REELpoetry, Houston – a whole new festival format – 31 March – April 12 2025
It’s April and REELpoetry is here once again, but under a new guise, with over a week of online screenings (March 31– April 9), and Saturday, April 12th on home turf, featuring live events from Houston. As they say in the programme details: ‘In addition to open submissions, the festival includes 45-minute curated programs, premieres, commissioned collaborations, live readings, poetry in sign language, youth events, poet+filmmaker talks and networking cafés. In 2025, all screenings, including those shown exclusively at the in-person events, will stream on-demand.’ I am just flagging this up fairly quickly as I have been promised an in-depth coverage of events to come, so in the meantime here are the essentials.
Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran
It begins on the Monday March 31st with the Video Jukebox curation presented by Eleanor Livingstone (Scotland), including leading poets and poetry filmmakers: Ian Gibbins, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Colm Scully, Steve Smart, Lucy English, Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran, Odveig Klyve and myself, followed by the exciting ‘Screening Texas Poets’ curated by Pam Falkenberg and Jack Cochran. The festival runs online through the week with juried submissions and curators screenings by Todd Boss, Mathew Mullins, Janet Lees, Paul Casey, Chris Pacheco and Mersolis Schöne. Festival director Fran Sanders will be at all the REELcafe meetings online throughout the week. On the Saturday the day is hosted by Võ Đức Quang, with Screening Texas Poets and 4 of the poets live at the event. There will also be a section on Young Creatives or Writers in Schools presented by Outspoken Bean. I am particularly pleased to see this as I managed a number of schools poetry film workshops with Helen Moore and Howard Vause for Liberated Words. In Location Houston Raneem Bakir Alia (Ranyah) and ten poets and filmmakers reveal unseen aspects of the city in film.
Just as an afterword, I am thrilled to finally work with Marc Neys after all these years. He has produced a sublime soundscape for my film Nocturne for a Lighterman in the Video Jukebox section on Monday 31st March. It is perfect for the subject matter and suggests all the layered moods and content superbly. This is also an ekphrastic poetry film, being a dialogue between Whistler and his painting Nocturne in Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge (c. 1872–5) and one of my ancestors.
A whole fresh new approach to the festival and it looks to be a winning formula. Have a great time if you make it!
