Send and Receive: misaligned model or magnificent mix? - John Davies
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A POEM BY LEMN SISSAY POSTED UP IN WOOD STREET LIVERPOOL NEAR FACT
Send and Receive: misaligned
model or magnificent mix?
John Davies
1
A day in the life …
Send and Receive was a one day conference at FACT (Foundation for
Art and Creative Technology) in Liverpool on Thursday 5 February
2015 all about poetry, film and new technology in the 21st century. It
was organised by a partnership involving FACT, the University of
Liverpool, the Poetry Society and PoetryFilm.
What’s happening?
In her presentation setting out the agenda for the Centre for New and
International Writing at the University of Liverpool, Deryn Rees-Jones
explained how difficult it is to find out what is happening in the area of
“poetry, film and technology”. I had this image of the whole process
hurtling forward, uncatchable, deliberately outrunning its
cartographers and analysts, as if technology itself is on the run. But
the territory is being mapped, so here are a few markers from the day
and from my own research.
Zebra
The Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin was one of the first to stake out this
territory in 2002 and I remember seeing some superb examples of films from
the festival when Thomas Wohlfarht gave a presentation at the Cuisle
Limerick City International Poetry Festival in Ireland in 2011. Zebra is a
partner in the Liberated Words Festival (screen poetry, e-poetry, video
poetry, poetry films, multimedia poetry…) in Bristol which seems to have an
arts and healthcare tilt.
Film Poem
Alistair Cooke who runs Filmpoem in Scotland has an interesting
article on his website about ‘poetry-film', which he sees as a “a
single entwined entity, a melting, a cleaving together of words,
sound and vision.” He rightly acknowledges William Wees who
wrote a seminal essay on poetry film in 1984. Alistair organises
the Filmpoem Festival that took place in Antwerp last year and
gave the keynote speech at the ReVersed Poetry Film Festival in
Amsterdam which understands a film poem as a “filmic
equivalent of poetry. Poetry film is distinct from a poetic film in its
aesthetic: it incorporates text, whether written or spoken, within
its frames – a poem taking shape on screen.”
PoetryFilm
A partner in the Send and Receive event, PoetryFilm founded by Zata
Kitowski (more about her presentation later) has also been running since
2002 and can claim to be the focal point for the form with some credibility,
curating poetry film events at festivals internationally. There were curated
screenings by PoetryFilms at Poetry International on the Southbank in
2014 under the auspices of Filmpoem, PoetryFilm and Zebra - together
with a competition.
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Peter Todd
Someone who seems to have been forgotten is Peter Todd who was
at the BFI and ran Poem Film Film Poem in the nineties. He was
certainly the founding father of the poetry film festival. In his
fascinating PhD thesis entitled The Film Poem Fil
Ieropoulos, recognises Todd’s contribution. You can download a
shorter version historical analysis of film poetry from Fil’s website.
Moving Poems Magazine
Moving poems showcases what it calls videopoetry from around the world and provides lots of
useful information including a list of international poetry film festivals.
PROJECTED POEM ‘SECOND SKIN’ BY CATHERINE SMITH & DIGITAL ARTIST
GREGG DAVILLE ON THE SEA FRONT AT HASTINGS.
Projected poetry
Writers’ network THE SOUTH based in Brighton, proposed a Poetry in Motion festival back in 2002
and at the same time set up the innovative and influential Project poetry! commissions for poets
and screen-based visual artists from 2002-2004.
The basic aim of these was for “commission-led, community-involving local production of projected
poetry in which the poets, unusually, will occupy the lead creative role.” The theme of each of the
seven commissions was ‘place of birth’. So, for example, Jackie Wills and animator Mark
Collington were based in Worthing and developed Jackie’s poem ‘Alphabetic’ with a visual tribute
to Aubrey Beardsley.
Problematic terminology
One thing the foregoing illustrates is the plethora of terminology related to the area of poetry films,
film poems, etc. This is partly due to the fact that each player in the field is keen to establish a
branded space for their activity. PoetryFilm has gone to the extent of trademarking its name and
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identity. Some degree of agreement and discipline in the use of terms would be helpful to the
poetry film community as a whole.
