Sarah Tremlett interviewed by Dr Tereza Stehlíková – from Marinetti to Danny Boyle – Tangible Territory 4 & The Poetics of Poetry Film
Issue 4 of leading avant-garde art journal Tangible Territory came out recently https://tangibleterritory.art/journal/issue-4-content/poetics-of-poetry-film/ and I am humbled to say I am included amongst a rich collection of writers with their fingers on the cultural pulse (for example, digital media theorist Lev Manovich, also quoted in TPOPF). In terms of subject matter, the content really opens up how we might think about our role in the biosphere (for example place in terms of different ‘time scales’ (Václav Cílek) or the magic of VR enchantment (Célia Quico).
Founder and editor Dr Tereza Stehlíková now based in Prague, works as an artist, filmmaker and a senior lecturer and PhD supervisor. I am a great admirer of Tereza’s work, not only as a deeply intelligent editor, (she co-founded Artesian journal, featuring the writings of luminaries such as John Berger and Don DeLillo) but also in terms of her innovative research concepts. I really first got to know her through her interview with Christian Pacheco-Cámara (Chris Patch) for Fotogenia Festival, Mexico City, back in 2020, when she was introducing her film-based practice in relation to the senses – taste and smell. A fascinating discussion and impressive research. See Cinema for all the Senses
Cinema for all the Senses, Dr Tereza Stehlíková
Bringing up this subject in relation to contexts such as the enforced isolation of COVID she notes: ‘My practice is informed by my ongoing exploration of the role of the senses and our embodiment in communicating meaning, often using narratives to help activate imagination and provide a framework. Beyond this, the core themes in my creative practice are built around our relationship to landscape and place in general and how our environment can become an extension of our inner worlds.’
Tangible Territory
And in terms of the journal: ‘Tangible Territory is a platform that offers a space for various voices to meet and discuss themes relating to the importance of place and embodied experience, in giving meaning to our everyday experience of life and art.’ Tereza notes that the focus of this issue is centred on the relationship between human beings and the different environments we occupy ‘which shape us as much as we shape them’. See for example:
Herbarium. Flowers of Transhumanist Fantasies: Artist Adam Vačkář shares the story of his fascination with invasive plants and his subsequent artistic journey into the world of biology.
Quiet Activism
In her editorial comment she brings to attention one contributor’s use of the term ‘quiet activism’ and also observes that a key word that has arisen in this edition is ‘empathy’, with a final comment that we need ‘hope for the future’. For her, cultural thinking is certainly via a philosophical lens of connective aesthetics, rather than divorced from our position in the biosphere. Through Tangible Territory, she would like to build an open community where ‘key values are celebrated, explored, promoted’. I would also like to note in this post-BREXIT Britain (which has floundered without proper government since the suicidal severing) that I am pleased to be part of a really internationally inclusive group of authors. So, it was a joyful challenge to be asked quite complex questions by her on The Poetics of Poetry Film and really think hard about the answers.
Here are a couple of fascinating questions:
When speaking of poetry films, I am reminded of the filmmaker Werner Herzog’s ‘ecstatic truth’, which he understands as a form of deeper, poetic truth independent of facts. In one of his typically provocative statements, Herzog claims that “Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.” You are a poet, poetry filmmaker but also an academic. How do you reconcile the two different ways of approaching the same subject, and do you feel there are dangers or advantages in coming from two different “camps” or angles?
I was also struck by your statement of poetry films dealing with “things in process”, examining and reconfiguring time. Can you expand here on what you mean by that and how does this relate to ideas of vertical time, subjectivity, and being attentive?
Cocteau to Danny Boyle
From Marinetti to leading experimental film poets Gwendolyn Audrey Foster and Wheeler Winston Dixon,from Cocteau to Danny Boyle and Trance (2013), we cover a whole field of filmmaking. For example, Trance with ‘Baudelairean’ cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle, is for me an extended film poem. It could in some ways be compared to any of the dream-like films by the early experimental filmmakers and the Surrealists, or even Deren in the use of mirrors and reflections, or staring into the camera; except that the strident use of colour to help tell the narrative adds digital, 21st-century volumes to those who are receptive.
