~ Motionpoems ~
The Mother Warns the Tornado by Catherine Pierce
Motionpoems‘ latest release is a film by Isaac Ravishankara that transforms Catherine Pierce‘s poem into something that, save for its brevity, approaches a blockbuster movie in style and and emotional impact, complete with a very real-looking tornado at the end. MP’s “citizen journalist” Maggie Roy conducted interviews with both the poet and the filmmaker. Here’s some of what Pierce told her:
On April 27, 2011, the day of the tornado outbreak that killed over 300 people and injured many more, I was in Cullman, Alabama with my husband and infant son when an EF-4 tore through that town. Those moments of waiting while the tornado passed (we were huddled in the lobby bathroom of a Days Inn) really crystallized for me both the intensity of love I had for my child and what real, immediate fear felt like—not fear of something that might happen in the future, but a visceral fight-or-flight fear.
I’d been sort of stuck, writing-wise, since the birth of my son (the sleep deprivation wasn’t helping, either), but I’d been planning to write a series of poems from the point of view of a tornado; after that day, I realized that the scope of that series had to be big enough to include not only the tornado but the lives it impacted. […]
I think the film is incredible. I’m bowled over by how powerful and visceral it is, and also by how beautiful. There are so many small moments here—the lizard, the shot of the boy’s feet, the mother opening her eyes—that just undo me each time I see them, and I love the way the film slowly ratchets up the tension. I knew, from talking with Isaac at the outset of the project, that he connected with the poem exactly as I hoped someone would, but what he ended up making surpassed what I could have imagined. I just love everything about this film, and am so grateful to have been introduced to Isaac’s work.
It’s evident just from watching the film that a lot of care, attention and hard work went into it; the interview with Ravishankara suggests just how much:
I first spoke to Catherine Pierce about the project in the fall of 2014. I knew from the second I read the poem that I wanted to make this piece, and I knew from that moment that it needed to show a mother with a child who was actually her son. It wasn’t until March of this year that I was introduced to Dianna [Miranda] and her son Gus [Buck]. I knew from the moment they invited me into their home that they would be the family around which we would build this piece.
The real feeling of the piece came together in post production. There is absolutely NO WAY this film would have come together the way it did without the amazing insight from our editor, Jamie Foord at Rock Paper Scissors, who just kept making it more and more and more EMOTIONAL with every edit. And then we still had NO IDEA how we were going to make this feeling so tangible, but the team of artists at A52 not only dreamt up the tornado, but made it REAL. Of course, there are the shots where we SEE the thing, but they made sure we FELT it in nearly every shot leading up to the conclusion.
A Day at the Mall Reminds Me of America by Sarah Blake
Motionpoems has just kicked off its 6th season with this tour de force from the Turkish-American filmmaker Ayse Altinok. The cinematography is by Greg Schmidt and the music by William Orbit.
Sarah Blake‘s poem appears in her debut collection Mr. West, an “unauthorized lyric biography of Kanye West” which Evie Shockley calls “tender without being sentimental, funny without being cruel, and obsessive without being exploitative.” Check out Arisa White‘s interviews with Blake and Altinok at the Motionpoems website. Blake says, in part:
I love the film. I felt like [Ayşe] made me a version of Kanye West’s music video for his song, ‘Flashing Lights’—a version of it just for me and my poem.
And Altinok notes that she deliberately chose a shorter poem with lots of room for cinematic exploration:
“Less words, more story” is very interesting to me in any discipline. I didn’t want to explain the poem, I wanted to duet the words and the meanings explored in the text. When I read the poem, I immediately saw the 14-year-old girl and her world. It wasn’t a struggle to bring her to life. It was a very relevant subject to me. I love youth culture and also visual poetry; this was a heavenly project. […]
After I read the poem I immediately started writing a script. It was more of a shot-list at first. I didn’t bother writing the happenings in a poetic way, I thought the poetry was already written by Sarah Blake, so I only put ideas on paper in a very practical manner. It was literally a list of scenes. I definitely knew my character needed to be the 14-year-old, rather than the woman who is the pregnant narrator. She didn’t seem too interesting to me, like myself—I can never make a film about me, but I want to make films about things I like. Rather, things I find fruitful (story-wise). I also thought my writing sucked, so at that point, I turned to photography. I started looking at pictures, mostly portraits, and created this character, and give her an identity. I felt very free—that was the best part of working with a poem.
