~ The Poetry Storehouse ~
Two Miles After the Gravel Road Ends by Sherry O’Keefe
This video based on a poem by Sherry O’Keefe uses public-domain footage shot in South Dakota in the late 1930s, as Marc Neys (Swoon) explains:
Promises are there to be broken (the ones I make to myself, that is)
I’ve said never to use the footage of Ivan Besse again. I didn’t.
Not until I came across ‘Two Miles After the Gravel Road Ends’ by Sherry O’Keefe in The Poetry Storehouse.
Sherry was one of the poets I did a video for in ‘my early days’. A videopoem and a collab that is still dear to my heart.
It was a pleasure to find her words on the shelves of the warehouse. Such beautiful words.A lot of her poems tell stories. Great chunks of life wrapped in words and images. And these were just a perfect match for the storytelling images of Ivan Besse.
Poetry Storehouse videos featured at BluePrintReview blog
Thanks to the BluePrintReview book+lit blog for a kind feature on a project I’m tangentially involved with, The Poetry Storehouse. Moving Poems regulars would be forgiven for assuming that all Storehouse poetry videos eventually get re-posted here, since I try to share at least one of them a week. But even if I posted one a day, I’d still have trouble keeping up. So as the BluePrintReview post suggests, the Poetry Storehouse Vimeo group is the best page to bookmark if you don’t want to miss anything. (Poetry Storehouse videos on Moving Poems do have their own archive, too.)
Metanoia Lost by Risa Denenberg
https://vimeo.com/92423501
This video remix by Nic S. of a poem by Risa Denenberg layers in footage of one of those natural sights that moves us at a very primal level, I think — rain falling into water — to very good effect. In some process notes on her blog, Nic writes:
Poems on big metaphysical themes are some of the most rewarding to work as video remixes, because they leave the visual field wide open and give the remixer real opportunities to insert him or herself into a poem’s narrative and move it forward in complementary but different ways. This lovely poem by Risa Denenberg at The Poetry Storehouse was a case in point. I read it as beautifully capturing one of those devastating moments of big doubt we sometimes encounter.
Which is where it got personal. The belief I try to live by is that we are lying fallow during such bleak periods, and that, their awfulness notwithstanding, they are at the same time periods of underground preparation, restoration and growth. So I went with that approach. I thought rain, with its double connotation of weeping/mourning and of life-inspiring nature, was the perfect backdrop metaphor. […]
For the cross-fades, I chose images with very personal connotations for me, but which I thought added the right ‘universal’ overtones of the twin companions, loss and hope. All of them jumped out at me as being ‘right’ as I flipped through my clips library. Ending with the bear family at the end might perhaps be a more upbeat conclusion than originally intended in the piece, but the image was insistent, so I went with it. The soundtrack with its lonely piano and melancholy motif and underlying energy was by Mustafank and really felt like rain to me.
There’s a bit more if you click through. I must say I’m grateful to Nic for blogging about her techniques and thought-process in such detail with almost every videopoem she makes.
Escaping the writer’s closed loop: an interview with Rose Hunter
This is the 13th in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? This time we talk with Rose Hunter.
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
RH: I love it any time someone interprets my writing. I’m interested in what they see, especially if it’s something I haven’t seen, or if I disagree with their ideas. And there is something extra going on when work gets interpreted in a different form I think. For example I’ve been really impressed with what people have come up with as covers for my books, and how different they are to what I would have thought of. As writers we are in that closed loop in a sense, creating in the same medium more or less, as we are criticizing in. (Not that criticism isn’t also a creation of course.) But there isn’t that marked transfer, for example, that there is in writing about visual art or music, say. So I think it’s really interesting to look at these videos as (also) a form of engaged criticism in the sense of being an interpretation that shines a light on the work, in a different form. They’re also kind of translations, of course.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at The Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
RH: Just the one so far, which you did, Nic! I love it, and I love how different it is to what I had imagined. Having not considered the scene (in “You As Tunnel”) beyond what I saw in my head while writing it, I thought automatically of grainy images, maybe black and white or desaturated, flickering perhaps, a gritty realism. Which is not very original (for this poem). I loved your fresh, non-literal take, and the visual symbols you created with the planets and the headphoned and sunglassed woman. You got to a really emotionally true part of that experience. Of my experience. So that is just so interesting to me.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
RH: Yes, for sure I would do it again! Well, re advice I’m not sure, so I’ll just share my experience of submitting. When I was getting together the poems to send, I thought well first of all your guidelines say short, so that ruled out a lot of my current stuff in particular. Then I thought I would take them all out of my You As Poetry book in case that serial idea is interesting to anyone. So I got together five short ones from that book. It’s strange, I had a feeling that the one that you made a video out of might be the one most suitable actually. I don’t know why exactly, but I remember it passing through my mind, that probably someone will make that one. Maybe because it has a clearer narrative than the others and is more serious. And/or because it is very scene specific, and therefore provides more of a jumping-off point for someone else, whereas some of the others I sent are already “jumped-off” so to speak. If that makes sense. Anyway, not advice per se, just something I thought of.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
RH: No, not offhand. I love what you’re doing.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
RH: Well, I blogged about some of my experiences (specifically the issue of reading my work out loud, and my insecurity/phobia). That’s here, and also you reblogged it at Voice Alpha. Thanks for the experience and the questions, and I look forward to keeping in touch and seeing what you do next!