Trance, Danny Boyle
A Body, Milena Tipaldo
I was also pleased to be asked about animation today and how I feel it seems to have developed in recent years. Artists mentioned in this context include: Efrat Benzur and Yuval and Merav Nathan, Lise Fearnley and Kaisa Naess, Stephanie Dudley and poet Erin Moura, Suzie Hanna, Susanne Wiegner, Melanie Ludwig, Milena Tipaldo and Ann Isensee.
It was also very gratifying to bring into the discussion my own wider philosophical / political influences. Early feminist theorists who I value, admire and who are also mentioned include: Somer Brodribb Nothing Mat(t)ers: a feminist critique of postmodernism (1988), Carol Bigwood Earth Muse (1993), and Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (1983) by Sandra Harding. These important thinkers (and note the relatively early dates) put the injustices of the inherited hierarchical dualities of Western philosophy in context, especially in relation to how we conceive of mankind’s position in relation to the biosphere. Their ideas are, unfortunately, even more relevant today and give a strong foundation for rethinking the nature/culture divide, as we all work to save the planet.
I would also like to give a warm mention to all the artists that I have cited and who aren’t mentioned here, and who continue to inspire in the field. And now, go read!
Poems by Poetry Filmmakers in San Francisco – Marc Zegans and Sarah Tremlett
Marc Zegans and I will be sharing poems and poetry films on Thursday November 10th at Adobe Books in San Francisco. Thank you so much Prasant! Marc has an exciting and topical new collection out, Lyon Street (on San Francisco itself), which is a wonderful and really evocative read, with memories of a more laid back time. I will be discussing The Poetics of Poetry Film and also reading poems from TREE on family history. Excited to tap into the place where amongst many other creative significances, Herman Berlandt began the first poetry film festival back in the 70s.
Utility Pole – Behind the Scenes of a Masterful, Binaural Ecopoetry Film
I am very pleased to share details on this important ecopoetry film.
Utility Pole is a poetry film collaboration between two leading Canadian poetry filmmakers: Vancouver’s current Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam and award-winning poetry filmmaker Mary McDonald. I have known Mary as a good friend for some time, and she was one of the judges of my Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow ekphrastic poetry film prize this year.
Vancouver reading and Poets with a Video Camera symposium
I will be presenting alongside Fiona [and Annie Frazier Henry, Heather Haley, Kurt Heintz, Adeena Karasick, Tom Konyves, Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel H. Dugas, Matt Mullins and Javier Robledo], at the videopoetry symposium (5th November) at Surrey Art Gallery related to Tom Konyves’ Poets with a Video Camera: 1980–2020 exhibition. Fiona will also take the stand as the emcee for the Poems by Poetry Filmmakers reading the next day at the Co-Op Bookstore [see other posts on presentations and readings]. A great Canadian welcome, so a BIG HUG to VANCOUVER.
UTILITY POLE
I am a huge supporter of tree planting, and reforestation, and so this particular poetry film means a lot to me. As they say in their description of the film: ‘Utility Pole explores the transformation of trees into the poles that hold our communications, the many branched network that connects us, as the trees have been severed from each other and their own living networks. The soundscape is a binaural, 360 soundscape featuring a mix of urban forest sounds, with the sounds of technology today and the pointed call of Morse code, our earliest technologically enabled transatlantic communication. The Morse code recording is from Freesound.org.’
As you can see the construction of the film is very interesting and quite complex, it is rare to have a binaural soundscape; and do check out Mary’s development of her visual techniques (below) if you want to learn more about making poetry films.