A poet’s view – George Szirtes
Well known and well published, George Szirtes is an internationally respected poet and translator,
and he gave a personal poet’s eye view of the territory.
Twitter drafting
George uses Twitter to write short drafts that he later re-edits into longer poems and “hangs them
out to dry on Facebook”, harvesting comments and suggestions from his audience. This is an
excellent use of social media for drafting and effectively seeking a degree of collaboration in the
development and revision of a poem. I use a similar technique myself and I’m currently using
blipfoto to generate daily poems.
A lost domain?
What struck me about George’s twitter poems was that many were about or set in a limbo – ‘a
vacancy that should have been filled’ – a ghost metropolis or ‘a nebulous unspoken terrain’, and
they often seem to concern spectres and absences.
They seemed to be about a kind of lost domain and it set me wondering if that was poetry itself,
drifting away from us, increasingly under threat from a storm of technology, media noise and
interference. You can find his full presentation and his tweets on his excellent blog – which I hope
he continues. He ended with a consideration of the different forms and products of Twitter
collaboration and muses on the poetry produced by the Internet generation, the famous millennials.
Next Gen
“There is a now a generation … who have grown up with the internet, and can move about it like
human ghosts within a familiar and amenable machine.” George highlights the poet Sam Riviere
whose PhD thesis turned out to be his first Faber collection, 81 Austerities.
THE AUTHOR JOHN DAVIES (L) IN DISCUSSION WITH SAM RIVIERE (C) AND TIM CUNNINGHAM (L)
AT CUISLE LIMERICK CITY POETRY FESTIVAL 2014 (PHOTO ALAN PLACE FOR CLARE HERALD)
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What is poetry?
George was the lone voice of a poet as a poet and with Twitter he uses the primary material of
poetry – words.
Other poets came to the lectern but representing their organisations or talking about the film poetry
genre. This had the effect of leaving the whole question of ‘what is poetry?’ suspended, like a big
floating ghost in the room. Since much of the discussion was about adapted or applied poetry, the
pressure of this question became quite intense.
However, like all good ‘hard core poets’ (as someone described the conscientious wordsmiths in
the room) we were quite happy to leave the question in the air. You can guarantee as soon as
you’ve arrived at a workable definition of poetry, something will come along to disrupt your neat
categorisation. Most poets I know steer clear of this question with the aplomb of Dr Johnson, who
when asked “What is poetry?” replied: ‘‘Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not.” But even in
defining not–poetry, I find the judgement may often be reserved or reversed.
Word power
Roger McKinley from FACT was the day’s welcoming and unfazed Chair, his voice calm and
reassuring even when sessions over-ran and the opportunity for delegate participation in
discussion disappeared in the blink of an eye. A telling moment came as he thanked George for his
presentation and said how he had been hypnotised during George’s finale reading of his haiku
sequence. “Words have power,” said Roger. George’s ability to cast an incantatory spell by the
simple reading of the words of his poem using his human voice was highly significant in the context
of what followed, when the reading, the voice, the words and the poetry were potentially diminished
by the presence of other media assets in a multi-modal transmission.
Digital poetry – Jason Nelson
Jason Nelson is a name which will be familiar to many since his ‘digital poetry’ has an international
audience of millions playing his interactive poetry games and enjoying his online poetry
experiences. The tongue in cheek reaction of many of the poets (used to the pub reading with ten
devotees, or less!) was that it just can’t be poetry if it attracts such a big audience.
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Poetry games
Jason’s argument is that games engines encourage people to
engage. The game’s the thing. There’s a lot of text and images too,
but he didn’t share whether the texts, the ‘poetry’ came first,
although he talks more about his process on his YouTube channel.
He wasn’t available on Skype from Australia as the hotel internet
connection was down (although I suspect he just wanted to get to
bed). But he had pre-recorded a superb presentation of his craft,
complete with screen shots and samples played as he presented
direct to camera in an on-screen window. He had, like many a
creative entrepreneur, a smart turn of phrase (“you can’t read until
you play”), an invincible self-belief and a talent for marketing
presentation.
Co-creator or puppet?
Roger McKinley raised the issue of whether Jason’s interactive
poetry games are really that interactive or whether the coder keeps
a very strict control on the options open to the player: in Slavoj
Žižek’s terms, is the player co-creator or puppet?
