Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow finalists for FOTOGENIA 2023

By Sarah Tremlett | October 18, 2023 at 2:34 pm

A Word from the Director – Sarah Tremlett

I am really pleased to announce the finalists of Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow ekphrastic poetry film prize for 2023. I am very proud to say that the screening will be part of the exciting programme at FOTOGENIA 2023, Mexico City, November 22nd to December 2nd. ‘The Special Programme Frame to Frames II will be screened at 4 p.m. on Saturday, December 2nd at Complejo Cultural Los Pinos (Calz. del Rey S/N, Bosque de Chapultepec I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11580 Ciudad de México, CDMX).’

Steered by the leading festival director Christian Pacheco-Cámara (Chris Patch) this event gets better and better every year and is one of the most artistic, avant-garde and experimental out there, so try and make it if you can. I look forward to meeting Ana and Chris in person!

Ekphrastic poetry films in the Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow prize are based on works of art, whether paintings, sculptures, prints etc. This is the second year I have organized a screening on this fascinating subject, and I am also honoured to have secured an inspiring festival painting – Huapango Torero – by Mexican artist Ana Segovia, courtesy of the Karen Huber Gallery, Mexico City. Filmmakers were invited to submit a film based on their own choice of artwork or the festival painting itself. I personally found Ana’s subject matter to be rich with associations and deep emotional connections. The strong links between outdated patriarchal politics and cruelty to animals cannot be avoided. I must have had some sense of the painting’s power in that two-thirds of the submissions were based on this arresting and thought-provoking work. We have a truly international group of artists and I hope this collection inspires many of you to submit in future years.

This year I  am joined in the judging by two esteemed leaders in the field: Canadian prize-winning digital media artist, Mary McDonald and American ekphrastic poet, cross-media artist, scholar, educator and multiple award-winner and nominee Janée J. Baugher, MFA (Seattle, Washington). Author of the leading work on the subject The Ekphrastic Writer (McFarland, 2020) Janée has been kind enough to contribute a few words on why ekphrastic poetry means so much to her.

Janée J. Baugher

‘I am a writer who is intrigued by collaborative opportunities between cross-disciplinary artists. As a young literary artist visiting the NYC Guggenheim for the first time many years ago, I became so entranced by the Georg Baselitz painting, Der Dichter, I not only wrote my first ekphrastic poem while sitting on the floor before the painting, but my sense of the aesthetic possibilities of the world changed forever. Since then, I’ve spent my life writing in museums worldwide, which has culminated in hundreds of pages of ekphrastic writing, including the poetry collections, Coördinates of Yes (Ahadada Books, 2010), The Body’s Physics (Tebot Bach, 2013), and the craft book, The Ekphrastic Writer: Creating Art-Influenced Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction (McFarland, 2020).

When we stimulate the eye, that sight can lead to insight. Paul Valéry wrote, “One makes use of images in order to guide oneself, to please oneself, to heal oneself, to know oneself,” and it’s the question of where vision can lead a person that consumes me. As an educator, I’m best known for my ability to teach creative writers how to master description (i.e., “ekphrasis”), which is best learned through studying the visual arts. Some might wonder, as an aesthetic pursuit, what currency does ekphrastic writing hold? To the literary canon? To the art world? To the general public? Making creative use of visual stimulation is a bio-psycho-social experience. And, what’s crucial, as Thoreau wrote, “is not what you look at, but what you see.” Giving your full attention to artwork can feel meditative, and it can also feel dramatic, as in Stendhal’s experience. Art-viewing is an important type of play that can provide a conduit and a framework for the imagination, for it opens a world of speculation, surprise, and discovery.

Traditional ekphrastic writing has limitations, namely the absence of auditory and kinetic components. Film—motion pictures—provides the unique medium by which creators can juxtapose soundscapes with both static and moving imagery. Unlike what I’ve ever accomplished on the page, these types of filmmakers conjoin image-text-sound to create an interdisciplinary experience. Though at their core, poetry filmmakers and ekphrastic writers have similar aims: we value collaboration, spontaneity, chance, and beauty.’ Janée J. Baugher, ekphrastic poet and scholar

And a few comments on being inspired by the ekphrastic process

Colm Scully – why he loves Ekphrastic Poems

‘I love writing ekphrastic poems. However when reciting them it always seems necessary to  let the audience see the piece of art you are writing from, by holding up a picture or using a projection. How else can they truly appreciate what you are trying to say. The joy of poetry film is that in this case it serves both purposes, allowing you to perform your poem, while  simultaneously allowing you to illuminate aspects of the art  through a cohesive single work. Poetry Film often works best when it is simple, and ekphrastic poetry film allows this to happen more naturally. Sometimes just a snapshot of a painting may suffice, sometimes a more complex endeavour is required to let the poem and art coexist.’ Colm Scully, poet, poetry filmmaker and curator

Huapango Torero by Ana Segovia courtesy the Karen Huber gallery

 Dr Meriel Lland – Why did the artwork Huapango Torero inspire you?