In terms of script, though, I had to structure it in a way that felt compelling, and with a sense of beginning, middle, and end. It was a fragile story, I didn’t want to make a big statement, but I didn’t want to create just fluff, with a bunch of beautiful images and no thread, either—it was a gentle balance, not too much story that kills the poem, but not too freestyle that loses its meaning. I wanted people to feel what it’s like to live this character’s life, rather then me telling them how to.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter”
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter
Poem by Mark Strand
Film by Scott Wenner
Voice by Don Drive
Recording by Kelly Pieklo
Motionpoems 2013
I love animated videopoems. This appreciation developed while I was growing up watching cartoons with my favorite baby sitter, the television set. Although most animated videopoems cannot be compared to Heckle and Jeckle or Bugs Bunny, they still bring back memories of my formative years, eating Wonder Bread and butter sandwiches. The shows that I watched were filled with sarcasm and also had a dark side. When I look back, one could say that they were for the most part inappropriate and violent. That’s the down side. The up side is that they helped shape my sick sense of humor. Perhaps watching cartoons prepared me for adulthood. It’s sad to think of Tweety Bird as a role model.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter is exactly what I’m talking about in terms of it having a hint of darkness. The design is well done, the timing is perfect and the art is beautifully animated. The first scene involving the graffiti subway is a nice touch. I won’t bother to compare it to When At A Certain Party In NYC. Both are on the same level in terms of excellence. Both are wonderfully executed and although seemingly simple, they’re amazingly complex. Again the animation is flawless and I am still trying to figure out which program Scott Wenner used. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some kind of 3D aspect in After Effects, but that’s a technical question we animators like to ponder.
The poetry is wonderful. The ending is a bit of a surprise, but not really. So many times we expect more from a situation and are left hanging. Although the character is plain in appearance he remains expressive and possesses an amazing amount of emotion. This coupled with the poetry makes this videopoem outstanding.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter tells a story that leaves you dangling. We are experiencing a small yet unsettling trip through limbo, which is perhaps closer to reality than we would like to be. It’s sort of like reading a book and having the last page torn out. I could bring this review full circle and continue to talk about how my childhood was shaped by Walt Disney and Looney Tunes, but hopefully by this point my taste in animation has become a bit more sophisticated.
Upcoming poetry-film screenings: Minneapolis, Edinburgh, Lublin and London
May 21 in Minneapolis
Motionpoems Season 6 World Premiere.
Two screenings: 6:00pm and 8:00pm with a half-hour panel discussion taking place after the 6 pm screening. Each screening will last less than 60 minutes and will be hosted by Motionpoems Artistic Director Todd Boss and MPR ‘movie maven’ Stephanie Curtis. Many featured poets and filmmakers will be on hand. It’ll be a night of great poetry brought to cinematic life!
May 24 in Edinburgh
Filmpoem Festival Fifteen at Hidden Door.
Filmpoem Festival 15 will be an open-ended series of events and screenings. After our successful Antwerp festival in 2014, we are working this year with The Poetry Society and a series of universities and poetry festivals, presenting Filmpoem’s established mix of poetryfilm, live film performance, poets, filmmakers, and discussions.
May 28 in Lublin, Poland
A screening of films from the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival as part of Festiwal Miasto Poezji (City of Poetry Festival).
June 13 in London
Mahu in Video at the Hardy Tree Gallery.
The emerging medium of poetry film or cinepoetry, crossing poetic principles with video art has often been overtaken by limited, dualistic collaborations. This evening aims to screen the more complex understandings of this new potentiality, another weapon in the pocket of the contemporary poet – the moving image. Co-curated by Dave Spittle & Gareth Evans
– Films from Joshua Alexander, David Kelly-Mancaux, Simon Barraclough, Caroline Alice Lopez, Robert Herbert McClean & more
June 21 in London
PoetryFilm Solstice at The Groucho Club.