Reading as co-creation
In later discussions many poets wanted to argue for reading as the most fruitful act of interactive
co-creation, since a reader reconstructs the world of the poem in their imaginations. In a computer
game there are ultimately a limited number of variable outcomes determined by algorithms. The
imagination comes into play in solving problems but the world of the game is usually given - now
often in 3-D.
Immersive poetry experiences
Jason had some great titles such as ‘Six sided strange’ or ‘I made this you play this we are
enemies’. He wants to get technology to do something it wasn’t designed for - like using a one arm
bandit game engine to deliver recombinatory poems. He believes he creates multidimensional
digital poetry as a deeply immersive experience.
The matrix for a new form – Deryn Rees-Jones
In her presentation Deryn Rees-Jones described poetry and film as natural partners, providing the
matrix for a new form. Invented pretty much at the same time over a hundred years ago as any
other film application, this new emergent form seems to be taking quite a while to reach maturity,
and that begs the question, ‘do poetry films constitute a genre? Or are they just another type of art
film?’
And Derry asked a crucial question – does the poem film lose what happens when we read or hear
a poem? She also wanted to consider the poem film as an 'embodiment' of the spoken word.
Psychology of Aesthetics – Marco Bertamini
A member of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, Marco Bertamini set up the
Visual Perception Lab at the University of Liverpool in 2000. His presentation on the psychology of
aesthetics was necessarily compressed and cryptic because of limited time. It hinted at all kinds of
challenges to received wisdom about artistic conventions – from the baddie entering and exiting
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frame on the left in movies to the line of beauty of the golden mean. He said there seemed to be
“nothing special from the point of view of science” in these conventions but further research is
needed. He was fascinating on the subject of mirror images – whether in the Rokeby Venus or on
an iPhone. There was a huge amount of potential significance for poets in his work but sadly time
didn’t allow us to probe a little deeper or for a discussion of his research with a view to drawing
some tentative conclusions. If this is an area that interests you then Liverpool will be hosting the
2015 European Conference on Visual Perception http://ecvp.org/2015/ and Marco is especially
involved with a satellite meeting the Visual Science of Art Conference http://ecvp.org/2015/
sac.html.
PoetryFilm – Zata Kitowski
Understandably because of her long association with the realm, Zata Kitowski of PoetryFilm was
an authoritative presence. She made two presentations – one to show different examples of poetry
films and the second to offer a statement of belief and her personal view of the genre.
7PoetryFilm theory
In her second presentation, Zata set out her thinking about poetry films clearly, informatively and
provocatively, calling on reception theory and semiotics. However, I found her style a little
disconcerting as she presents with a missionary zeal, as if selling something or making a branding
presentation in a boardroom.
Historical perspective
Zata gave us a quick tour of the art form and emphasised
its connection with experimental film.
I thought she was right to point out the desire of some
poetry film makers to access TV budgets and create work
specifically for TV audiences – someone like Tony
Harrison.
She also referenced the famous 1936 Post Office Film
Unit documentary Night Mail with its poetic sequence
using a poem by W. H. Auden.
Meaning making
Zata asked us not to focus on experimental film, art or poetry, but on semiotics. She’s a great
advocate of the poetry film genre and her evangelical passion found its expression in the
powerfully rhythm language of the preacher:
“sound is a meaning making system
different films stocks are a meaning making system
body language is a meaning making system
duration is a meaning making system…”
Multi-modal communication
Zata believes poetry film as an art form provides the opportunity for “the creation, perception and
exploration of meaning” in a multi-modal way with the possibility of communicating more
synaesthetically, beyond words. She referenced ‘edible cinema’ and the possibility of osmic poems
using smell. The basis of her approach is that the formal patterns of poetry can be emulated in
other media modes.
Experience design
She made the point that multiple meaning making systems are at play in any artwork. However, I
felt she thought the audience was unaware of this. In fact I think most producers of creative content
are aware that we are ‘designing experience’ in one way or another.
Design principles
She stated that design principles are firmly grounded in the psychology of perception which felt a
little at odds with the brief view Marco had given us of the psychology of aesthetics.
Semiotics
Moving to semiotics she chanted another mantra listing all manner of things as a semiotic mode
and urging us to understand communication. “We can bypass words and suggest richer meaning”.