FIONA TINWEI LAM
“Utility Pole” was one of the many odes to ordinary things I was trying to write for my 2019 collection, Odes & Laments. https://fionalam.net/home/odes-laments/
For years, I’d been walking up and down the same alley way to get groceries, and noticing these telephone poles right next to live trees. I started noticing all the attachments to these poles, and then started researching the history of telephone poles, which became the genesis of the poem. I met Mary at REELpoetry in Houston, and when she was in town, I suggested we collaborate. We went to UBC Botanical Gardens to do its Greenheart suspended walkway through the trees to get some footage. I obtained permission to use some photos of clearcuts taken by the local Sierra Club. I also took some photographs of telephone poles for Mary to incorporate. Mary did a fabulous job incorporating and integrating all this material.
MARY MCDONALD
For me, the key visual component for this work, is anchored within the first lines of the poem – “teeming green”. I wanted to create a lush, moving cornucopia of life, a living green network in contrast to the stark, mechanical world of the utility poles, fraught with the vicarious life of our human communication networks. I played with various apps to turn my photographs of trees, leaves, needles into abstracts [see end for a demonstration of the transition].
Turning a Photo into a Webbed Image
Before I painted on the movement in Pixaloop, I turned the Live Photo into a long exposure. I started with the app Tangled FX which took the photographs of the cedar branch that closes the film, and reduced it to webs of filaments, hashed lines/abstract thick virtual finger-painted swirls. I then moved these transformed images into the app Pixaloop where you can literally paint on movement, using my fingers on my iPad to draw out the movement I choreographed into the still image. The resulting moving image, full of noise and aliasing hit the perfect note of the seemingly disordered, moving chaos of life [see end for an example of the process with a borage flower].
For stark contrast, I turned other photographs like the aerial view of the clearcut [clearcut logging is a forestry/logging practice in which most or all trees in an area are uniformly cut down] into hashed drawn images that morph into threaded webs. I painted movement onto these, moving from images full of colour and multiple shades of green to grey, black and white. The rhythms of the sound clip of Morse code that appears halfway through the film, can be heard underlying the entirety. The 360 natural soundscape contains wind and leaves, squirrels and birds as well as the sounds of airplanes and traffic in an ever-changing mix in contrast to the urgent pulse and pitch of the Morse code clip. The images at the end of the poem pull us back into the teeming web that is then frozen into a single, still, stained glass image of a tree trunk. It is here at last, that we clearly hear birds and a chorus of forest voices which play as if in eulogy following the stilled image of the tree trunk.
Example of Mary’s process as shown with the cedar branch in Utility Pole
Borage Flower on Nasturtium Leaf
Tangled
Tangled FX 2.1.2
Brushstrokes 1.5 preset
Tangled FX 2.1.2
Brushstrokes Extreme preset
FINAL
Tangled FX 2.1.2
Webbed Thick preset
BIOGRAPHIES
Fiona Tinwei Lam
Chinese-Canadian writer Fiona Tinwei Lam was born in Scotland but raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. She holds an LL.B. from Queen’s University, an LL.M. from the University of Toronto, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Fiona is the author of Intimate Distances (finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Prize), Enter the Chrysanthemum, and Odes & Laments. She also authored the illustrated children’s book, The Rainbow Rocket. Her poetry and prose have been published in over forty anthologies (Canada, Hong Kong, and the US), including The Best Canadian Poetry in English (2010, 10th anniversary Best of the Best edition 2017, and 2020). Three of her poems have been featured on BC’s Poetry in Transit. She is a co-editor of and contributor to the creative nonfiction anthology, Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood published by McGill-Queen’s University Press with Cathy Stonehouse and Shannon Cowan, and also the editor of The Bright Well, a collection of contemporary Canadian poetry about facing cancer. She and Jane Silcott co-edited the creative 2018 nonfiction and poetry anthology, Love Me True: Writers Reflect on the Ins, Outs, Ups & Downs of Marriage. From September 2020-21, she curated and hosted the online monthly poetry series In/Verse for the Federation of BC Writers to showcase local published poets. Her award-winning poetry videos, made in collaboration with local animators and filmmakers, have been screened at festivals locally and internationally since 2009. She has recently been appointed Vancouver’s Poet Laureate for 2022-2024.
photo credit: Holly Hofmann
Vancouver’s Poet Laureate 2022–2024
The Poet Laureate, “the people’s poet,” is an honorary position with a two-year term. Serving as a champion for poetry, language and the arts, the Laureate creates a unique literary project and represents the City as Laureate during readings and public poetry events. Funded through a generous endowment by Dr. Yosef Wosk, OBC, the position was established in 2006 by the City of Vancouver in partnership with the Vancouver Public Library and The Vancouver Writers’ Festival.