‘I have a long-standing interest in the art of Mexico and women’s self-portraiture in particular.  Ana Segovia’s painting Huapango Torero and the image of the same name that inspired it, had a powerful impact on my thinking.  The apparently simple act of offering a fighting bull a flower is loaded with complexity.  It led to research into bullfighting in Mexico City (which has only recently been banned in 2022) and into related gendered issues and versions of machismo and maleness.  Segovia represents herself within the painting offering the flower as a gentle, compassionate gesture against violence.  I find this gesture full of hope.’ Dr Meriel Lland, poet, nature photographer and poetry filmmaker

Carlos Ramirez Kobra – Why did the artwork Huapango Torero inspire you?

‘Due to the environment in which it takes place and the name of the work that permeates the texture of the son huasteco, the guapango that is part of the culture of my mother’s birthplace and this audiovisual writing exercise became a journey of return. I was inspired by the mountain range that housed my childhood and now that my mother has passed on I have taken the opportunity to pay tribute to her and to the land that saw me grow up.’ Carlos Ramirez Kobra, poet and audiovisual artist

Penny Florence – Why did the artwork Huapango Torero inspire you?

‘I love the way Huapango Torero foregrounds responding to previous work, while shifting it into the present. We are invited to enter into histories in ways that engage with them in non-binary ways: there is immediacy, but not past-present; individual creativity, but acknowledging shared elements; sexual difference, but non-binary.’ Penny Florence, artist, educator, theorist

THE FINALISTS

A New History, Patricia Killelea

A NEW HISTORY

Patricia Killelea
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Poem: Patricia Killelea
Video Clips & Production: Patricia Killelea
Translation Assistance: Lisandra Perez
USA, 2023

Inspired by Ana Segovia’s painting Huapengo Torero, A New History is an author-made poetry film celebrating the act of crossing over into a new way of life— one that challenges stereotypical conceptions of gender, animal-human relationships, and desire. Armed with flowers and desire instead of instruments of war, the figure steps into the field of the future. In doing so, she comes face to face with mystery and the possibility of transformation.

Patricia Killelea is a writer and multimedia artist living in the rural Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her poetry films have been screened at Det Poetiske Fonoteque: Nature & Culture Poetry Film Festival, Ó’Béal, Rabbit Heart and received Honorable Mention at the Midwest Video Poetry Fest.

Patricia’s poetry films and essays on videopoetry have been featured at FENCE, Poetry Film Live, Atticus Review, and Moving Poems.

Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, and her most recent poetry collection, Counterglow, was published by Urban Farmhouse Press (2019). She was Poetry Editor at Passages North from 2015-2022 and recently became a Poetry Editor at FENCE. She is an Associate Professor of English at Northern Michigan University. www.patriciakillelea.net

THE FALL OF LILITH

Tova Beck Friedman
Painting: Lilith, 1887, by British Pre-Raphaelite painter John Collier,
Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport, England
Poem & Video: Tova Beck-Friedman
Translator: Odeiny Gavira Tejeda
Music: Kamila Kustar
USA, 2023

The Fall of Lilith is an ekphrastic video poem inspired by the painting Lilith, by the Pre-Raphaelite British painter John Collier (1850–1934). Lilith’s story is part of the pantheon of narratives centered on the female archetype. Like all such mythological tales, hers begins as seen through the male gaze. I have recreated her story through a contemporary lens.

While Collier paints Lilith as a seductive woman, standing with a snake wrapped around her naked body, in my interpretation of Lilith (in both poem and video), she is a strong woman who was wronged by the Patriarchy and who becomes an archetype of contemporary womanhood. The video borrows from the old silent-movie style. This choice of outdated method of presentation reflects both conceptual and technical archaic approaches to Lilith’s story.

RESIST EXIST

Alejandro Thornton
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Concept, video poem, music: Alejandro Thornton
Argentina, 2023

Resist / Exist, Alejandro Thornton

Resist/Exist is a videopoem based on the painting Huapango Torero by Ana Segovia that tries to rethink, with a play on words and in a poetic way, the conditions in which we inhabit this world, how to confront the abuses of our rights and of our cultures by colonization and globalization.