8But a simple question nagged away in my mind. ‘What if multi-modal expression actually erodes
the quality and value of language?’
I was reminded of Auden’s remark on the Parkinson TV show in 1972 (quoted by Mark Lawson): “A
poet – pardon me, a citizen – has one political duty, which is to try, and by one’s own example, to
protect the purity of the language. I’m a passionate formalist on hedonistic grounds.”
Mix and balance
The poets and creative producers in the audience may have felt like me that Zata was not making
the further connection that it’s not the mix that’s important, it’s the balance in the mix. It’s not how
many channels you use, but how they’re blended. This issue was highlighted many times in the
poetry film examples introduced by Zata, and by Judith Palmer, Director of the Poetry Society.
Judith made the interesting point that the visible screen area for watching poetry videos has shrunk
considerably and now most people watch them on small screens.
Dream of a filmpoem
I’ve listed all the poetry videos presented as an Appendix together with my my comments as I
recorded them. Looking back at this list I wondered if I was being too harsh. But there are many
superb videos out there and I worried that we hadn’t been shown the best examples.
For me, only one of the videos really stood out as a successful example of the genre and that was
Dream Poem by Danny Casswell. It was, I thought, superb – witty, clever but thoughtful animation
that played with the media. A true poetry film with the right mix and balance.
I’m afraid I found most of the others pedestrian or unsuccessful, either because the creative
treatment was far too literal or because the balance of the mix was out of kilter.
Suzie Hanna – animation
Professor Suzie Hanna is Chair of Animation Education at Norwich University of the Arts. She
discussed her own poetry animation Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge exploiting Hart Crane’s poem To
Brooklyn Bridge. Susie is a very experienced animator and you can find many examples of her
work on her website.
Highs – and lows
The graphics and production values of Proem are magnificent. But sadly the audio mix in the
version shown was just plain wrong, leaving Tennessee Williams’ reading of the poem, and the
poem itself, embedded in an acoustic glue of literal sound effects.
The problem of literalism
Literalism is a constant problem for poetry film artists. It doesn’t really help to show swivelling
derricks when the word ‘derricks’ already told us the image to have in our mind. I’m afraid ‘multi-
modal overload’ was the note I made about this brave and creative effort.
Experience design with a multi-modal shift
It seems to me poetry films work best when the images of the film counterbalance, juxtapose or
play against the image scheme in the poem, shifting us in a new direction that may already be
inherent in the poem but isn’t ‘literally’ available. This approach means that the poetry film can be
an integrated designed experience of the poem enhanced by the film, or vice versa.
9Terminology again!
I was also a bit thrown by the title as a ‘proem’ (in the dictionary) is an introduction to a book by its
author, but he’s also a dance music creator with a ‘damn the manual’ approach to composition, as
well as the title of a wonderful work by Ian Hamilton Finlay, one of the great semiotic mixers.
(‘Damn the manual’ could be the approach of many poetry film makers. It’s an exciting but risky
approach.)
Right and wrong
Suzie asked the question, “There's no tight and wrong, is there?” and I felt the need to ask back,
“Isn't there?” She said, “It’s not like selling something.” And I wanted to ask, “Isn't it?”
PROEM BY IAN HAMILTON FINLAY
It felt as if many of the speakers were trying to sell us something. I put that down to the tentative
nature of the genre.
Peripheral vision
Poetry films sit on the overlap between many different art forms, which means they’re on a
periphery of peripheries. That can lead to a lack of confidence and a desire to impress.
But it’s a brilliant place from which to see, target and express modern life and its conditions.
Peripheral vision is critically important for the reception of the bigger picture. It’s on the periphery of
vision that the hunter notices the first tell-tale movement of a prey. We first notice change at the
periphery.
Conclusions…
I drew two conclusions from the examples shown:
1 The quantity of words is often in inverse proportion to their quality.
2 The font size of the credits is often in inverse proportion to the quality of the film.
10Overall, I’m afraid I found the examples shown disappointing and didn’t feel they did justice to this
vibrant, challenging and developing zone.