Fiona Tinwei Lam’s Legacy Project will involve community outreach to encourage the generation of new poems and poetry videos to foster greater understanding about significant historical, cultural and ecological sites on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples now known as the City of Vancouver.
The first stage of the project was the City Poems Contest, a poetry contest for youth and adults April-June 2022. The second stage of the project is the City Poems Poetry Video Contest based on the award-winning poems and other curated site-based poems, which will officially launch in January 2023. Preliminary information will be posted in the fall of 2022 on this website.
Schools in the Vancouver school district may book a one-hour workshop with the Vancouver Poet Laureate through the Poet in Class program with Poetry in Voice, or with the Vancouver Writers Fest’s Writers in the Classroom program, or through contacting Fiona directly. Information about the Poet Laureate position is also available through the Vancouver Public Library and the City of Vancouver (Cultural Services).
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. Her most recent collaboration with Vancouver Poet Laureate, Fiona Tinwei Lam, explores the fibres of connectivity in our natural and technologized world. This work encompasses Mary’s multilayered approach to poetry and poetry film.
Mary is very fortunate to work with a not-for-profit organization which partners with remote and rural communities across Canada to share digital skills and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) education. This work has brought her into contact with many fabulous people and to some very beautiful spaces on our shared world. McDonald is grateful for these opportunities to share her love for creating with technology, to meet new people, to learn about different ways of being and experience new landscapes.
Great review of The Poetics of Poetry Film by Professor Suzie Hanna
Lovely review of The Poetics of Poetry Film by leading animator Professor Suzie Hanna in the Lisbon-based International Journal of Film and Media Arts – Vol. 7 No. 1 (2022): GEECT Transversal Entanglement – Artistic Research in Film. Thank you Suzie and editor Anna Coutinho. A valued endorsement.
https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijfma
Bideodromo
This week is Bideodromo International Experimental Film and Video Festival in Bilbao http://www.bideodromo.com/. They accepted my film Villanelle for Elizabeth not Ophelia so it is interesting to note they also take poetry films. Looks an exciting, comprehensive and very varied lineup!
Updates on Interviews and Endorsements on The Poetics of Poetry Film
The Poetics of Poetry Film
Intellect Books, UK, June, 2021
‘A ground-breaking, encyclopedic work and industry Bible, comprising nearly 400 pages, with multiple contributors … it explores the history and different types of poetry film, a must for students, researchers, poets, filmmakers, across the fields of media, filmmaking, literary and cultural studies, art and philosophy and sheds light on the fast-growing genre …’
also available through The University of Chicago Press, USA
https://www.intellectbooks.com/the-poetics-of-poetry-film
INTERVIEWS
Dr Tereza Stehlikova for Tangible Territory journal , September 2022
Rebecca Rezakhani Hilton for Atticus Review atticusreview.org, September 2022
Dr Meriel Lland on the publication of the book
also at the 10th International Video Poetry Festival, Athens, 6 June, 2021 YouTube link
Dr Rebecca Kosick, Bristol Poetry Institute and in collaboration with the Indisciplinary Poetics Research Cluster), online broadcast 21 April, 2021 at BPI YouTube.
Christian Pacheco-Cámara, director of Fotogenia, online broadcast 25 November, 2021 on The Poetics of Poetry Film and Voice in poetry film, available here.