Submissions are now being considered for this event, the post says. Here are the guidelines.
Please note that, contrary to what I had previously suggested here, the Laugharne Castle Poetry and Film Festival does NOT appear to be happening this year. (I had mis-read the website.)
Poetry-film screenings and exhibitions in May
This is everything I have a date and link for at present. (Upcoming events for PoetryFilm also include a “PoetryFilm event at The Groucho Club, London (UK)” sometime in May.)
All month (through June 7) in Taichung, Taiwan
TYPEMOTION: Type as Image in Motion exhibition.
All month (through July 5) in Montreal
Carrefour Vidéo-poétique video installation.
May 6 in Münster
Best of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2014: AUSLESE. The third of three events presented by Filmwerkstatt Münster in the Palace Theatre, compiled and moderated by the ZEBRA program director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel.
Aus den Einsendungen des ZEBRA 2014 präsentieren wir das breite Spektrum des deutschen und internationalen Poesiefilms. Krisen, Sehnsüchte, Angst, Lust und Liebe bilden eine gelungene Mischung.
May 21 in Minneapolis
Motionpoems Season 6 World Premiere.
For season 6, we’ve partnered with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts to produce a season by incredible female poets and a diverse array of amazing independent filmmakers from around the world.
We’ll premiere them for the first time on the big screen at the Walker Art Center Cinema in Minneapolis on May 21, and you’re invited.
Two screenings: 6:00pm and 8:00pm with a half-hour panel discussion taking place after the 6 pm screening. Each screening will last less than 60 minutes and will be hosted by Motionpoems Artistic Director Todd Boss. Many featured poets and filmmakers will be on hand. It’ll be a night of great poetry brought to cinematic life!
For more information (including a list of all 20 films), see the Motionpoems news page.
May 24 in Edinburgh
Filmpoem Festival Fifteen at Hidden Door.
Filmpoem Festival 15 will be an open-ended series of events and screenings. After our successful Antwerp festival in 2014, we are working this year with The Poetry Society and a series of universities and poetry festivals, presenting Filmpoem’s established mix of poetryfilm, live film performance, poets, filmmakers, and discussions.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “When At A Certain Party In NYC”
When At A Certain Party In NYC
Poem by Erin Belieu
Animation by Amy Schmitt
View at Motionpoems
This has to be one of the most charming video poems I have seen so far.
For starters, the animation is delightful: well stylized and flawlessly (graphically) designed. I am not usually a huge fan of Adobe Illustrator (I believe that is the program Amy Schmitt used to create the artwork for the animation), but in this case the simplicity of her art complements the poem perfectly. The speed and timing with which the graphics are deployed is seamless. The imagery doesn’t overshadow the poem but brings out the poet’s sense of humor. I could go on and on about the execution of the art, but long story short, it’s great.
The dryness of the poetry and the innocence of the art combine for a perfect fit. Our main character will never be part of the New York scene. She leaves the city not necessarily defeated, but with an acquired knowledge and awareness. It’s the realization that it’s all a bunch of bullshit, so why bother?
The message is very specific in terms of coming from a place like the Midwest and going to NYC. In other words, it’s basically a reality check. Belieu points out the pretentiousness of the whole hipster-scene phenomenon, which has gotten completely out of control. As a matter of fact, as long as I can remember, every scene has gotten out of control whether it’s the hipster regime, area- or zipcode-envy. People dream of coming to a place like New York for countless reasons. Some seek stardom and others are just looking for a more accepting lifestyle, a place to fit in. When they arrive, they either feel right at home or on another planet. I myself, a native New Yorker, ironically can relate to the Midwesterner who decides not to stay. I like to take a step back sometimes and observe the people who have come to my home town, agree to pay the high rents and act out their fantasies—which may or may not include someone like me, for of a whole slew of reasons. It is this trite behavior that Belieu has exposed and pokes fun at. Her vision makes me to laugh, and I could not agree more.