Alejandro Thornton is an Argentinian artist, visual poet and Professor and researcher at the Department of Visual Arts of the National University of the Arts (U.N.A.).

He has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies e.g. Traces of Argentine Visual Poetry (2014), Poéticas Oblicuas. Modes of Counterwriting and phonetic twists in experimental poetry 1956-2016 (2016), …xyzA-Cdef… Anthology of Argentine Catalan Visual Poetry (2019), Proporción Aurea (2023) and Visual Poetry. An Argentine and Brazilian anthology (2023).

Recent publications include:Poemas Libres (Ireland, 2022);Aquiahoraotravoz together with JM Calleja (Ireland, 2021); Portraits of Solitude (2020); Abracadabra (2017)). In 2021 he won the III Paqui Jimenez Yepez International Visual Poetry Prize (Spain). https://alethornton.wixsite.com

INTERIOR GROUP PORTRAIT OF THE PENROSE FAMILY

Colm Scully
Painting: Interior Group Portrait of the Penrose Family, 1776, by Robert Hunter,
Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland
Director: Colm Scully
Poet: Colm Scully
Editor: Colm Scully
Music: J.S. Bach
Ireland, 2021

Interior group portrait of the Penrose family, Robert Hunter, 1776, Colm Scully

This portrait of a wealthy 18^th-century Cork Quaker family hangs in the Cork City Crawford Gallery. A number of years ago the gallery had a competition to write a poem about your favourite piece of art.  I wrote this poem and more recently turned it into a poetry film. Looking up local phone directories, I found no entries for Penrose, even though the family lived here for several hundred years before returning to England, and were connected with very important figures in Irish nationalism. I try to elucidate the poignancy of this in the film poem.

Colm Scully is a poet and poetry film maker from Cork, Ireland. His films have been shown internationally and he recently won The Deanna Tulley Multimedia Prize, 2022.

He is curator at Drumshanbo Written Word Poetry Film Competition, and judge at O Bheal Winter Warmer Poetry Film Prize. His poems have been published in many journals including Poetry Ireland Review and The Friday Poem. You can learn more at colmscully.com.

SELF PORTRAIT WITH A LINE FROM LORCA

Janet Lees
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Director: Janet Lees
Poets: Lois P. Jones & Elena K. Byrne
Editor: Janet Lees
Music: Yehezkel Raz feat. Sivan Talmor
Cast: Narrator Mónica Zúniga
Translation: Camilo Bosso
UK & USA, 2023

Self Portrait with a Line from Lorca, Janet Lees

A film inspired by the poem ‘Self Portrait with a line from Lorca’, by Lois P. Jones and Elena K. Byrne, which in turn is inspired by the painting Huapango Torero by Ana Segovia. I wanted to honour the spirit of both, which speak to different ways of relating with other beings and with ourselves. The dancer I filmed at the Casa Fortaleza de Emilio el Indio Fernández in Coyoacán, Mexico City – and the narrator in the film, Mónica Zúñiga, is an artist I met by chance on the same day. I wanted to include this Día de los Muertos dance, which echoes the dancing poppies earlier in the film, as a way of honouring the lives of the millions of bulls who have been killed in bullfighting; also to counter the machismo of the bullring, touched on at the beginning of the film, with a more open, creative and empathic energy. Reflecting the poem and the essence of the painting, the film moves from machismo and violence to the possibility of the death of these things.

Janet Lees is a lens-based artist, poet and poetry filmmaker. She won the 2021 Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film competition, and has been selected by such festivals as: ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, the Aesthetica Art Prize, and  Festival Fotogenia. In 2022 her work featured in the landmark exhibition Poets with a Video Camera: Poetry Film 1980 to 2020.

Her art photography has been exhibited worldwide and her poetry widely published in journals and anthologies. Her two books are House of water, a collection of poems and art photographs, and A bag of sky, the winning collection in the Frosted Fire Firsts prize, hosted by the UK’s Cheltenham Poetry Festival. https://janetlees.weebly.com/

Lois P. Jones’ first poetry collection, Night Ladder was published by Glass Lyre Press and was a finalist for the Julie Suk Award. She is the winner of the 2023 Alpine Fellowship in poetry and previous winner of the Bristol Poetry Prize, the Tiferet Poetry Prize and the Lascaux Poetry Prize. Jones’s work has been published or is forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Wales, Plume, Guernica Editions, Agenda and elsewhere. Since 2007 she has hosted KPFK’s Poets’ Cafe and acts as poetry editor for the Pushcart and Utne prize-winning Kyoto Journal. https://www.loispjones.com/

