~ The Poetry Society ~
The posh mums are boxing in the square by Wayne Holloway-Smith
The posh mums are boxing in the square is a marvelous piece from U.K. poet Wayne Holloway-Smith and Dutch film-maker Helmie Stil, both award-winning artists. The synopsis:
The film poem is about a mother re-imagined into life and given boxing gloves to fight off cancer.
Credits:
Producer Director and Editor: Helmie Stil
Writer: Wayne Holloway-Smith
Swimmers: Adele Carlson and Katie Fried
Underwater Camera: Philip Bartropp
Underwater camera assistent: Aaron Hindes
Camera: Edmund Saunders
Soundscape: Lennert Busch
The film was made in association with the Healthy Scepticism Project, The Poetry Society and Motionpoems.
Moving Poems has previously shared several other poetry film collaborations from Helmie Stil.
Shadow by Alice Oswald
Alice Oswald is a very well-known and loved poet, especially in the UK, her native land, where she has been Oxford Professor of Poetry since October last year. Her poem Shadow is at the heart of this video commissioned by The Poetry Society, also in the UK.
The video is by Defacto Films based in Texas. There is no information to be found on the web about the people involved in Defacto. In any case, this is a beautifully simple audio-visual accompaniment, intimately evoking nature as a bed for Oswald’s voice. The image stream is again of green nature, creatively literal and well-edited in way that adds new feeling to the poem.
Oswald’s list of major poetry prizes is long and it’s easy to see why. With Oswald’s voice, the film’s sounds and visions of nature, the overall piece is darkly profound and beautiful.
Muirburn by Yvonne Reddick
Dutch filmmaker Helmie Stil‘s latest filmpoem, just released online yesterday, is a brilliant follow-up to her award-winning The Opened Field. Like that film, it’s based on a poem from the UK Poetry Society’s 2017 National Poetry Competition, this time the commended poem “Muirburn” by Yvonne Reddick, a scholar of ecopoetry and up-and-coming poet from the northwest of England. And like Dom Bury’s “The Opened Field”, “Muirburn” is an unsettling poem that gives Stil plenty of room to subvert viewers’ expectations, steering just close enough to standard, narrative film-making to draw us in and reveal the—I would argue—true, uncanny reality of nature and our relationship with it. One of the National Poetry Competition judges, Pacale Petit, noted that the poem itself contains “filmic flashes, which dissolve and sear as if glimpsed through a furnace”, and added that it “concludes on an astonishing parting image”—a real gift to the filmmaker, who certainly rose to the challenge.
The film premiered in March, according to the Poetry Society’s announcement post:
Yvonne Reddick also won the inaugural Peggy Poole Award, and the film ‘Muirburn’ was premiered at the Peggy Poole Award readings at Bluecoat, Liverpool on 13 March 2019.
The Opened Field by Dom Bury
Devon-based poet Dom Bury‘s poem won the 2017 National Poetry Competition sponsored by the UK Poetry Society, and the judges said:
The darkly allegoric winning poem surrounds six boys in a field enacting a disturbing coming-of-age ritual, and is told with a driving rhythm and mantra-like repetitions. The poem interrogates themes of unchecked masculinity, exploring our destructive relationship with each other and with the natural world. The barbaric impulses enacted are interwoven to offer us a sombre and precisely wrought ecological and social fable for our times.
This film interpretation by Helmie Stil takes, perhaps unavoidably, a somewhat illustrative tack while remaining suggestive and allusive in all the right ways, so that the poem doesn’t feel pinned down, as it easily could have felt with a more conventional approach.
Never Say Never Say Never by Patrick James Errington
From British director Adele Myers, a film based on a poem by Patrick James Errington. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
Savouring their last moments, a couple struggle with letting go. They must, but breaking up is hard to do.
This short film is based on an original poem written by Patrick Errington. The poem was commended in the National Poetry Competition 2016, Poetry Society (UK). This film was commissioned by FilmPoem and original adaptation was produced entirely in Fujairah UAE.
The actors are Layla Al Khouri and Sanoop Din. For a full list of credits, see Poetry Film Live.