The music is great and adds to the nostalgic, late 50s-early 60s, plastic backdrop. I love this video poem. It’s superbly done on every level.
AWP 2015: videopoetry- and multimedia-related panels
With more than 12,000 attendees, the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs or AWP conference is by far the largest gathering of creative writers and writing teachers in North America. This year it’s being held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home to Motionpoems, and if you’re attending, be sure to check out the Motionpoems display at the book fair.
Visit us in Booth #1036! We’ll have:
- a preview of Season 6, produced in partnership with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts
- free lesson plans with prompts by Janet Burroway
- more information on our Big Bridges contest
- and much, much more!
(That’s from their email newsletter.)
AWP is this very week, April 8-12, so I’m a little late in getting this out, but I was excited to see nine different panel discussions that are directly or indirectly related to videopoetry and multimedia. I think this is as good an indication as any of the growing literary prestige of multimedia experimentation. Only two of the following panels conflict with each other, so if you’re attending, be sure to check out as many of these as you can. (I’ll be happy to post reports if anyone wants to write them.) Click on the titles for more information, including biographies of the panelists.
R204. Hypertext: Bookish Writing for a Digital Age
Room 200 H&I, Level 2
Thursday, April 9, 2015
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
Panelists: Susannah Schouweiler, Halimah Marcus, Dustin Luke Nelson, Jamie Millard, David Doody
Panelists will speak to the interplay of medium and message as lit mag fare and literary journalism migrate from print to web-based platforms. We’ll highlight new forms of online storytelling and innovations in meaningful reader engagement in this new wave of bookish writing, marked by an increasingly interdisciplinary way of writing and publishing inclined toward more inclusive critical conversations and contributions by “professional” journalists and critics, writers and readers alike.
R237. Reimagining the Author: Pedagogies of Collaboration, Chance, and New Media in Poetry Workshops
Room 205 A&B, Level 2
Thursday, April 9, 2015
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm
Panelists: Timothy Bradford, Susan Briante, Joseph Harrington, Cheryl Pallant, Grant Matthew Jenkins
Collaboration, digitization, automation, and conceptualization are just some of the ways traditional notions of authorship can be reimagined in the classroom. Panelists will discuss how rethinking these notions can unlock students’ creativity and critical thinking about their own writing, and they will share lesson plans geared toward helping community, undergraduate, and graduate students generate innovative work and practice new methods they can later apply in more traditional assignments.
R280. Ut Cinéma Poesis: Using Film in Poetry Workshops
Room M100 J, Mezzanine Level
Thursday, April 9, 2015
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm
Panelists: James Pate, Sandra Lim, Lisa Fishman, Arda Collins, James Shea
Pasolini wrote poetry. Frank O’Hara made a film. Poetry and film have long found inspiration in one another. This panel of five poets explores ways to use film (Bergman, Eisenstein, Maya Deren, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Trecartin) in poetry workshops. How can film lead to writing exercises and discussions about poetic form, image, repetition, sound, and juxtaposition? We also address new, evolving technologies, such as iMovie and the iPhone, and consider how they might be used in a poetry class.
R234. The Essay Blinks: Multimedia Writers on Crafting the Visual Essay
Room 200 D&E, Level 2
Thursday, April 9, 2015
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm
Panelists: Sarah Minor, Mark Ehling, Amaranth Borsuk, Eric LeMay
As literary publishing adjusts to the presence of both small-scale presses and web-based magazines, more publishers are adapting to and even selecting for writing that experiments visually. But what makes a multimedia essay? And what makes a good one? Specifically, which techniques render multimedia elements inextricable from rather than extraneous to a text? On this panel, four writers focus on the craft of visual texts and address how ancient essay forms are thriving in the newest media.