Equally, aware of the genre’s tradition, breadth and constant evolution, I remain fascinated by
poetry films and their tremendous power. When effective they can be a fantastic means of bringing
a poem to life reaffirming both the power of words and images. But when not very good they do a
disservice to pictures and poetry. They are the audio-visual equivalent of the droning poetry
readings we all know and loathe.
…and questions
Three questions occurred to me at the end of the day:
1 How are we to agree the quality of poetry films? What’s the quality threshold?
2 How can we standardise the analytical language and develop a critical discourse that we can all
employ?
And:
3 Why was the day marked by a lack of applause?
Was that to do with the first question? Was it to do with stage management and a feeling that
somehow we needed permission? Was it connected to the uncertainty of the genre (Do you
applaud something on screen)? or to do with the traditional ‘professional’ poetry convention that
you don’t applaud individual poems?
Curating quality
Ultimately, I thought it was probably because there wasn’t a lot to applaud – except the vivacity of
this emerging artistic space (whatever it’s called) and the commitment of the organisers. I very
much hope they will organise another event like this very soon and the curators will think carefully
about the examples shown to present and encourage a high quality of designed multi-modal
experience and best practice.
They wouldn’t go far wrong by going back to Night Mail.
11Auden’s influence
This film and Auden had a tremendous impact on me when my father showed a print of the film on
a 16mm projector in our lounge at home when I was a boy. (I still have that old black and white
print as well as a commemorative reprint of the original poster promoting the film.)
More on Night Mail
According to its Wikipedia entry, quoting Forsyth Hardy’s biography of John Grierson (another hero
of mine), “Auden wrote the verse on a trial and error basis. It had to be cut to fit the visuals …
Many lines were discarded, ending as crumpled fragments in the wastepaper basket. Some of
Auden's verbal images – the rounded Scottish hills ‘heaped like slaughtered horses’ — were too
strong for the film, but what was retained made Night Mail as much a film about loneliness and
companionship as about the collection and delivery of letters.”
Collaborative production
Another interesting aspect about Night Mail in common with poetry films generally, is that it was,
according to its BFI screen online entry, “the product of collaborative, rather than individual
authorship. Although it was primarily directed by Harry Watt, Basil Wright developed the script, and
had overall production responsibility for the project. The resulting film was edited by Wright and
Alberto Cavalcanti (the Brazilian sound director); John Grierson and Stuart Legg were also
involved in its production. The music score was arranged by Benjamin Britten and Cavalcanti, and
the rhyming verse used in the film - spoken by Pat Jackson - was written by W.H. Auden, who also
acted as assistant director.” (If you’ve never seen this film I think you’ve missed something really
special. A dreadful upload is viewable on YouTube although it does have good sound – or you can
buy a decent copy online.)
Less well known Auden projects
Auden also wrote two other projects. Runner for director Don Owen https://www.nfb.ca/film/runner
and U.S. an ambitious state-of-the-nation documentary projected across three screens in a
purpose-built auditorium at the San Antonio HemisFair, a 1968 trade fair and exposition. (You can
find a transcript here – I’d love to see the finished three screen film!)
There’s more fascinating information in the article Poetry in Motion by David Collard. He writes that
Auden told the director “Now we've made a subversive film for the US government”.
Thoughts at the exit
Throughout the day at FACT and afterwards, a variety of things crossed my mind, some
connecting with thoughts and ideas that have occurred to me (and others) before, and some fresh
responses to the content of the day’s presentation.
On being poetic
It’s struck me many times that visual artists want to be ‘poetic’. Artists want their work to have
poetry, be poetic, be poetry – albeit in material other than words – because to describe something
as ‘pure poetry’ is almost the highest accolade it can be given. It seems to suggest that the purest
form of expression and insight is poetic.
In other words, it is a gift amenable in its purest form only to the poet, who is uniquely able to
concretise this insight and expression in words.
12On artistic envy
This desire to be poetic both masks and expresses two types of envy.
Firstly there is envy of poetry as an art form of words and language, the everyday tools at
everyone’s disposal, that would seem amenable to all.
Secondly, there is envy of the poet as an artist, an envy of the verbal dexterity to communicate in
poetry, whatever that may mean. That is often the envy of those who either lack such a talent or
who believe they have it, when they don’t.
So poetry becomes a focus of a jealousy of both the art form and the artist.