Two poems by Hisham Bustani
Arwa’ Debaja filmed and edited this documentary-style poetry film of the Jordanian poet Hisham Bustani for the UK’s Poetry Society. Here’s their description on Vimeo, with a link added:
In this powerful film, Jordanian poet Hisham Bustani reads in Arabic his poems, ‘The Maestro’ and ‘Night’. The English translations of the poems by Thoraya El-Rayyes are shown as subtitles. The poems first appeared in the winter 2017 issue of The Poetry Review magazine from The Poetry Society, and the film was premiered at the launch of the winter issue in January 2018. Filmed and edited by Arwa’ Debaja, the project is a collaboration with The Poetry Society and Seven Mountains Media. © Hisham Bustani, Thoraya El-Rayyes, Arwa’ Debaja, Seven Mountains Media and The Poetry Society, 2017.
(I hate to preempt the Poetry Society’s possible sharing of the video on their own website, but it’s not clear whether or how often they still update their poetry film page. Last year’s National Poetry Competition filmpoems are still nowhere to be found.)
The Desktop Metaphor by Caleb Parkin
The Desktop Metaphor is a film by Helmie Stil of Caleb Parkin’s second placed poem in the National Poetry Competition 2016, commissioned by Alastair Cook of Filmpoem in partnership with the Poetry Society.
Dutch filmmaker Helmie Stil is also the organizer of Filmpoem Festival 2017 at the Depot in Lewes on October 28, which will include a screening of all ten of the films made for the 2016 winners of the UK Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition.
Caleb Parkin is a “poet, performer, artist, facilitator and educator, based in Bristol.” His poem on the page takes an interesting diptych-like form as the words echo back and forth from one line to the next.
Filmpoem Festival 2017 program released
The Filmpoem Festival slated for Saturday, 28 October in Lewes, UK has released a very full and innovative program.
Some of the UK’s best spoken word poets come together to perform live, integrated with films inspired by poetry. Depot screens film poems from around the world and shows some fantastic national poetry competition films. And then it’s your turn – we round the evening off with an open mic session.
Helmie Stil, organiser of this year’s festival and filmmaker, created this trailer mainly from footage of the new 10 National Poetry Competition Films which will be shown at the festival. Original music by Lennert Busch.
The events include:
- Première of two short animation films made by children during the Depot workshop, inspired by a poem by Colin West
- Live poetry performances by Louisa Campbell, Maria Jastrzębska and Siân Thomas
- Dean Atta will perform his poetry live, show his own poetry films, and also present three of his favorite poetry films from the South East
- Filmpoem and The Poetry Society present the 10 National Poetry Competition 2016 winners realized as poetry-film
- Madi Maxwell-Libby performs her poetry live, followed by a screening of the documentary We Belong, featuring Madi and seven other UK poets and spoken word artists on ‘state of the nation’ themes
- Ross Sutherland’s live performance of Stand-By For Tape Back-Up, his well-reviewed videopoem about memory, death and re-runs
- Open Competition winners presentation and screening
- Matt Abbott performs his poetry live and shows his poetry films
- Salena Godden, one of UK’s best spoken word poets, will perform exciting new work live, and will show, amongst other short films, her newest film poem RED, written and filmed in response to the tampon tax and period poverty
- Open mic
A hearty congratulations to the organizers for such an exciting line-up! Book your tickets today.
Poetry film screening season is upon us!
Autumn is here, and with it the annual parade of poetry film festivals and screenings that do so much to expose new audiences to this still obscure hybrid genre. Many of the films shown in these events are yet not available to watch on the web (and some may never be), besides which most films do deserve to be seen on the big screen, so please try to support live events like these. Here’s a rather too brief run-down, including one that just concluded.
September 28-October 1: Festival Silêncio, Lisbon, “Isto Não é um Filme. É Um Poema” (That’s Not a Film. It’s a Poem) competition. Just in, here are the results:
NACIONAL
Prémio Especial do Júri Competição Nacional:
‘Dia’ de Rita QuelhasPrémio do PÚBLICO NACIONAL:
‘A Montanha’ de Pedro CaldeiraPrémio VENCEDOR NACIONAL
‘Running Man’ de Pedro Sena NunesINTERNACIONAL
Vencedor Internacional
‘Spree’ de Martin Kelly & Ian McBrydePrémio de Público Internacional
‘Vaccine’ de Kate Sweeney
October 7: Juteback Poetry Film Festival Fall Screening, Fort Collins, Colorado (USA). There’s an annotated list of the films on their website.
October 13: My Eyes Like Rays: National Poetry Competition Filmpoem screening & poetry reading, Poetry Cafe, London (UK). “Filmpoem makers James William Norton, Helmie Stil and Sarah Tremlett will screen all ten NPC films.” I’m glad the Poetry Society is still promoting poetry films, and I hope to be able to share some of them when they’re released to the web.