Elena K Byrne

Former Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America, final judge for the PEN’s Best of the West Award, the Kate & Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards, and the international Laurel Prize, Elena Karina Byrne is a freelance editor, professor, Programming Consultant & Poetry Stage Manager for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Her five poetry collections include If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn Publishing, 2021). Elena’s work can be found in Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prize, POETRY, Paris Review, APR, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Oxford Review of Books, BOMB, and elsewhere. https://www.elenakarinabyrne.com

NIGHT IS PAPER

Martin Sercombe
AI Imagery created in Midjourney
Director: Martin Sercombe
Words: Thom Conroy, Martin Sercombe
Music: Holizna, Language Removal Services, Ben Stepner and Jaap Blonk
New Zealand, 2022

Night is Paper, Martin Sercombe

Night is Paper is a cinepoetic collaboration with novelist Dr Thom Conroy. The artistic process began with a series of images generated in Midjourney, using artificial intelligence. The images prompted a sequence of text-based fragments which combine to evoke a sense of eves-dropping into a shadowy, indistinct world where nothing can be fully understood. A mix of found sounds and electroacoustic music from the Free Music Archive build upon this mood of unexplained mystery.

Martin Sercombe began making artist’s films in the 1980s, supported by Arts Council England and other funders. Over the years he has worked extensively with other artists and composers on work that explores the boundaries between poetry, animation, music and performance art. His video production company, Media Projects forms partnerships with community groups and institutions to produce short films exploring heritage, the arts and social issues. https://martinsercombe.com/

Thom Conroy co-wrote the script for the film ‘Night is Paper’ with Martin Sercombe during Martin’s residency as the Massey-Palmerston North visiting artist in 2022. Thom is the author of the novels The Salted Air and The Naturalist (Penguin Random-House) and the editor of the essay collection Home (Massey University Press). His short fiction, widely published in New Zealand and the US, has been recognised by Best American Short Stories and received other awards, including the Katherine Ann Porter Prize in Fiction. He is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University, and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Headland. https://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/expertise/profile.cfm?stref=552930

HUAPANGO TORERO

Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Film: Jack Cochran & Pamela Falkenberg, Outlier Moving Pictures
Poem: ‘Huapango Torero’, extracted by Jack Cochran from ‘La Faena’ poem
by Bruno Enciso
Song: ‘Huapango Torero’ written by Tomas Mendez, performed by Laura Beltran
courtesy of Frontera Library (UCLA)
Additional paintings by Ana Segovia
USA, 2023

Huapango Torero, Pamela Falkenberg & Jack Cochran

A fiesta of intertexts inspired Jack Cochran’s found ekphrastic poem, ‘Huapango Torero’, which began with Sarah Tremlett’s selection of Ana Segovia’s Huapango Torero painting as the prompt for the Festival Fotogenia Frame to Frames challenge. However, this quickly expanded in a widening gyre to include what Segovia had to say about their Huapango Torero painting, as well as their other paintings. Also, other renditions of Huapango Torero,  such as the Huapango Torero song written by Tomas Mendes and performed by Laura Beltran (courtesy of the Frontera Library, UCLA). We were also inspired by the poem, ‘La Faena’ by Bruno Enciso, from which Jack extracted a new ‘Huapango Torero’ poem, haunted by intertexts, as was the film we were inspired to make from it.  This concludes with an art gallery fiesta inhabited by Ana’s paintings, Day of the Dead folk-art marionettes, and cross-dressing paper dolls. A result demonstrating that social constructs are not unmalleable truths, but instead subject to deconstruction and reconstruction that can change reality. Viva la differance!

Pam Falkenberg & Jack Cochran met in graduate school and made films together when they were young. Jack was part of the Iowa Creative Writing Workshop (and has written poetry all his life) and was working on a PhD in film studies when he left to pursue a career as a professional cinematographer.

Meanwhile, Pam stayed in school, got her PhD, and went on to become a film professor and experimental filmmaker, but eventually dropped out to work in visual display. They reconnected some thirty years later and formed Outlier Moving Pictures, honouring their new name by making technically innovative and poetic films about life, love, landscapes, social justice, and the environment. https://www.outliermovingpictures.com

THIS YARD

Csilla Toldy
Paintings: Laszlo Bujaki
Director: Csilla Toldy
Poem: Csilla Toldy
Hungary / Ireland, 2023

This Yard, Csilla Toldy

This Yard is a double-ekphrastic poem. The text came about through a poetic dialogue with Italian poet Viviana Fiorentino. The text of the poem is a response to her poem ‘Sedimentare’ or ‘Sedimentations’. The visual elements are based on Hungarian painter Laszlo Bujaki’s work, whose constant accompanying theme is the little doe represented in my poem by the ‘little hen’.

