~ Jeffrey Zhang ~
Cultural Submissions by Caroline Reid
Written in a free-associative Australian vernacular and littered with local references, Cultural Submissions is by Caroline Reid in Adelaide. It evokes episodes in places on either side of the continent and the endless drive between the west-east poles of Perth and Melbourne.
For the video, Caroline speaks the prose-poetic text in a downbeat drawl, layered in a call-and-response fashion by sound engineer Jeffrey Zhang. This heightens the sense of thoughts rolling over each other and subjects changing as if melting in mid-sentence. Film-maker Patrick Zoerner brings together a series of slowly dissolving images that provide a poetic visual space for the voice to take centre stage.
Cultural Submissions can be read on the page at Verita La. It is from Siarad, a collection of Caroline’s poetry and prose published by ES-PRESS in 2020. The video was part of an interesting program curated by Jacqui Malens for the 2021 Poetic City event in Canberra.
Moving Poems has previously featured three other videos from Caroline’s writing.
murder girl gets wired by Caroline Reid
murder girl gets wired is written and spoken by award-winning South Australian poet and performer, Caroline Reid. She describes its subject as “hard-edged urban youth culture in late night small city Australia”. The film-maker in the collaboration goes by the artist name featherfurl, and also makes music and gif art.
The eerie suburban images are night-time photographs that are given filmic motion via subtle and unusual visual effects. The soundtrack, engineered by Jeffrey Zhang, is a stand-out feature, with two softly-layered voice tracks accompanying the central reading of the poem.
The inventive use of simple media elements, coupled with the powerful writing, creates outstanding videopoetry in this piece.
murder girl gets wired is the second film we have featured at Moving Poems from Caroline Reid and collaborators. The first was Lost, a finalist in the Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film competition in Ireland in 2019, and part of Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Germany in 2020.
