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  • Dave 9:33 am on August 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Willaim Stafford   

    William Stafford documentary airing on PBS 

    See the website for a list of airdates (PDF) around the U.S. this month and next. See also the review of Every War Has Two Losers by Jayne Lyn Stahl in the Huffington Post.

    Every War Has Two Losers is a documentary based on the journals of midwestern poet William Stafford who declared himself a conscientious objector to World War II and, from 1942 through 1946, was interned at the Civilian Public Service Camps as a pacifist. The film has already aired on selected PBS stations, and features some of this country’s finest poets, W.S. Merwin, Coleman Barks, Robert Bly, Maxine Hong Kingston, Alice Walker, reading from Stafford’s work.

    Stafford, who was born in 1914, was the author of some 67 volumes of poetry, winner of the National Book Award in 1963, and a close friend of another legendary American poet, Robert Bly.

     

  • Dave 9:17 am on August 10, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Sharon Doubiago,   

    Sharon Doubiago reading from My Father’s Love 

    A great example of an author-reading video made riveting not only by gripping material and a good reading but also by judicious editing and the inclusion of still photos. This really makes me want to read the memoir.

    Hat-tip: the Women’s Poetry (WOMPO) listserv

     

  • Dave 9:26 am on July 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Guggenheim,   

    YouTube Play contest — an opportunity for videopoem makers? 

    The deadline is July 31. Here’s a New York Times article on the contest. For more, go to YouTube.com/play.

     

  • Dave 11:38 am on July 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    Congratulations to Alastair Cook for having two of his videopoems selected for the 5th ZEBRA Poetry film Festival in Berlin, which will be held October 14-17. Both films have been featured at Moving Poems: “Emily Melting” (a poem by Gerard Rudolf) and “Scene” (a poem by Morgan Downie).

     

  • Dave 4:36 pm on July 8, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: videopoetry sites   

    Random strangers reading poems on camera 

    Check out How Pedestrian, the latest addition to the Moving Poems linkroll. As described in a recent article in the Toronto National Post, the site’s curator and videographer, Toronto poet Katherine Leyton, stops people at random and asks them to recite a poem on camera. Most of the time, they agree.

    “Poetry has such a bad rap,” Leyton says. “People will tell me about how they had to analyze Robert Frost poems in high school, and how boring it was, but poetry doesn’t have to be like that.” She’s hoping her blog will change the public’s perceptions about poetry and make it more accessible to those who might otherwise shy away from it.

    Most of the participants read the poem Leyton provides only moments before they recite it, and while in some videos this is obvious, in others, the readers recite with such feeling and conviction that it’s hard not to think it’s rehearsed. “Good poetry should always work first on a gut level — it should communicate with you intuitively,” Leyton explains. “I think that for most poets, that’s the aim.”

    As a proof-of-concept, the site is brilliant, and with Leyton’s short but substantive blurbs about each featured poet, I should think How Pedestrian could really come in handy in the classroom.

     

  • Dave 4:16 pm on June 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Carol Ann Duffy, parody   

    Literalism run amok! 

    The folks at Weirdo Productions demonstrate what happens when poems are taken too literally, using as an example the Carol Ann Duffy poem “A Child’s Sleep.” I love this, because overly literal videopoems are one of the banes of my existence as curator of Moving Poems.

     

    • ChristineSwint 11:00 am on July 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      It’s actually a nice poem. The video cracks me up. At least it was tongue in cheek. I guess you see a lot of literal videos that are trying to be sincere. :-/

    • James 9:55 pm on August 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      This just killed me.

  • Dave 7:32 pm on June 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Blogger, video hosting, vuvuzela,   

    Video-hosting news 

    YouTube has added a vuvuzela button to all its videos. As a fan of noise rock and dissonant avant-garde classical, I’m cheered by this decision to embrace the sonic chaos of the 2010 World Cup. Sadly, however, this option is not included on embeds, so Moving Poems visitors will have to click through to YouTube itself to hear Sylvia Plath or Linh Dinh accompanied by the drone of a cheap plastic horn.