You as tunnel by Rose Hunter
https://vimeo.com/92389734
Another stunning Poetry Storehouse remix by Nic S., this time using a text by Rose Hunter. Nic posted some process notes to her blog:
‘You as tunnel’ a poem from The Poetry Storehouse by Rose Hunter, turned out to be the third remix of an accidental triptych I completed on abusive situations (the first was brother carried the poppies by Theresa Senato Edwards, and the second, Secrets by Ruth Foley.)
It took me more than one reading for this poem too to get at the narrative. After a poem on sexual abuse and one that referenced emotional abuse, I read this one as dealing with domestic violence. The language approach is clipped, condensed and stream-of-consciousness, but the overall impact for me was just as disturbing as the two previous ones.
For the remix, I returned to one of my favorite kinds of imagery – space imagery. I found a series of lovely clips of Jupiter and its moons at Video Blocks, and it didn’t take me long to put my own spin on the story. I re-imagined Jupiter as the brutish abuser around which all pivots, the victim as one of its moons caught in helpless orbit, and the second moon as their dark mutual secret, orbiting with them in silent complicity. With that as the ‘meta’ context, the mannequin clip represented the victim of violence at ground level for me – I saw the mannequin itself as representative of deadening of feeling needed for survival, the sunglasses as having connotations of hiding bruising and of obscuring vision, the headphones as attempt to escape into a different (aural) reality, and the broader head-shaking trajectory of the clip reflecting denial.
The soundtrack was easily picked here – something big and space-y yet with some sense of emotional alarm and general tension, which I found via Eric Hopton at Freesound.
Do read the rest. And if you’re a filmmaker or video remixer, don’t forget to visit The Poetry Storehouse whenever you’re looking for ideas for new projects. There are still many terrific poems there without video accompaniment, most with an audio version (sometimes two audio versions).
At Ruby’s diner by Sherry O’Keefe
https://vimeo.com/92974203
Montana-based poet Sherry O’Keefe has long been one of my favorite bloggers, so I was chuffed to see this video adaptation by Nic S. of one of O’Keefe’s poems in The Poetry Storehouse. She used landscape imagery and a soundtrack from a freesound.org user (Eric Hopton) to very good effect, I thought.
Bees in the Eaves by Bill Yarrow
Bill Yarrow’s poem “Bees in the Eaves” has had many lives. It originally appeared in Mad Hatters’ Review along with audio of the author’s reading, was reprinted in his collection Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012), and was reprinted again at The Poetry Storehouse, where it garnered a reading by Nic S. and this video remix by Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon. Coming back full-circle to the mad hatters, perhaps, the video uses footage from the 1940 documentary Symptoms Of Schizophrenia, via the Prelinger Archives. Marc notes:
There was a track ‘Tsukuru Swims‘ I had just finished that was right for Nic S.’s reading of the poem.
It took a bit of re-editing but the combination worked beautifully […]The lines ‘There’s a remedy for everything. And a remedy for every remedy.’ made me think of a short and uncomfortable docu I saw on Prelinger last year.
I took out the footage I thought was disturbing and confronting and edited it to the rhythm and the noises in the soundtrack. I layered the result with moving lights, shot from a train, to give it an extra edge and some depth.
Bill Yarrow spoke of his experience with Poetry Storehouse remixes in an interview at the Moving Poems forum back in March (prior to the release of this video).
Boy in a field by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick
https://vimeo.com/90072086
I could watch this again and again. Nic S. makes great use of artwork by Michael Vincent Manalo in this kinestatic video remix of a poem from The Poetry Storehouse by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick.
