A highly inventive videopoem from the indefatigable Swoon (Marc Neys), who described how it came about in a blog post last month:
Note to self: make more ‘Belgian’ videopoems…
So I made one to start with. One I wanted to make for a long time, but never had the right idea for.Now I did.
The poem ‘Memoires / Memoirs’ is by Belgian poet / painter Paul Snoek.[…]
First I created a soundtrack so I had a time frame to work with once I would start filming. I used the recording of the poem that I found on Lyrikline. [listen on Soundcloud]
My idea for the visual was simple, but effective I believe.
‘Cut up flowers and create a house in the most simplistic manner and then destroy the house’
I filmed the whole process from different angles and with different lenses. Editing came naturally once I had the music and the visuals. I adapted the pace and feel of the soundtrack until there was a sense of unity. A translation by James S. Holmes (from ‘A quarter century of poetry from Belgium’, 1970) was used as subtitles.
Memoires is currently a featured film at The Continental Review.
This recent videopeom by Swoon (Marc Neys) uses a text and reading from the fantastic online audiopoetry site Lyrikline.org by Finnish poet Saila Susiluoto. A little background from Swoon’s blog:
This summer I’m invited to the The Annikki Poetry Festival in Tampere (Finland)
Really looking forward to that. Giving a workshop and having a talk with JP Sipilä about videopoetry.One of the poets performing at the festival is Saila Susiluoto and I found a gourgeous poem by her on Lyrikline to work with.
Click through to read the text in Finnish and in English translation (by Pirkko Talvio-Jaatinen and Saila Susiluoto), as well as few process notes.