    In other video-blogging news from the Blog Herald, the folks at Blogger have dramatically improved their free video-hosting system, but they still don’t allow embedding. Given that Blogger also doesn’t have an export tool that allows people to take their files with them, people who upload videos to Blogger at this point are basically consigning their uploads to a Blogger lockbox.

     

  • Dave 2:50 pm on June 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Heather Haley, , Vancouver Videopoem Festival, Visible Verse   

    SEE THE VOICE: Visible Verse Call for Entries 

    Heather Haley sent along this press release:

    SEE THE VOICE – Visible Verse 10th Anniversary Celebration & Festival Call for Entries and Official Guidelines

    Please send in your videopoem by Sept. 1, 2010.

    Visible Verse logo

    • Visible Verse seeks videopoems, with a 15 minutes maximum duration.
    • Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or -subtitled version is required for consideration. Videos may originate in any part of the world.
    • Works will be judged by their innovation, cohesion and literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
    • Please, do not send documentaries as they are outside the featured genre.
    • Videopoem producers should provide a brief bio, full name, and contact information in a cover letter. There is no official application form nor entry fee.

    Send, at your own risk, videopoems and poetry films/preview copies (which cannot be returned) in DVD NTSC format to: VISIBLE VERSE c/o Pacific Cinémathèque, 200-1131 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2L7, Canada. Selected artists will be notified and receive a standard screening fee.
    For more information, see below, or contact Heather Haley at: hshaley@emspace.com

    In 1999 the Vancouver Videopoem Festival, the first of its kind in Canada, began as an effort of the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre, a non-profit literary arts organization dedicated to expanding the reach of poetry through new media with programs such as Telepoetics Vancouver and the Edgewise Café electronic magazine. The VVF became critically regarded owing to its progressive regard for spoken word in cinema, presenting poets both in performance and on the big screen. The audience could explore the merits and distinctions of poetry rendered in these two forms, stage and screen, sparking new dialogue as to the essential nature of poetry. The festival then built upon that foundation, with widened explorations into poetry cinema across national frontiers. They presented significant new works from Europe and the Americas, and continued to offer Canadian audiences a remarkably broad selection of new videopoems from their own country.

    Pacific Cinémathèque has been the VVF’s partner since 2000 and throughout the dissolution of the Edgewise. Founder Heather Haley continues to provide a sustaining venue for the presentation of new and artistically significant videopoetry as host and curator of SEE THE VOICE: Visible Verse. And owing to Vancouver’s strength in the film and television production industries, Haley has been able to cultivate critical interest between filmmakers and poets, with positive consequences for both.

    To celebrate entering their second decade of showcasing videopoetry, Haley and the Pacific Cinémathèque are presenting two screenings this year as well as poetry performances, a panel discussion and an awards gala, Friday Nov. 19 and Saturday Nov. 20.

     

  • ChristineSwint 10:24 pm on June 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: January Gill O'Neil, Underlife   

    January Gill O’Neil 

    January just posted her video poem to Facebook, and I thought everyone might like to see it here. It’s from Underlife, her first book of poetry.

     

    • Dave 8:14 am on June 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Very nice work. A few of the transitions from the inside to outside location seem a little forced (though I’m not enough of a filmmaker to suggest how they might be improved), but I loved the cooking-show set-up. Literal interpretations of text into film don’t always work for me, but this does.

  • Dave 3:14 pm on June 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Chris Eyre, Dick Lourie, movies   

    Father’s Day videopoem by Chris Eyre and Dick Lourie 

    I don’t tend to post things to the main site which were uploaded by someone other than the copyright holder, but I don’t mind sharing this here. It’s making the rounds on Facebook today, and it’s been viewed 84,515 times, which makes it one of the most popular videopoems on YouTube. It’s a clip from the end of the movie Smoke Signals, directed by Chris Eyre. Sherman Alexie wrote the novel and screenplay, but the poem voiced here is by Dick Lourie, according to the YouTube notes. A little web searching turned up the text of the poem, which is titled Forgiving our Fathers.

     

  • Dave 9:47 am on June 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    I just updated this site (along with the main Moving Poems site) to WordPress 3.0. As soon as I did so, a new update of this theme became available, so I updated to that as well. Let me know if you notice anything funny.

