Motionpoems at the AWP book fair
A brief interview with Todd Boss, poet and co-founder of Motionpoems — the most ambitious poetry animation project in the U.S. to date, on a par with Comma Press’ film division in the U.K.
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Dave Bonta
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Dave Bonta
Help Motionpoems animate some “Best American Poetry”
In case you missed the note to “Sea Salt” by David Motion on Monday (or the Kickstarter widget in the main site’s sidebar) let me repeat what I wrote there:
Motionpoems has some pretty exciting news: they’ve partnered with David Lehman and Scribner’s Best American Poetry 2011, and are lining up animators to produce videos for poems in the anthology. If this is the kind of thing you’d like to help support, please consider making a donation to their Kickstarter campaign. With 15 days to go, they’ve raised more than $10,000 in pledges toward the $15,000 needed. Click through for the details, including a video that tells the story of how they got started.
Here are Angella and Todd to tell their story and give their pitch:
Please note that I am not connected with Motionpoems in any way other than that I like Angella and Todd and believe they are advancing poetry animation enormously in this country, comparable to, but more ambitious than, the efforts of Comma Press in northwest England. Of course, there is some enlightened self-interest at work here: I’m eager for more quality poetry videos! But I would also encourage other poetry video makers to consider following Angella and Todd’s example and get more aggressive about fundraising — and let me know if you do, so I can promote your efforts here.
Once again, here’s the link to help Motionpoems meet their $15,000 goal. The deadline is June 15.
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Beau Blue
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Dave Bonta
Hi Beau, are you sure you read the post? I’m thinking maybe you missed the part where I stressed I have no connection with, and will get no direct benefit from, Motionpoems’ fundraising campaign. If your project wants to run a similar campaign, as I said: let me know and I’ll provide free publicity for that too.
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Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel
I just posted on the facebook site of the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival! Good luck! Some of the films of motionpoems took part of the 5th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in 2010.
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Angella Kassube
THANK YOU!!! So great of all of you to help spread the word! We love Dave and ZEBRA!
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marly youmans
Nothing in Bonta e-land could never become a typical website. However, Dave is generous to other people, as he is here.
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Dave Bonta
Motionpoems fundraising campaign breaks $10,000 mark
I’ve included notes about the fundraising campaign for Motionpoems in several recent posts at the main site. The donation page is now reporting that they’ve raised $5,112 from 53 donors, exceeding their goal of $5000 — but why stop there? It’s great to see poets and artists working so hard to bring compelling videopoetry to the masses, and they deserve all the support we can give them. An article at mnartists.org tells the story of how Todd Boss and Angella Kassube teamed up in 2008.
(Update) Angela tells me via email that the GiveMN fundraiser will be done next week, and pointed out that they qualified for $5,000 in matching funds — “kind of amazing that we’ve had ZERO money for 2 years and suddenly we have $10,000″ to support Motionpoems! And they’ve just been accepted into the Kickstarter fundraising program, as well.
Suddenly the future is looking very bright for professionally made American poetry films.
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Dave Bonta
New “motionpoems” to be unveiled October 8 in Minneapolis
“Motionpoems” is the term preferred by filmmaker Angella Kassube and poet Todd Boss at motionpoems.com for what the rest of us variously call videopoems, film poems, cinepoetry, etc. Kassube and Boss are responsible for a number of quite lovely films illustrating not only Boss’s own poems, but a growing number of others’ as well. They’re helping to raise the bar for mainstream poetry animation in the U.S.
Click through to their website for a description of the upcoming screening event (which I can’t copy-and-paste from or directly link to because it’s a Flash-based site). The list of films to be screened looks tantalizing — poems by Jane Hirshfield, Terese Svoboda, Alicia Ostriker, Thomas Lux, and Robert Bly are among those featured. I hope we can expect to see them at motionpoems.com and on YouTube after their Minneapolis debut.
(Update) Angella Kassube provided some additional detail about the event in an email. She wrote:
The really groovy thing about our screening is it is actually a great discussion about poetry and interpreting poetry. Everyone talks about how their piece came together, the audience is engaged and they ask great questions and have great comments. It’s an incredible evening—we expect about 150 people to be there.
“It is a lot of work,” she added about the motionpoems project in general, “but Todd and I just keep going.” I hope anyone in the upper Midwest who can make this screening will turn out and support them.
It’s too bad the only thing I can do for your project is donate money. Typical poetry sites beg for money all the time. That makes this a typical poetry website now. Geez, how depressing. -beau blue