“A more open kind of collaboration”: an interview with Steve Klepetar
This is the 12th in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? Steve Klepetar is our 12th interviewee; both video remixes made so far with texts of his from the Poetry Storehouse were featured on Moving Poems this week.
1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.
SK: I find the entire concept of the Poetry Storehouse, with its invitation to multiple readings and remixes, thrilling. In the past, I have been fortunate to collaborate with the painter Bill Ellingson, my colleague at Saint Cloud State University, and with composer Richard Lavenda of Rice University, for whom I wrote a libretto and who set several of my poems to music. In those cases I worked closely with the other artists. The Poetry Storehouse allows a different kind of collaboration, one that is more open, and allows for surprises. There is something liberating about writing a poem, controlling all aspects of that process through final revisions, and then releasing it and relinquishing control while waiting to see what others might create with it.
2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at The Storehouse and your own reactions to them.
SK: So far two of my poems have been recorded by someone other than myself, and I love the results. That other voice is female and lightly carries an accent quite different from my own, still rather thick New York City sound, little changed from my many years in Minnesota. Those readings have stirred me with their clarity and loveliness. Two of my poems have been used in remixes, and I’ve enjoyed both a good deal. They are quite different, as are the poems they work with. One sets a short love poem about a woman working in a late fall garden against an image of Marilyn Monroe sashaying through a room, captivating male eyes as she goes. The juxtaposition strikes me as playfully erotic, funny and apt at the same time. The other works with a surreal poem about counting, settling up, paying existential debts, and the remix is wild. My favorite section involves a can of beans being opened, poured out onto a plate and eaten, a visual pun about bean counters perhaps?
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
SK: I would participate in this kind of experiment again in a heartbeat, with enthusiasm and pleasure. In fact, I submitted three poems, and did not wait very long before submitting three more. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to record my own readings, and to hear other readings and uses of my work — or work that has become mine and someone else’s. I would certainly advise other poets to participate, provided they could let go of individual ownership and would enjoy taking a risk.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
SK: My experience has been entirely positive, and I cannot think of anything I would change.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
SK: I should add that I have been following the Poetry Storehouse on Facebook, and have enjoyed various readings and remixes of other poets’ work with different readers and video artists. I have also garnered some lovely comments from friends old and new. There is something so democratic about this process, which allows fresh views and voices to mingle with one another.
In The Garden by Steve Klepetar
Marilyn Monroe meets a poem by Steve Klepetar in this simple but effective Poetry Storehouse remix by Othniel Smith. According to the Vimeo description, the Marilyn Monroe footage is from Home Town Story (Arthur Pierson, 1951), via the Prelinger Archives.
Secrets by Ruth Foley
https://vimeo.com/92025859
Another of Nic S.’s innovative video remixes for a poem from The Poetry Storehouse, this time by the Massachusetts-based poet and editor Ruth Foley. Sebastian blogged some process notes; here are a couple of snippets:
The language of Secrets was slow and rather sensuous, and when I first read it, I took it as the description of a gradual process of discovery, an uncovering, a blooming of sorts. It was only on the second and subsequent reads that I took in the extent to which it was actually a slow process of flaying, and of destruction. Then it struck me as really incredibly violent, and all the more so for being presented in so meditative and lush a fashion.
[…]
For the soundtrack, I used a track appropriately titled ‘A rotten fairytale’ by a Soundcloud member called Mustafank, whose work I had run across in a video elsewhere (wish I could remember where now). It starts with a toy piano solo and moves into an electric guitar solo, with a faux-innocent sinister feel that really makes you think Hansel & Gretel, sweet gingerbread house & related bad things.
Ruth Foley doesn’t seem to have a website (though she is all over the Google), but she does keep an amusing blog called Five Things.
Counting by Steve Klepetar
Steve Klepetar’s poem from The Poetry Storehouse gets the Swoon treatment. Marc Neys writes,
I wanted a more experimental (frantic even) sequence of images for this one. I constructed a soundtrack around Steve’s reading. Re-edited sounds I created before, a sample from I.M. Rawes, taken from London Sound Survey, and new addings of heavily treated recordings (a boiler room) […]
I found the perfect images and atmosphere in one of the hundreds of excerpts out of “The International Institute for the Conservation, Archiving and Distribution of Other People’s Memories” on IICADOM.
A weird combination of naive stop motion (with clay, hands and beans) with some alienated dancing and dark faces in between… A strange string of associations, perfect for what I had in mind.
Steve Klepetar’s home page has some links to his poetry collections (scroll down). And of course check out the rest of his stuff at The Poetry Storehouse.