     

  • ChristineSwint 11:29 am on June 13, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: drawing, Frederic Bruly Bouabre, literature and visual art, visions   

    Fréderic Bruly Bouabré The Universalist 

    Although this video isn’t a video poem, I thought there were elements in it that might inspire the rest of us to create. The cultural messages are also very interesting. I admire him for following his vision.

     

    • Dave 4:46 pm on June 13, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for sharing this. There are so many things to love: the similarity of his work to poetry postcards and haiga; the similarity of his vision experience to a traditional West African shamanic crisis (but instead of a shaman he became an artist); his gathering of “knowledge of the world” through trash found on the street; “art by chance” and his seemingly interchangeable use of “chance” and “divinity”; the statement that anyone can be an artist if he divests himself of shame; and his informal school.

      • christine 5:56 pm on June 13, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        I thought about the poetry postcards too. I just read _Black Elk Speaks_ – it’s interesting that when Black Elk shared his visions with the elder shamans they helped him create dances, paintings, and songs from what he saw. They said the medicine wouldn’t help the people unless he made the visions concrete (my words). I thought about that when I watched this video.

        • Dave 9:40 am on June 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply

          The problem with Black Elk Speaks is we really have no way of telling how much is Black Elk and how much is John G. Neihardt. Bruly is much more in control of his own message — and obviously the film medium gives the audience more direct access to him. But yeah, art and healing are intertwined in many traditional cultures. Among the O’odham (Pima and Papago) people, for example, the same songs that were used in all-night healing ceremonies could also be used in secular, all-night circle dances.

  • renkat 2:09 pm on June 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: photo-reading, slideshow   

    This is the first photo-reading that I really love. Even the less-than-professional reading works perfectly for me.

     

    • Dave 11:43 am on June 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      You’re right. I remember coming across this a while ago and being very impressed. Most slideshow-style poems on YouTube don’t excite, but ths does.

    • Viral Verse 5:29 am on June 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Wow!!! The poetry adds greater depth to such a striking photo journalist story – reminds me of the photo stories from Life Magazine that used to transfix me as a child. I also love it when the reader chokes up near the end. Brilliant find Renkat!

  • Dave 11:07 am on June 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: found poetry, TV   

    Found videopoem? 

    A reporter tries to get out a simple report in what I presume is Urdu. The result struck me as an inadvertent videopoem. (Many thanks to Arvind for locating this for me on YouTube, based on a version that had been uploaded to Facebook.)

     

    • Viral Verse 5:20 am on June 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Wonderful Dave! Lately I’ve become very interested in ‘found poetry’, as I question what constitutes poetry. I put up a video on Viral Verse today called ‘I Hate Tennessee’ which is really just a football fan dissing the opposing team, but somehow this video (which I first saw months ago) resonates and sticks with me more than some classic verse.

      • Dave 10:01 am on June 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Love it! I’ve met lots of people like the gentleman in your video who have a real way with words. Maybe I should start filming them in action.

  • Dave 10:12 am on June 8, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , collaboration, Morgan Downie, multimedia   

    Morgan Downie on videopoetry and surrendering to time vampires 

    Scottish poet Morgan Downie shared some of his thoughts about videopoetry and his collaboration with Alastair Cook (see their two videos) in “time vampires,” a blog post from April 28 which I only just discovered. He includes some kind words about Moving Poems, which I appreciated, but I particularly liked his conclusion:

    in computerland you can pretty much do what you want, pick a sound, an image, a stream of words and run with it. when alastair did the scene video he just picked it up and ran with it. what a surprise, what a treasure! not only that by indulging yourself in these collaborative efforts you get to meet new people who do things differently to you, who come from different and interesting backgrounds, countries, cultures and, more or less, there’s no publisher, deadline, competition, brief etc etc other than what you want there to be. so all of that is rendered superfluous. and that can only be a good thing.

    so, time vampires. yes, staring at a screen can be a bad thing, but as a means to some form of creative expression, some interaction, something new you hadn’t even thought of? that’s a monkey on my back i’ll welcome. i could write more but i’m off to practise some guitar noise i want to use. i have no idea how to record it, what to do with it when i have done, but that’s all part of the joy.

    i recommend it.

     

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