Javier Robledo, director of VideoBardo, on poetry film and video poetry in general, as part of celebrating 25 Years of VideoBardo Festival. The rich and varied live event was 25-28 November at the CENTRO CULTURAL SAN MARTÍN. The online interview was on 29th November, 2021, and is available at the YouTube channel
Also the fascinating video documentary by Charles Olsen of selected interviews with Spanish and Portuguese video poets from the book at YouTube and with English subtitles
Since its publication The Poetics of Poetry Film has had a wonderful reception. It was launched in April with an insightful interview between myself and Dr Rebecca Kosick, (poet, senior lecturer in translation at Bristol University) through the indisciplinary research cluster and Bristol Poetry Institute. It is now in numerous university libraries, being sold by many academic bookshops such as Blackwells alongside Intellect Books itself, and has become mandatory reading at universities/art colleges in the UK, Europe and South America. I am so very honoured that this book, which was over five years in the writing, is now taking on a life of its own around the world. Thank you.
REVIEWS
Quoted and cited by Dr Rebecca Kosick, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Poetry and Poetics at Bristol University ‘Such distinctions are evident when considering concrete poetry’s “appeal tonon-verbal communication” and its desire to break with a “merely temporalistic linear”poetic structure (de Campos et al. 1965: 157, 156). Whereas early waves of concrete poetry sought an immediacy of poetic perception akin to the way viewers might take in a painting all at once, for video poetry, a linear experience of time on the part of the viewer overlies even the most nonsequential or nonnarrative “content” it might convey. In this way, video poetry returns the visual/spatial aspects of concrete poetry to a tradition perhaps more temporally akin to literature or film than to the visual or plastic arts. Yet this same fact can offer opportunities to the intermedium of video poetry. As Tremlett explains, “what makes a poetry film so unique is that the spatio-temporal visual surface or monstration, descending from the graphic arts, is as powerful or more powerful than the sequential trajectory inherited from the traditional dramatic film” (Tremlett 2021: 79). Thus, while a lengthened temporality may seem to be restored from the perspective of visual poetry’s turn toward video, from the perspective of film, poetry – particularly poetry related to thevisual arts – offers alternatives to the narrative sequentiality dominant in moremainstream cinema.’ in ‘Late Twentieth-Century Intermedia Poetry in the Americas’, The Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality, J. Bruhn et al. (eds.), London: Palgrave Macmillan, December, 2023.
Professor Rebecca A. Sheehan, the Department of Cinema and Television Arts at California State University: ‘”Sarah Tremlett’s The Poetics of Poetry Film: Film Poetry, Videopoetry, Lyric Voice, Reflection offers a breathtaking range of glimpses at the historical flashpoints, formal anatomy, and major and minor contemporary makers and trends […] The Poetics of Poetry Film should serve as an important resource for scholars and filmmakers interested in contemporary aesthetic trends in this interdisciplinary field. It also offers an important archive of festivals and conferences on poetry film through its inclusion of interviews with festival organizers and writings by contemporary filmmakers working at the intersection of poetry and film.’ in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, Volume 17, Issue 2, June 2023, pp: 101–105(published in association with The Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, https://scsmi-online.org/https://scsmi-online.org/).
Associate Professor of Digital Cinema, Gabrielle McNally, Northern Michigan University: ‘’The Poetics of Poetry Film functions as an extensive survey of the field of poetry film, film poetry, videopoetry and the many related methodologies. […] Tremlett’s voice carries with it a level of authority due to her work as both a scholar on the subject as well as a practicing artist in network with the international collection of practitioners included in the volume. As a reference volume, instructors working with students through experimental forms could find many valuable resources. An inclusion of the leading poetry film festivals stands out as a great resource for filmmakers interested in sharing their own poetry films with a larger audience. The ideal audience for this book includes those interested in creating film poetry works who can explore other makers’ methods described in this book for inspiration. The volume is organised by topic and looking directly at the subheadings within each section reads as a toolbox for aspiring poetry filmmakers with examples of artists and works to direct the reader toward additional resources.’ in Visual Studies (2023) ‘The Poetics of Poetry Film: film poetry, videopoetry, lyric voice, reflection’ 40(1), pp: 146–147.Taylor and Francis, 17 Nov, 2023.