Csilla Toldy is a writer and translator from Hungary. Her writing has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies and in book form in three poetry pamphlets: Red Roots – Orange Sky (2013), The Emigrant Woman’s Tale (2015) and Vertical Montage (2018), as short fiction in Angel Fur and other stories (2019) and as a novel with the title Bed Table Door (2023).

Csilla creates film poems as a visual artist. Her award-winning work has been screened at international festivals. www.csillatoldy.co.uk

AFTER HUAPANGO TORERO

Finn Harvor
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Director:  Finn Harvor
Poet:  Finn Harvor
Editor: Finn Harvor
Music: Finn Harvor
Canada, 2023

After Huapango Torero, Finn Harvor

A brief poetry film based on a work by Ana Segovia that illustrates nature in a time of the Anthropocene. Ancillary footage was shot in South Korea — which also feels itself under subtle but relentless pressure from climate change and ‘global fevering’.

Finn Harvor is an award-winning artist, writer, musician and filmmaker. He has had articles in many journals including the Brooklyn Rail and Canadian Notes and Queries. He has presented to academic conferences in Oxford, Bath, Liverpool, Berlin, Seoul, Osaka, Bologna, Madrid, Helsinki, and elsewhere. He has been selected by festivals in Korea, Ireland, the U.K., the US, Canada, Mexico, China, Kazakhstan, Australia, Greece, Pakistan, Serbia, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Ukraine, India, and elsewhere.

‘I’m particularly interested in the following themes: nature and the anthropocene, addiction and family dynamics (my late brother’s story), technology and contemporary war, and the nature of love. I usually make videopoems that I term authorial movies; these are movies in which one person creates — authors — all elements of the movie.’ https://bridgetextpress.weebly.com/

Y SUBO LAS ESCALERAS (AND I GO UP STAIRS)

 Javier Robledo
 Artwork: Visual Poem by Oliverio Girondo, Argentina. Ed Proa Publishing Society, 1932
Director: Javier Robledo
Poet: Javier Robledo
Edition /edición: 38 escalones
Music: Gyorgi Ligetty
Cast: Gabriel Espinosa, Adriana Saponko
Argentina, 2005

Y subo las Escaleras (And I go Upstairs), Javier Robledo

The scarecrow returns to human life and emerges from its immobility in search of fulfillment.

Javier Robledo is an Argentinian writer, performer, visual poet and the founder and director of VideoBardo International Video Poetry Archive and Festival. Originating in 1996 it is the oldest active festival in the world of its genre and has shown work in 21 countries.

He has made numerous video poems and exhibited and performed in numerous festivals in Argentina and abroad. He was co-founder of Impa La Fabrica cultural city, where he built and directed the Farbil Microcinema from 1999 to 2013 with poetry, video and performance activities, and Bardo, a poetry magazine, from 1996 to 2004.

He has published six books of poetry and one of stories. He received the Clamor Brezka Award from Vortice Argentina 1994 and the Editorial Poetry Award 3+1 25 years in 2018. Ed. Santillana included a visual poem of his in its manual for secondary students. https://videobardo.wixsite.com

HUAPANGO TORERO  

Beate Gördes
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Director: Beate Gördes
Editor: Beate Gördes
Music: Beate Gördes
Germany, 2023

Huapango Torero, Beate Goerdes

Inspired by Ana Segovia’s artwork Huapango Torero, the film presents human emotions in an experimental manner. Through poetic audiovisual elements, the film delves deeply into the intricate interplay of ambivalent hesitation and curious observation. The film illustrates a phase of intense tension. It immerses itself in the moment of observation, trembling, and excitement one experiences while making preparations from a (still) safe distance. By depicting the inner dynamics of this moment, the film creates an atmosphere that lingers between hesitation and action, thus generating an ambivalent and unsettling mood.

Beate Gördes has worked as a freelance artist since 1992. Her artistic work is multi-layered across all media and technologies, and video and sound have supplemented her artistic work since 2006.