F204. Word Meets Image: The Video Essay
Room 101 F&G, Level 1
Friday, April 10, 2015
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
Panelists: Ned Stuckey-French, Eula Biss, Kristen Radtke, John Bresland
New technologies (iPhones, editing software, YouTube, etc.) have made possible a new literary form—the video essay. This panel will investigate the video essay, including its relationship to other genres (e.g., print essays, graphic memoirs, film, documentaries, etc.), the relationship of text to image, video essays in the classroom, collaboration, curating essays for online magazines, developing scripts, editing, and the use of animation, sound, found footage, titles, and other techniques.
F274. Writing with Media: Poets, Printers, and Programmers
Room 200 D&E, Level 2
Friday, April 10, 2015
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm
Panelists: Kevin McFadden, Todd Boss, Katherine McNamara, Lisa Pearson, Steve Woodall
The art of the book in the digital age is the art of collaboration. Writer, poet, printer, programmer, filmmaker, animator, composer, publisher: all play vital roles in new media, widening the role of authorship. This panel of writers who are also editors-printers-filmmakers-programmers-publishers demonstrates, on screen and on the page, the emergence of the book as a total work of art, from text to voice, photo, scan, and video, forming a unified expression where codex meets multimedia.
S172. Literature On Air
Room 101 F&G, Level 1
Saturday, April 11, 2015
12:00 pm to 1:15 pm
Panelists: Marianne Kunkel, Jeffrey Brown, Don Share, Michael Nye
The panel will explore innovative ways in which the literary arts have achieved renewed life through various broadcast media, including video, vimeos, and the exciting rise in literary podcasts. Editors of Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Missouri Review, and PBS NewsHour will discuss strategies, challenges, and opportunities that come with creating on-air media platforms for the literary arts and what these productions mean for their vision for their pages.
S204. Video Poems and Cross-Genre Collaboration: A Conversation and Screening with Louise Erdrich, Heid E. Erdrich, and Trevino Brings Plenty
Room 101 F&G, Level 1
Saturday, April 11, 2015
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
Panelists: Jocelyn Hale, Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Louise Erdrich, Heid E. Erdrich
Louise Erdrich, National Book Award-winning author of The Round House, collaborates on video poems with her sister Heid and an all-indigenous filmmaking crew including musician-poet Trevino Brings Plenty and filmmaker Elizabeth Day.
S284. Creative Writing in the Digital Age
Room M100 J, Mezzanine Level
Saturday, April 11, 2015
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm
Panelists: Joseph Rein, Doug Dechow, Janelle Adsit, Trent Hergenrader, Michael Dean Clark
Digital technology has a profound and ever-increasing impact on creative writing; however, this impact is often overlooked in the traditional creative writing classroom. This panel addresses creative solutions to utilizing technology in traditional and hybrid genres, from digital poetics to social media to game theory. The panelists discuss traditional, hybrid, and online-only classrooms, and how instructors can integrate digital tools to enhance creativity both in process and product.
Call for poems to be turned into films about “Big Bridges”
The Minneapolis-based poetry-film organization Motionpoems, in cooperation with the Weisman Art Museum of the University of Minnesota, is seeking submissions to a poetry-film installation called Big Bridges.
See your poem turned into a film! Calling all artists, designers, engineers, poets, and the entire community…Join us in a creative dialogue to establish the expectations, possibilities, and aspirations for the future of our Big Bridges over the Mississippi River. America’s bridges are failing. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, 25% of America’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
To inspire future engineers, Motionpoems and Target Studio at the Weisman Art Museum of the University of Minnesota invite poets to dream big about bridges. We want poems to inspire our nation’s designers, engineers, and architects to reimagine the future of America’s big bridges. You might send us a poem that imagines a physical bridge of the future or one that conceptualizes the idea of bridging in a big way or you might send us a poem that reinterprets bridge-crossing for a new age. Broad interpretations of the theme encouraged. Executive director of the Poetry Society of America and former New Yorker poetry editor Alice Quinn will judge this poetry contest.
Five winners will:
- receive $1,000
- see their poems turned into short films
- see those films at the Weisman Art Museum
- receive airfare/accommodations to attend the premiere in Minneapolis (date to be announced).
