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.”

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“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.”

Read the rest.