She is represented in numerous exhibitions both in Germany and abroad. www.beategoerdes.de

SENSURIOUS / SENSORIALES

Ian Gibbins
Coloured Pencil Drawings: Judy Morris
Director: Ian Gibbins
Poet: Ian Gibbins
Editor: Ian Gibbins
Music: Ian Gibbins
Cast: Ian Gibbins (spoken word)
Translation: Ian Gibbins (2023)
Australia, 2016

Censorious / Sensoriales, Ian Gibbins

‘This, then, our new world, serried with vigilance, chromed with unrecorded opportunity… Who will catch your tears before they dry? Save some meteor for me… the roots, leaves, flowers, fruits that stimulate our senses … ‘

Text was written to accompany an exhibition of an extraordinary series of drawings – Sensurious – drawings to stimulate the senses by Judy Morris exhibited at The Gallery @ Pikes, South Australia, in 2014 and again at Magpie Springs, South Australia, autumn/winter 2014/15 with accompanying poems by Ian Gibbins.

From Judy’s website: ‘These works are a celebration of produce from the garden, vineyard, orchard, or greenhouse that we collect for our kitchens and dining rooms and in most cases eventually consume! The pleasure we gain from this produce is amplified by simultaneous stimulation of multiple senses – vision, touch, smell, taste and even sound – and can be further enhanced when we grow the produce ourselves. Such stimulation forms memories so vivid that the full sensory experience can be evoked in the future by just a quick glimpse or whiff or feel.’ https://www.judymorris.net.au/the-natural-world/sensurious/ 

Ian Gibbins is a poet, video artist and electronic musician living in South Australia. His poetry has been widely published in Australia and overseas, and includes four books, two of which are collaborations with visual artists.

His award-winning poetry videos, video art and soundscapes have been exhibited to acclaim at festivals, installations, galleries and high-visibility public art displays around the world.

Until he retired in 2014, Ian was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia, having originally trained as a zoologist. www.iangibbins.com.au

Judy Morris is a fine artist, based in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. She interprets the natural world in drawings that emphasise the contours and textures of animal and plant forms, exploring their intricate beauty on the macroscopic and microscopic scale.

One focus is the human body, with pencil and charcoal drawings of the human form interacting with the everyday world. Recently, she has concentrated on contemporary botanical drawings in coloured pencil, bringing attention to the wonders of plants and their importance in our natural environment. See https://www.judymorris.net.au/

FLOR DE CRISTAL / CRYSTAL FLOWER

Carlos Ramirez Kobra
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Director: Carlos Ramírez Kobra
Poet: Carlos Ramírez Kobra
Editor: Carlos Ramírez Cobra
Music: Carlos Ramírez Kobra
Photography: Omar Ulises Plata Castillo
Mexico, 2023

Flor de Cristal / Crystal Flower, Carlos Ramirez Kobra

Crystal Flower is a piece of audiovisual writing based on a process of ekphrasis that takes as its starting point the work Huapango Torero by the Mexican artist Ana Segovia. It combines writing on images of the Huasteca Hidalguense and the process of returning to a town where are left the remains of a mother who has passed to another existential plane. All of the above is superimposed on the idea of ​​the discovery of God enclosed in a crystal flower.

Carlos Ramírez Kobra was born in Neza (MX) in 1984. Poet, publicist and cultural manager, he is coordinator of the PLACA Platform in Mexico, managing cultural events such as the Chilango Andaluz Poetry Recital, the Gabinete Salvaje or the Festival de los Barrios. His poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies in Mexico and Spain; in the plaquettes Los Salvajes de Ciudad AKA (Deleátur) and A word with a bullet name (Dos10 Studio digital) in the collection of poems Own Dream Code (Editorial Ultramarina C&D 2020), dios un pixel (Centro Cultural Digital 2022), and Visual Trance (Malviaje , 2023). His audiovisual pieces have been selected by numerous festivals around the world. He has worked for 17 years with poetry projects that are in dialogue with other artistic expressions. https://carlosramirezkobra.com/

IT AIN’T WHAT IT SEEMS/ NO ES LO QUE PARECE

Penny Florence
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Director:  Penny Florence
Poet: Penny Florence
Editor: Penny Florence
Music: Silent
UK, 2023

It Ain’t What it Seems / No es Lo Que Parece, Penny Florence

A silent visual poem that responds to selected works by Ana Segovia, especially Huapango Torero, 2019 and It’s not what it looks like, 2023. All the visual elements derive from her work, as is gradually revealed throughout the film-poem. This is directly inspired by her response in La Faena. The words and wordplay move between English and Spanish (and occasionally other languages), exploring shared features and divergences, especially where gender and sexuality are involved. The translations are deliberately taken from Google Translate. While I do not speak Spanish, I do speak French and German, and have a life-long scholarly interest in etymology, digital poetry translation and linguistics. Drawing on the above, the film-poem seeks to move around Ana’s work in a sympathetic version of analysis, shifting the ground of ‘criticism’ towards shared inquiry and ‘the pleasure of influence’.