Professor of Animation, Suzie Hanna, Norwich University of the Arts for the Lisbon-based International Journal of Film and Media Arts – Vol. 7 No. 1 (2022): GEECT Transversal Entanglement – Artistic Research in Film.
Leading polypoet Enzo Minarelli in Italian for Juliet Art Magazine
A FEW ENDORSEMENTS – THANK YOU!
Thank you for writing such a wonderful book! Your chapter Text-on-Screen was really helpful to my PhD and particularly the section on text and image no voice. I watched Double Life in REM State (loved it) and it’s the closest example I have found to what I’m trying to do with my reimagined film. Thanks again! ANNIE WATSON, Deputy Head of Department of Design and Digital Arts at Nottingham Trent University.
If I may, I’d like to congratulate you on your publication, The Poetics of Poetry Film, which I have loved reading – it is encyclopaedic, fascinating and beautifully written. DR LINDSAY BLAIR, Reader in Visual Culture and Theory, Moray School of Art, University of the Highlands and Islands.
With great generosity Sarah Tremlett makes available indispensable material for understanding this genre, thank you. JAVIER ROBLEDO, Director of VIDEOBARDO, the longest running video poetry festival in the world.
The sentence on the cover says it all for me. Hard to believe it’s been more than 50 years since Sympathies of War, my first videopoem. I’m thankful that a book like this, the first of its kind, of its sheer scope, finally exists and humbled that I had a part to play in the flowering of a new genre of poetry. No one better than the indefatigable doyenne of videopoems, my good friend Sarah Tremlett to make it come true. TOM KONYVES, videopoet and theorist.
Sarah Tremlett’s The Poetics of Poetry Film is a unique and extraordinary contribution to this vibrant field of expression. Her landmark volume elegantly articulates the conceptual foundations, language, grammar, and vocabulary of poetry film and its cognate forms; delivers a concise and incisive history of the genre, and introduces students, practitioners and scholars to the field’s contemporary pioneers, methods of making, and varied narrative forms. Laden with rich and provocative illustration and example, The Poetics of Poetry Film functions as Bible, Guide to the Perplexed, and indispensable reference, fluidly integrating interviews with and notes by forty contributors into a coherent and beautifully structured progression. This book—a wonder in its variety, complexity, and ambition—is a superb read. MARC ZEGANS poet, poetry film and immersive theatre artist.
Arrived in today’s mail–an exhaustive study of Video Poetry by the remarkable Sarah Tremlett and over 40 contributors! I was fortunate enough to have read with Sarah at the Bury Text Festival and found her work to be amazing. She also appears in an issue of Ekleksographia edited by Judith Skillman. I recognize some names among the pioneers of the movement, including the Polypoet Enzo Minarelli. Congrats on this fantastic book! This is really wonderful! JESSE GLASS American poet, artist and folklorist and Professor of American Literature at Meikai University, Japan.
The Poetics of Poetry film is a ground-breaking publication which brings together the history of poetry film in a global context along with analyses of the creative process by filmmakers, poets and theorists. Sarah Tremlett’s encyclopaedic manuscript is a key text in the understanding of this growing genre and an essential companion in the exploration of poetry and moving image. DR LUCY ENGLISH, Professor of Creative Enterprise and the Spoken Word at Bath Spa University.
Sarah, I’ve been reading your book – I just wanted to say a huge and heartfelt thank you. It’s a breathtakingly comprehensive and important work. I knew that it would be a hugely informative, insightful and useful guide, but what I wasn’t quite prepared for was how inspiring it would be too. I am finding it genuinely electrifying – it’s sparking off all manner of ideas. It is an absolute gift for anyone working in poetry film. THANK YOU! With love and respect, JANET LEES, poet and poetry filmmaker.
A huge piece of work and very ambitious, I am recommending your book to the new MA students, selecting passages for particular notice on research/practice/methodology. PROFESSOR SUZIE HANNA, Norwich University of the Arts, animator, artist, poetry filmmaker.
