Greenspin Helen Moore and Howard Vause
Nominated for best music and editing in Liberated Words 2013. Ecopoet Helen Moore and digital artist Howard Vause (also LW workshop team) were one of the first collaborators to really address through poetry film the greenwashing we have been receiving since the 1970s.
Fugitive Creatures by Meriel Lland
Influenced by the writings of spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh and current scientific research into biophilia, Meriel Lland’s film-poetry explores human and non-human interactions and interdependencies. Thich Nhat Hanh said: “Real change will only happen when we fall in love with our planet. Only love can show us how to live in harmony with nature and each other and save us from suffering the devastating effects of climate change. …We want to be connected. That is the meaning of love: to be at one.” In Fugitive Creatures we share just such a love story. We witness the small ways in which one person learns to cherish and nurture the world beyond himself. And in that process of appreciation he simultaneously nourishes and revives the person within.
http://www.meriellland.co.uk
Some Nature Books authored or co-authored by Meriel. A wonderful selection!
B’Leaf.com Plant Trees
Please go to this website and check out their initiative. And this short promotional film is a great enticement!
I Cannot be Human
Words and Performance: Sarah Tremlett
Rabbit: Duchess
Camera: Hatti Rees
Editing: Sarah Tremlett
Portrait of Sarah Tremlett: Hatti Rees
Music: esistnichtsoernst and imaginaryband, freesound.org Charles Olsen – http://charlesolsen.es;
2021 and 2022
Rest in Peace beautiful Duchess
I Cannot be Human is about the human / animal relationship on both a personal and planetary level. It takes a stand against a human race that, through its leaders doesn’t appear to be listening or solving the ecological crisis that overwhelms us every day. It is also an elegy for a close connection to a pet who has died. With a charged metamorphosis, the protagonist fights to leave her human identity and enter a different world, where we can interrelate with our ecosystems, and resurrect the memory of those who have passed on. [I made a shortened version of this for Charles Olsen’s ‘La Exposición’ (The Exhibition) poetry film in the summer of 2021, with the poem added in June 2022]. Shared on the Deep Adaptation Forum with many thanks to talented ecopoet Janet Lees. The Deep Adaptation Forum builds communities to help face the devastation of the climate crisis. Planting forests in the UK is fantastic, as long as it isn’t too late. All oil companies and chemical companies accelerating global warming and wildlife extinction since the 1970s should already be a thing of the past. Follow Just Stop Oil and let’s act for change NOW. What are oil company profits in terms of a dying planet???? Ecological profit is the only way forward.
I Swallow
i swallow
poem by Caleb Parkin
Dadaist bike ride, swallowing flies and being part of the world’s ecosystem.
Poet: Caleb Parkin
Director, editor and selection of footage (2019) and music: Sarah Tremlett
Music: ‘Isaac the Syrian’ courtesy The Anchorites
Footage: ‘How the Fires of our Body are Fed’ Maurice Ricker, 1926 – Prelinger Archives; Yevgen Rychko, Erstudio5 – pond5.com; Miguel A. Padrinan – Pexels.com; Oleh Slepchenko – istockphoto.com. All under Creative Commons licence.
I first encountered i swallow when Caleb Parkin (Bristol City Poet 2020-22) sent it to me to make a poetry film. That was in July 2019. Working on other things, time elapsed, but in November 2019 I found the perfect footage for the film – ‘How the Fires of our Body are Fed’. I was finishing a large reference work on poetry film The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect Books) and so only finished the film in July 2020. But then the film came together pretty quickly! I love Caleb’s visceral, visually evocative language that concerns itself with deep issues – crises within society and our ecosystem. I also echo the idea of turning the spotlight on insects and other forms of what have been termed ‘lesser life’ beyond the human. I was also very lucky to find the unique sound of the ‘postmodern’ band The Anchorites and will definitely work with them again.
POEMFILM
2020
Premiere:
Lyrical Visions, Titirangi, Auckland, New Zealand, 9 December, 2020
liberatedwords.com/2020/11/22/i-swallow-and-lyrical-visions-new-zealand/
October 2021
The Midwest Video Poetry Festival, USA
ABSURDAH, Sheerness, UK, 2021
Festival Fotogenia, 2021
Poets with a Video Camera – Tom Konyves and a milestone exhibition
A HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Tom Konyves!!! for organising this long-awaited curation. This is an achievement of a lifetime and needs much recognition, particularly as it is a long-running event (September 17th 2022–January 2nd 2023). Titled Poets with a Video Camera: Videopoetry 1980–2020 and taking place at the Surrey Art Gallery (SAG) in Vancouver, there are 25 artists taking part representing different stages in the forty-year period.
Hours of Darkness, Janet Lees, 2014
Artists to be screened are: Jim Andrews with Adeena Karasick, Paul Bogaert, Eric Cassar, Brandon Downing, Antonello Faretta, John Giorno, Kurt Heintz with Patricia Smith, Nobuo Kubota, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Valerie LeBlanc, Janet Lees, Machine Libertine, Azucena Losana, Matt Mullins, Marc Neys,bp nichol, Reverend Pedro Pietri, Arturs Punte, Caroline Reid, Javier Robledo, Peter Rose, Hubert Sielecki with Gerhard Ruhm, W. Mark Sutherland, Sarah Tremlett, and Eku Wand.
This is truly a milestone in the genre, and there will also be a very interesting symposium on the subject (in which I am very honoured to say I am the key speaker) on the 5th November, 2022 entitled: ‘New Art Emerging: Two or Three Things One Should Know About Videopoetry’. Other speakers will be Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel Dugas discussing collaborations (CAN), Annie Frazier Henry, (CAN), Fiona Lam ‘Animation and Poetry’ (CAN), Javier Robledo of VideoBardo ‘festivals’, and Matt Mullins. Heather Haley will be discussing festivals, and Kurt Heintz ‘Reminiscences’. Adeena Karasick will be performing ‘Checking In’ live. It looks like an exciting and inspiring day.
My video poem some everybodies is from 2009 and asks questions about place as embodied site, tourism, and passing by. It centres on a corner near a tourist hotspot in historic Bath, England (where incidentally a small accident occurs). Footage was gathered over a year, from a fixed camera, and both the sound and the images have been slowed down to emphasise movement. Conversations have become text-on-screen disconnected from the images and creating a communal poem of the site itself. Wherever a tourist has paused to take a picture, the film has been frozen for a few seconds, and the screen has a graphic coloration to emulate old postcards (which have also been made from selected stills, to accompany the film).
More updates on this coming up in the next month or so but check out SAG if you need more details in the meantime. A not-to-be-missed event.