Penny Florence is an inter/cross/un/disciplinary artist and writer, and a feminist materialist who struggles with ‘isms’. She is based in West Cornwall, where she exhibits digital poetry, films and mixed installations, especially, but not exclusively, as a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists (NSA).

She has performed readings in various galleries in the UK and internationally, the most visible of which include Tate Modern and Tate Britain. She has worked in universities, while resisting the label ‘academic’, and her books, articles and papers are fundamentally concerned with the forms and processes of thinking and their intersection with what we call art and media. Appointments include: Head of Research Programmes at The Slade School of Fine Art (including leading the practice-based PhDs); inaugurating and running the first PhD programme at Falmouth University (also practice-based); and Chair of Humanities and Design Sciences at Art Center, Pasadena, USA. www.pennyflorence.com

A LOVE SPELL CAST IN PETALS

Meriel Lland
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Words and concept: Meriel Lland
Photography and camera: Michael Leach and Meriel Lland
Editing: David Lland and Meriel Lland
Animation: David Lland
Sound: David Lland
Translation: Camilo Bosso
UK, 2023

A Love Spell Cast in Petals, Meriel Land

A love spell cast in petals weaves together threads from many sources.  Most importantly, Ana Segovia’s flower offering in her painting Huapango Torero – and the painting of the same name that inspired it – but also the 1950s Lola Beltrán song ‘Huapango Torero’ and the once banned 1936 children’s book The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf.  The film-poem explores what happens when we dare to think differently and challenge the cruel stereotypes that misrepresent and trap a living being.  It refuses the theatre of machismo to remake old understandings of bulls and of men.  The painter is a peacemaker, she invites new dialogues and encourages forgiveness and an end to violence.  She is a sorceress casting a spell of hope.

Dr Meriel Lland is an ecopoet, author, photographer, artist and film-poet.  Until recently, she was Creative Writing Programme lead at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has worked with BBC Wildlife, RSPB Birds, National Geographic, Birdwatching magazine and the Natural History Museum.  Meriel investigates biophilia, ecology and wellbeing, encouraging communities to reconnect and care for the planet.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at: ZEBRA, Berlin; Cyclop, Kyiv; Liberated Words, Arnolfini, Bristol and Bath, Encounters Short Film Festival, Bristol;; REELpoetry, Houston; art en nature en art, Galerie du Château Sainte-Croix-de-Mareuil, Dordogne, France and many others. She is co-author of 18 books translated into 16 languages, including the Nature Explorer Guide for Kids (QED Publishing), the Wildlife Watcher Guide (Firefly Books), the Children’s Encyclopedia of Animals (Arcturus) and Animal Talk (DK Publishing). www.meriellland.co.uk

SEME (THE SEED)

Ana Pantic
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Poem, voice, film: Ana Pantić
Language: Serbian with English subtitles
Music: iMovie soundtrack, made on an iPhone
Serbia, 2023

Seme (The Seed), Ana Pantic

The very first encounter with Ana Segovia’s painting awoke an initial idea for creating a poetry film based on her piece of work. Intuitively, I hadn’t read the description of the painting, nor the author’s biography before I finished my own work. I wanted a metaphor rather than an interpretation or description of such an inspiring piece of art.

In my own interpretation I associated the image of a person leaving ‘wired space’ and stepping out to the ambience of pastoral nature, with the picture of a part of the garden I own, which is situated on a Belgrade river island. The wires were a direct link, but more importantly, the place itself is a mental and spiritual safety area from what is called a real life with urban pace and rules. Whilst this image was firmly in my imagination, the process itself led me to simplifying the complexity of Ana Segovia’s painting and translating it to the very essence of the initial emotions it provoked in me. Ultimately, the action of planting a seed became an all-consuming image which was to become the basis of the film and then the poem. A seed is a new life, it is a possibility rather than a clue, and it always requires interaction in order to bloom into life. Choosing barren ground, such as sand or stone, I guess I was searching for those unimaginable possibilities, which somehow survive despite common sense doubts.

Ana Pantic is a poet, playwright, novelist and poetry film maker from Belgrade, Serbia. She graduated from Belgrade University, Faculty of Philology and was an actor for ten years in an independent theatre group.

Her poetry films have been presented and awarded at film festivals worldwide. She is an active performer at poetry events in Belgrade including slam poetry, spoken word and poetry performance. Her poems were published in the first Serbian Collection of Slam Poetry Tebi u lice as well as in several regional (former Yugoslavia) anthologies.