Inspired and meticulous scholarship. You have such a wide-ranging engagement with both poetry and image-making; I couldn’t imagine a more appropriate sensibility to bring the project to life. DR MERIEL LLAND, artist, writer, photographer, poetry filmmaker.
It really immediately strikes me as comprehensive and interesting and very well written. ALASTAIR COOK, photographer and poetry filmmaker.
Such an achievement, your book is such a good place to start with poetry film research. I really think it is a groundbreaking masterpiece. Although discussing theories and philosophical terms, and certain subjects that could be difficult to understand, your book is easy to read, and understand what you are talking about. Dr CHRISTIAN PACHECO-CAMARA (aka Chris Patch), Director of FOTOGENIA film poetry and divergent narratives festival, Mexico City.
It looks good and you made sure to have a lot of entry points into the subject. MARC NEYS, video poet.
It looks great! And it’s really heavy! (I mean in a physical, weighty, sense though looking at the table of contents I’m sure it’s heavy in an intellectual sense as well!). What a tremendous accomplishment for you! Congratulations on that! MATT MULLINS Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of English, Ball State University, video poet.
Very excited and proud to have collaborated and contributed to Sarah’s detailed and exhaustive research! As a videographer and writer, I am very happy to now have its many great references in my library – Fantastic! !!! BRAVA Sarah! VALERIE LEBLANC, videopoet.
Thank you for your wonderful hard work … very pressing, urgent and useful in academic research and beautiful for people working with poetry film in the last few years. I’m working on a PhD in film studies and your book will be very useful and recommended by me in this area. I’m very glad to be part of it. ALEXANDRE BRAGA, poetry filmmaker.
I loved reading this book. The Poetics of Poetry Film is an amazing resource for scholars and everyone interested in contemporary poetry. DR REBECCA KOSICK, Senior Lecturer in Translation and co-director of the Bristol Poetry Institute in the School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol.
I am thrilled and proud that I am a part of it. I really like the way it’s done, the layout, the pictures, the font. It is very, very well designed and it is such a pleasure to leaf through it. I’m looking forward to reading the texts one by one, but I am already convinced that the book is a very important contribution in the field of poetry film. Congratulations! It is so rare that good specialist literature is also well designed and I can imagine how much work is behind it. SUSANNE WEIGNER, video poet, architect.
A huge accomplishment. I cannot emphasize enough – I am very impressed and applaud you for writing such an encyclopedic book. I know so many people that are still writing and writing and ten years later … still writing. 🙂 BEATA POZNIAK, actress, artist, poetry filmmaker.
In anticipation:
I’ll look forward to reading it when it arrives. I’m really interested to see the bibliography too. I’m finding the literature quite patchy and sporadic so far, so I’m intrigued to see how you’ve managed to pull together content in a polished form – no mean feat! …
… and on arrival …
Congratulations on the publication! I downloaded it to my kindle this week. It’s a fascinating read, and a real trove of treasures. REBECCA GOLDSMITH, PhD Researcher in Poetry Film, Keele University.
I love it. It’s quite a wonderful read and a major accomplishment in this area. DAVE RICHARDSON, videopoet.
I’ve enjoyed watching poetry film activities from afar and have seen just how busy you have been with different poetry film related projects. I tuned into the Houston talk and I’ve followed the progress of the book – an advance order went into our library as soon as I saw the release date.I’m really excited to read it and I felt like I understood much more what Poetry Film is, could be, and where it came from after your talk, so I can’t wait to learn more from the book. DR STEVE FOSSEY, Senior Lecturer and Fine Art Leader, The University of Lincoln.
I am so thrilled and a little overwhelmed to be included in Sarah Tremlett’s book ‘The Poetics of Poetry Film’. I’m alongside so many of the ‘names’ of the genre that I need to do a double take each time I take a peep. JANE GLENNIE, artist, poetry filmmaker.
Thank you for sharing your brilliance and insight about poetry film. A gift to the growing community of film/video poetry artists, poets and collaborators. LORI H. ERSOLMAZ, award-winning filmmaker, poetic filmmaker and installation artist.