Subverting yet validating the canon
Curiously, in the desire to be poetic, there's an unconscious validation of literary culture and the
'well-read', of the canon and of writing 'real' poetry. Yet at the same time cross-discipline and multi-
modal artists often aim to critique or subvert traditional artistic categories and the pre-eminence of
established works.
On being ‘well-read’
There are are far fewer well-read people in the traditional sense; someone who has a double first
from Balliol, understands both Latin and Greek and completes The Times cryptic crossword full of
literary allusions one clue after another with no hesitation.
‘Well-read’ means something different now – a hipster who can find their way round cultural studies
and approaches thinking with a fastidious detachment and impassivity, happy in the realm of
theory.
The poetry film problem
There's no getting away from the fact that poetry film is a deeply problematic form.
There’s a danger that the envy of artform and artist connect with the desire to subvert and lead to
the destruction of a poem (albeit unconscious and unwitting).
How to destroy a poem
Let’s take one very simple example, where someone makes a film from an already existing poem.
Why do it when the poem already creates a film in the imagination of the reader? Many poems rely
on a sequence of images for their effect. When the filmmaker imposes a sequence of images on
the poem, especially when the interpretation is very literal (sadly it often is), the filmmaker is
effectively trapping the poem within the limits of their own imagination, excluding other readings,
other image-triggered imaginative responses.
When sound effects and music are added, the film maker starts to destroy the poem. Voiced
perhaps by the poet themselves, a famous colleague or actor, or by someone with little or no
microphone technique, the words of the poem are barely audible against a paling of noise.
So the poem as a poem gets diminished or lost.
Why? Does the film maker think the poem so insubstantial that it needs help and all these props
they've superimposed to make it work? Is an audio-visual mash-up of the original poem still some
13kind of poem? Or, in the worst case, is it a dead poem, drowned by too much other media stuff
overlaid on top of it. And has it been killed through artform and artist envy, because the visual artist
is strangely jealous of the power of the poem as a poem, on its own.
In wanting to partake of the unique power of the verbal artefact, yet being unable to do so, it seems
as though some artists unintentionally destroy it.
Personal conclusion
I’m going to leave interpretation, multi-modal re-presentation and adaptation to others – although I
might have a go at some more translation which I love.
I left Send and Receive feeling passionately reaffirmed that in my own practice I want to focus on
words and language, its rhythms, music and density of meaning, the core material of poetry.
“….poetry is understandably pressed to give voice to much that has hitherto been denied
expression in the ethnic, social, sexual and political life. Which is to say that its power as a mode of
redress in the first sense – an agent for proclaiming and correcting injustices is being appealed to
constantly. But in discharging this function, poets are in danger of slighting another imperative,
namely, to redress poetry as poetry, to set it up as its own category, an eminence established and
a pressure exercised by distinctly linguistic means.”
SEAMUS HEANEY THE REDRESS OF POETRY
“A poet cannot refuse language, choose another medium.”
ADRIENNE RICH THE FACT OF A DOORFRAME
“Poetry in film is related to a similar quality in painting, in music, and in poems…
A poem is not an object you contemplate or an idea you learn: it's something that you live through,
that you experience.”
WILLIAM P COLEMAN
14Appendix
Poetry film examples
This is the list of poetry films shown at Send and Receive together with my immediate comments
as I recorded them.
Poetry Film archive
Zata’s films were all from the PoetryFilm archive and included some of her own work.
Reversed Mirror Eduardo Kac, 1997
An art film that looked like the kind of video graphics people played with when digital effects were
first launched..
Lunar tides Susan Trangmar, 2014
Too long. Animated prose. Sound effects of sea became irritating. There was a typo in one of the
texts. Could the chosen words have been more carefully chosen? Seemed very old fashioned.
Sandpiper John Scott, 2014
Elizabeth Bishop compared her poetic self to a sandpiper, so the film maker decided to show us
sandpipers. Far too literal. The poem would be better heard on its own. The voice was too low.
Full stop Zara Kitowski, 2014
Zara’s own work. Text running along bottom of screen. Cheesy Morse code sound effects. Some
nice ideas. A bit old fashioned?