The deadline for submissions is April 30, and only poets resident in the U.S. may enter. Click through and scroll down past the images to read the terms of entry. There will be a second call for entries, this time to U.S. filmmakers, at a yet-to-be-determined date after the five poems have been chosen.
Upcoming poetry-film screenings and festivals
Spring is almost upon us in the northern hemisphere, and with it some opportunities to see poetry films and videopoems on the big screen, with a cluster of events around the equinox.
March 12 in Leipzig
Lange Nacht Des Gedichtfilms: Google Translate renders that as “Long Night of the Poem Films,” which sounds rather dire, but apparently it will consist of “the award-winning films to poems from the audiobooks ‘Black fears’ and ‘Words are boats,'” with “skilful interplay between visual, narrative and auditory elements of style.” See the Facebook event page for full details.
March 19-21 in Bezons (right outside Paris)
Ciné Poème Festival de courts métrages de la ville de Bezons en partenariat avec le Printemps des Poètes. I don’t know much French, but “Printemps des Poètes” sounds pretty alluring. Visit their webpage (or see the English translation via Google) for the full details.
March 19-21 in Gijón, Asturias
Deletréame Poesía: I Festival de Poesía de Gijón includes a section called “Poesía Iluminada (palabra + imagen)” each day of the festival. On the 19th, the poetry filmmaker Eduardo Yagüe will be curating a selection of works. See the complete schedule on Facebook.
March 19-20 in Barcelona
PoetryFilm will be presenting two programs at the Kosmopolis Amplified Literature Festival at CCCB Barcelona. For the full list of films, see the PoetryFilm website. (And by the way, if you’re a filmmaker or videopoet, be sure to check out PoetryFilm’s guidelines for submission. “There is no deadline; submissions are ongoing and continuous throughout the year.”)
April is National Poetry Month in Canada and the U.S.
You’d think there would be poetry-film screenings planned for somewhere, but if so, I have yet to hear about any. (If you know of anything, please share the details.)
May 21 in Minneapolis
Motionpoems Season 6 World Premiere at the Walker Art Center. Make a donation via the Motionpoems front page and qualify for discounted reserved seats. (Also in Motionpoems-related news: they have a call-out for voice recordings to be used in one of their films. The deadline is March 14.)
May 24 in Edinburgh
Hidden Door arts and music festival will be including screenings from Filmpoem on the 24th. Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more information. And in the meantime, as reported here last week, Filmpoem submissions are open until May 1.
Eggheads by John Koethe
This is Talking Points, a film by Rob Perez for Motionpoems, based on the poem “Eggheads” by John Koethe. Perez tells a separate story in the film that intersects with the text in an interesting fashion. “Citizen journalist” Will Campbell writes about the poem and the film in some bonus materials on the Motionpoems website. Here’s an excerpt:
What drew Rob Perez to work on “Eggheads” was the challenge that came with adaptation. “I was interested in the idea and challenge of lifting a poem off the page and putting it on the screen” Perez said. That meant more than simply giving face to Koethe’s words. The film’s biggest challenge came in finding a way to preserve the quality of Koethe’s language while still making a film that uplifted the poem itself.
Perez’s solution to this dilemma was ambitious to say the least: let the poem speak for itself—supported, that is, by a narrative. His film adaptation of “Eggheads” combines a cool, crisp reading of the poem with jazz-tracked footage of a couple moving through the charmed humdrum of ordinary life. Their words are muted, leaving only their actions and something like “Take Five” to tell what they’re up to while in the background “Eggheads,” read by a separate narrator, gives meaning to the pair and their everyday world.
For Perez, the challenge of the film became finding just the right amount of narrative to support the poem without overburdening it. After all, “the poem is good enough to stand alone—otherwise it wouldn’t live like that. Therefore, my job is to find a story—of moving pictures—that allow the poem to say the same thing in a new medium. The screenplay, the actors, the frame, the score, sound effects, etc. are all tools to lift the poem off the page and onto the screen.”