October 15: 5th Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition screening, Cork (Ireland). Click the foregoing link for the shortlist as well as time and place details.
October 21: Rabbit Heart Poetry film Festival, Worcester, Massachusetts (USA). Here are the 2017 shortlists. (That’s right, they have more than one. And if you think some of them are actually rather long, you should see the longlist. This year they received over 350 submissions from 41 countries!) And here’s the trailer.
October 28: Filmpoem Festival 2017, Lewes, East Sussex (UK). A few more details about the event are on Facebook.
October 28: Cinema Poetica, Ashland, Oregon (USA)
November 9-11: Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival, Vienna (Austria). Click through and use the drop-down menus to peruse the programs for the multiple components of this supremely well-organized event — now the second largest poetry film festival in the world, with 82 films screening over three days. Here’s the trailer.
November 25-26: 6th CYCLOP Poetry Film Festival, Kiev (Ukraine). The submissions period just closed, so I’m guessing it will be a few weeks until the shortlist is released.
The Cracked Jug by Shakira Morar
There aren’t too many rules about what makes a successful poetry film, but one I tend to follow a lot when deciding what to post here is that a too-close match of imagery to text usually feels redundant and reductive, diminishing a poem rather than adding an extra dimension. But in this new film from the UK Poetry Society, somehow a teenage poet, Shakira Morar, and director Suzanne Cohen manage to break that rule, and I think it’s because the limpid quality of the text allows the illustrative imagery to attain a symbolic, even mythic weight. Watch it and judge for yourself. Here’s the description on the Poetry Society’s website:
On World Poetry Day 2017, we are delighted to present a new poetry film, produced by The Poetry Society to celebrate the overall winner of the Poetry for Peace 2016 project, chosen by Judith Palmer. The film features the winning poem by Shakira Morar, aged 17, from Headington School, Oxford, who reads the poem in the film, in English, while the Arabic translation by Manal Nakli appears as subtitles. The poem is inspired by a 4,000 year-old Mesopotamian jug in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the film is directed by Suzanne Cohen.
‘Poetry for Peace, 2016’ is part of the award winning, Arts Council-funded ‘Writing Mesopotamia’ collaboration between Oxford poet Jenny Lewis and the distinguished Iraqi poet Adnan al-Sayegh aimed at building bridges between English and Arabic-speaking communities. It involved Adnan and Jenny working with the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, The Poetry Society and more than sixty 11-17 year olds from four Oxford schools – Oxford Spires Academy, the Sudanese Saturday School, Headington School and Cherwell School – on themes of heritage and peace to produce poems for a competition judged by the poets.
Read a news story about the poem, film and winner Shakira over at the Oxford Mail.
Explore more of our poetry films on our Poetry to Watch page.
Who Keeps Observance in the Fever Room by Jane Draycott
This is part of a series called Beginning to See the Light by Corinne Silva. The text is by Jane Draycott, “a UK-based poet with a particular interest in sound art and collaborative work.” As the Poetry Society (U.K.) webpage explains,
The Poetry Society and Jaybird Live Literature commissioned six poets to create new pieces to celebrate National Poetry Day 2015, the theme of which was ‘light’. The poems followed the path of light over one October day. Artist and filmmaker Corinne Silva then made filmpoems of six of the poems, which you can watch on Vimeo or YouTube.
I see these as more in the video art tradition than previous poetry films sponsored by the Society; some of the imagery reoccurs from film to film, and watching them in order does give an interesting impression of the passing of time. But the juxtaposition of footage and text most often feels arbitrary, so for me they don’t really work as videopoems or filmpoems. Still, kudos for the Poetry Society for continuing to push the envelope and sponsor interesting multimedia poetry projects.
The Day the Deer Came by Joanne Key
Alastair Cook of Filmpoem directs, with cinematography by James William Norton and sound by Luca Nasciuti. “The Day the Deer Came” was the Second Prize winner in the UK’s 2014 National Poetry Competition. The Vimeo description notes that “Filmpoems of the top three winning poems have been commissioned in partnership with Alastair Cook and Filmpoem. Filmpoems of all eleven winning poems will be available to watch later this year, and will tour at festivals around the country and beyond.”
For more on the poet, Joanne Key, see her page at the Poetry Society website.