Turbines in January Kate Sweeney/Colett Bryce
Better but very literal again. Don’t people realise that poems are often a stream of images?
Self evident things Piotr Bosacki
Very clever. Very long. Made statements that demanded a challenge so as a poem closed down
rather than opened out. Impressive animations.
Dream Poem Danny Casswell 2006
Stunningly good. Superb, witty, clever but thoughtful animation. Excellent. A true poetry film.
Afterlight Timothy David Orme
Charcoal drawings. Felt very earnest. OK.
The Portrait of Jean Genet Disinformation, 2014
Animation of rotating cube and voice of Genet. An experimental film. Not a lot of depth. The
explanation about the film said as much as the film.
Solstice Samuel Levack/Jennifer Lewandowski, 2013
An experimental film surely. “A film poem that uses images as its vocabulary”.
15Poetry Society commissions
Judith Palmer introduced three films commissioned by The Poetry Society. These had obviously
been produced on tighter budgets than some of the other offerings.
Birdfall Adele Myers, 2014
A ballet dancer and feathers – again too literal for my liking.
Hare Melissa Diem/Carolyn Jess-Cooke, 2014
Using archive footage - again very literal
The Black Delph Bride Alistair Cooke/Liz Berry
I love Liz Berry’s poetry but I found this deeply disappointing. Again somehow too literal and it
looked like a selection of cobbled together out takes.
Other examples
You can find further examples of poetry films here, on the Co-Kisser Poetry-Film Festival
website, and on Moving Poems Magazine (the two last are well worth exploring and deserved
mention at Send and Receive). There’s also an excellent essay about videopoetry by Dave Bonta
on the Moving Poems site. Zebra Poetry Film Festival has a Facebook Group (as do a number of
other Poetry Film organisations). In France there’s also the Ciné Poème Festival in Bezons. Mark
Grist’s Girls Who Read has the production values of a high end music video and has already
reached 3 million hits on YouTube.
Also see:
http://www.motionpoems.com
http://www.motionpoems.com/public-art-projects/
Send and Receive presentations
You should be able to find many of the presentations on http://www.artplayer.tv
© John Davies 2015. All rights reserved. All referenced materials acknowledged.
Please contact the author for permission to use any part of this essay.
John Davies
9 February 2015
Word count 5370
16A note about John Davies
Film
I’ve worked in film and video all my working life - first on camera, then as writer, director, editor and
producer. I didn't go to film school but learnt pretty much everything I know on the job. My father
was a film producer in the Midlands running regional news crews for ATV and BBC in the fifties and
sixties, making commercials, corporate documentaries and synchronised slide shows, so I grew up
with film and film equipment all around me, being an actor in commercials as a child and a clapper
boy in my school holidays. It was - and still is - fun! I’m still making films, and winning awards, most
recently for films about medical research and healthcare. In terms of digital technology, I also ran a
digital production company in the nineties, one of the first agencies in the UK to produce websites.
Poetry
And, I write poetry with some success. I engage the public at festivals and events with poetry
through my poetic alter ago Shedman. I set up and ran a poetry publisher, Pighog, for twelve years
until 2014 when the list was taken over by Red Hen Press in Los Angeles. Pighog published the
first book as series of tweets - Brendan Cleary’s The Poet’s Notebook. From 2002-8 I was director
of a literature development agency in Brighton, THE SOUTH, that was highly successful in
promoting the region as a centre for creative writing, especially poetry. With THE SOUTH between
2002 and 2004, I developed and produced a major series of Arts Council funded commissions for
poets working with visual artists called Project poetry! — with the specific aim of projecting poetry
out through communities across the South East through collaborative combinations of moving
image and poetry. From 2003, we also ran poetry-video workshops with school students in the UK
and Ireland, and ran the world’s first story competition on mobile phones.
I used my own poetry in a film I made for BMW in 1979 comparing motor racing to medieval
jousting. (“It’s not Shakespeare, is it?” quipped the wonderful Michael Hordern as he tackled
recording the commentary!)
So I come to the space overlapped by poetry and film, (poetry films, filmpoems, screen poetry,
video poetry...) as well as digital poems (code poetry) with a little knowledge, although I hope that
doesn't prove to be a dangerous thing.
www,johndavies.net
www.shedman.net
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