the act of uploading to Vimeo and YouTube just seems like a natural and necessary final step of making a video these days. I am of course aware that some poet-filmmakers market their work on DVDs, and so don’t upload more than a sample to video-sharing sites, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.
But this has me thinking, because I’ve always considered author-made videopoems the ideal to strive for, and I most admire those poets who have taught themselves filmmaking in a serious way (or were smart enough to take film in college). Is it possible that in a literary culture in which self-publication is significantly less prestigious than publication by others, that the poet-filmmakers I so admire are at a disadvantage?
New column on videopoetry/filmpoetry at Connotation Press seeks submissions
The innovative online magazine Connotation Press has just launched a new column dedicated to videopoetry and related forms called The Third Form. It’s authored by San Francisco Bay-area poet Erica Goss, who writes:
My intent with this column is to open up a conversation about video poems. Every month I will feature a selection, so if you make video poems, please send me your work. We’ll post several submissions here. I will explore other topics such as the origins of video poems, their significance as an art form, screenings at festivals, and in-depth interviews. I’m also interested in the technical aspects of making video poems, so feel free to send me any craft tips you’ve picked up, whether they deal with cameras, software, royalty-free film footage, or sound.
Goss devotes the rest of her inaugural column to a brief survey of the field, sharing a few films and videos that illustrate the diverse range of approaches one encounters on the web these days, and I was pleased to see some of my favorites among those she cites. I like her conclusion:
In 1969, William Carlos Williams wrote that “a poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words” and “as in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.” A video poem is also a machine, small or large, and capable of transporting the viewer to a new place of understanding.
I’ve updated the list of Journals that publish poetry videos to include The Third Form.