She is interested in researching versatile modes of expressing poetry and believes that poetry film – as a challenging form intertwining literary and visual arts – opens a wide space for experimenting and expanding artistic boundaries.
She paints and draws ‘when she lacks words’. YouTube channel with her poetry films.
https://youtube.com/@anapantic5289?si=Jxor4b4Ejot7Q0IV

BULL / TORO

Sarah Tremlett
Painting: Huapango Torero, Ana Segovia
Poem, storyboard and Director: Sarah Tremlett
Performance: XaiLA (aka Hatti Rees) as Bull www.xailasworld.com
Assistant Director and camera: Georgi Rees
Voice: Helena Amado
Translator(s): Camilo Bosso / Ian Gibbins
Music: ‘Acro’, and ‘Contorsion’ from the album ‘Aha!’ Circo de Lapso Producciones
Makeup & wardrobe: XaiLA
UK, 2023

Darkly comic mime cabaret provides the stage for BULL/ TORO, which considers that man and bull are very similar, and respond in the same way to aggravation. A mime artist is referred to as the bull, at first happy in his world then his peace is disturbed. In effect, you are the bull and the bull is you – have compassion for all animals and humans in their pathos. An ekphrastic poetry film based on the painting Huapango Torero by Mexican artist Ana Segovia, created in the Italian sonnet form.

[NB: this film is not eligible for the prize!]

Sarah Tremlett MPhil, FRSA, director of Liberated Words, is a prize-winning poetry filmmaker, artist, poet and theorist. A curator, judge and speaker at international festivals such as VideoBardo, FOTOGENIA and REELpoetry her publication The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect Books UK, 2021) has been described as ‘A ground-breaking, encyclopedic work, and the industry Bible’. In 2022 she was key speaker and exhibitor in Tom Konyves’ milestone exhibition ‘Poets with a Videocamera : Videopoetry 1980–2020’. She inaugurated the Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow ekphrastic poetry film prize and a family history poetry film project, alongside TREE – a geopoetic family history research, and poetry film collection. ‘Firewash’ her poem (with related poetry film) on a mediaeval mining ancestor can be found in Earth Lines : Geopoetry and Geopoetics (co-editor) (Edinburgh Geological Society, 2021). www.liberatedwords.com    www.sarahtremlett.com

ABOUT THE JUDGES

JANÉE J BAUGHER 

Janée J. Baugher, MFA is the author of the only craft book of its kind, The Ekphrastic Writer: Creating Art-Influenced Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction, as well as two ekphrastic poetry collections, Coördinates of Yesand The Body’s Physics.

As a collaborator, she has had poems adapted for the stage and set to music at Interlochen Center for the Arts (Michigan), University of Cincinnati, Contemporary Dance Theatre (Ohio), Dance Now! Ensemble (Florida), Otterbein University, and University of North Carolina-Pembroke, to name a few.

Baugher is an assistant editor at Boulevard magazine (Missouri), and she’s been a featured poet on Seattle Channel TV and at the Library of Congress. www.JaneeBaugher.com

MARY MCDONALD

Mary McDonald is a Canadian writer and multimedia artist whose work explores words through sound, image, and movement. McDonald is passionate about creating with digital technology, bringing text and multimedia art directly into community, historic and natural spaces through AR (augmented reality).

McDonald’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses text, photography, poetry film, music and immersive sound, interactive AR (augmented reality) installations, and community participatory arts projects. Her poetry films and AR installations have been exhibited widely in Canada and internationally.

McDonald’s poetry film and AR installation, On the Margin of History, was awarded first prize in new media, performative and digital work. https://marymcdonald.ca

SARAH TREMLETT

Sarah Tremlett MPhil, FRSA, director of Liberated Words, is a prize-winning poetry filmmaker, artist, poet and theorist. A curator, judge and speaker at international festivals such as VideoBardo, FOTOGENIA and REELpoetry her publication The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect Books UK, 2021) has been described as ‘A ground-breaking, encyclopedic work, and the industry Bible’.

In 2022 she was key speaker and exhibitor in Tom Konyves’ milestone exhibition ‘Poets with a Videocamera : Videopoetry 1980–2020’. She inaugurated the Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow ekphrastic poetry film prize and a family history poetry film project, alongside TREE – a geopoetic family history research, and poetry film collection. ‘Firewash’ her poem (with related poetry film) on a mediaeval mining ancestor can be found in Earth Lines : Geopoetry and Geopoetics (co-editor) (Edinburgh Geological Society, 2021). www.liberatedwords.com  www.sarahtremlett.com

Posted on October 18, 2023 at 2:34 pm | Last modified on October 31, 2023 at 11:40 am