News round-up: Motionpoems’ Kickstarter; Dylan Thomas movie; videopoems on Montreal poetry festival website
With just four days to go, Motionpoems’ Kickstarter campaign for its innovative weeCinema outdoor theater is still $15,000 short of its $20,000 goal. As previously reported here, a mere $10 pledge qualifies one to answer their call for poetry films to be screened in the weeCinema during the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. Todd Boss announced on Facebook a few days ago that “Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler emails today to say he’s a huge Motionpoems fan. He pledged $200 to our newest project.” But it won’t happen without a lot more pledges. Do give if you can.
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In not-so-wee cinema news, the Welsh newspaper Daily Post reports that
A movie about iconic poet Dylan Thomas, which stars a Holyhead-born actor and music by a top Welsh rocker, is to be released in the United States.
Set Fire to the Stars tells the story of a week in the life of hell-raising Welsh poet Dylan Thomas as he embarked on a disastrous tour of American universities in the 1950s.
By his side is young poetry professor and admirer John Malcolm Brinnin, whose philosophy for looking after the firebrand is “I’ll improvise”, but a fragile friendship is stretched beyond the limit.
Holyhead-born Celyn Jones stars as Thomas and he also co-wrote the script while Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys of Bethesda provides the original soundtrack. Brinnin is played by Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood.
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Finally, a poetry festival set for June in Montreal is foregrounding videopoetry. If, like me, you don’t understand French, here’s what Google Translate makes of it:
The House of Poetry of Montreal, in partnership with the Self media arts center Vidéographe launched an innovative advertising campaign in several districts of the city. On more than one thousand posters in the Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Mile End, Ville-Marie, Rosemont Petite-Patrie and in the city center and Old Montreal, passers equipped with a smartphone can now scan a QR code and instantly watch videos-eight poems as many poets and video artists.
The viewer-reader at the end of each video-poem purchase the book of poetry which is taken the extract by a single click. It will then be directed to the website of a bookseller or publisher. He can also view all the video-poems on the www.videopoeme.com or at home in the Plateau-Mont-Royal culture, which showcases the works continuously for the duration of the Festival.
Through this joint development program for stimulating the House of Poetry allows several poets disseminate their work in a new form and touch and new readers. The expertise of Vidéographe in the field of media arts opens wide the door of new technologies to the current Quebec poetry.
Assuming that’s more or less the gist of it, that sounds pretty cool. And the videopoems are already available to watch on the website.
(Hat-tip for the second and third links to Thomas Zendegiacomo del Bel at the ZEBRA Facebook group page)
The Imagined by Stephen Dunn
A terrific animated film by Matt Craig for Motionpoems, influenced by “a lot of really early animation films,” as he told interviewer Michael Dechane.
I knew I wanted to stay away from illustrating the words or being too literal with the imagery. I wanted to create something that would be its own thing but would be a perfect companion to the poem. I spent a lot of time making these decisions before I got into the work, and I’m glad I did it that way. I was able to steer my own direction because of the rules I had laid out for myself early on.
MOPO: What are some of the stylistic influences you saw coming to bear on the film?
CRAIG: I had been watching a lot of really early animation films, one in particular called “The Idea” by Berthold Bartosch. It was based on a woodcut graphic novel by Frans Masereel. I had been watching that kind of work coming into this project. When I start a project I tend to pull a lot of artwork, paintings and things that I can respond to in some way. That helps me get towards ideas I like.
Do read the whole interview; Craig makes a lot of interesting points. And there’s an interview with Stephen Dunn on the same page which is also worth checking out. The last question concerns the film:
MOPO: I’m wondering about the whole idea of taking a poem and making a short film out of it, and this sort of hybrid art that Motionpoems is pioneering. Is presenting a work in a different medium akin to the difficulty of linguistic translation in your opinion? What would you share with us about why you consented to be a part of this Motionpoems season and growing body of art — what were you hoping or wanting?
DUNN: I have no expectations. My poem itself is a translation of experience. I would hope that you all would try to be true to the poem’s spirit and tone, but I also know that another medium will interpret in ways I can’t foresee.
Bryan Hanna composed the score.
