Poetry and Film

This chapter proposes a brief history of kinetic poetry as a transmedia and cross-artistic form. It connects the most relevant threads of a possible historiographic narrative of how kinetic poetry has been evolving since the beginning of the twentieth century at the intersection of literature, visual arts, cinema, animation, and technology, across various media. It argues for a transmedia approach because it does not place kinetic poetry at the heart of computational media and as a digital literature-specific genre, but rather as a temporal form that is media and language-specific, but also culturally and politically situated. Kinetic poetry is a form of poetry that relies on spatiotemporal transitions with expressive literary, visual and aural layers. Throughout the twentieth century, authors composed kinetic poems with varied media, such as motorized sculptures, celluloid film, video, holography, and computers. As it is unveiled, the origins of kinetic art and kinetic poetry can be traced back to the Constructivists’ "Realisticheskii Manifest" and the Dadaists’ praxis. When Marcel Duchamp staged puns via rotoreliefs in the 35 mm film "Anémic Cinéma" (1926), he opened up the way for hybrid works that can be experienced through the lenses of cinema, textual art in motion, and kinetic poetry. Later on, language went from projection to interaction, first with the investigations by the experimental poets in the 1950s-80s and then with the explorations by the digital poets from the 1980s onwards. Therefore, the discussion of kinetic poetry’s cultural and technological history goes back to early abstract films, mechanical poetry, film poetry, videopoetry, holopoetry, to finally present algorithmically programmed animation. Because this narrative is heavily Euro- and American-centric, this chapter invites readers to contest the following historiographic version of kinetic poetry’s trajectory, and to share knowledge about works created in other latitudes, especially by women and non-white authors.

Durante grande parte da sua vida, o cineasta e poeta António Reis (1927-1991) foi professor na «Escola de Cinema». Em Outubro de 2018, o Departamento de Cinema da Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema organizou a homenagem «Lições António Reis». Esta edição, revista e aumentada relativamente aos textos apresentados nessa ocasião, é composta de três partes distintas, mas interligadas: «Lições António Reis», «Homenagem», «Continuação». Certos de que na procura do ouro não há motivo para largar a picareta, fomos buscar a versos seus – «Descasco as imagens / e entrego-as na boca» – o título deste livro.

José Bogalheiro: "Nota introdutória" — Maria Filomena Molder: "Causas que seguem os efeitos ou ameixas doiradas com orvalho – Sobre Jaime de António Reis" — Nuno Júdice: "Uma poesia próxima da vida" — Manuel Guerra: "Da atenção ardente" — José Bogalheiro: "Uma torrente chamada vida" — Fátima Ribeiro: "António Reis, nosso mestre" — Maria Patrão: "Meia-luz".

Generally, I am interested in discussing the relation between the original text and its transformation
into film in terms of their medial differences. This bascially implicates an appreciation of both, the
original poem as text and the poetry film based on it, as two separate and independent pieces of art.
Interesting questions on the relation of both pieces are, which elements of the text are transformed
visually and how these processes can be described in greater detail. Is the visualisation rather
illustratory or reinterpreting? Is the process of reinterpretation based on association, exemplification
or which other approaches can be observed?
On another level, it I want to approach the poetry film as interpretation of the poem – which is of
course contradictory towards the autonomity of both pieces of art. In comparing the different poetry
films based on the same poem, different approaches open up towards a literary text, that is very
often perceived as hermetic and therefore uninterpretable.
Although poetry films have a very long tradition, very little research has been done in this field. A
noticeable exception is Anastasia Novikova’s recently published study Lyrikverfilmungen im
Deutsch-als-Fremdsprache-Unterricht (Hamburg 2013), who thankfully brought this topic to my
attention.

VIDEO OF ALL-STAR WOMEN POETS READ TO BENEFIT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY with Larissa Shmailo, Elaine Equi, Rachel Hadas, Patricia Spears Jones, Trace Peterson and emcee Maggie Balistreri
http://www.100tpcmedia.org/100TPC2012/2018/08/larissa-shmailo-all-star-women-poets-read-to-benefit-the-democratic-party-2018/

An interview with Saranac Review on the making of "Burgh" (2015)--a cinepoem by Julia and Michael Devine--which features the poetry of Gregory Pardlo, Joshua Mehigan, and other American poets. 

Go to:
http://saranacreview.com/blog/post.php?s=2015-11-11-meet-the-staff-michael-devine

"Burgh" premiered on the opening night of the 2015 Lake Champlain International Film Festival, and will be screened in film festivals in 2016.  In the spirit of "Manhatta" (1921) by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler, "Burgh" is a film about civic art, and it's about film as civic art.

Communication au colloque de l'INSL, THE BETWEEN-NESS OF LYRIC / L’ENTRE-DEUX LYRIQUE / LYRIK IM DAZWISCHEN, Lausanne (4-7 juin 2019).

Des années 1920 à nos jours, le cinéma a régulièrement été qualifié de « poétique » ou de « lyrique » par les critiques et, quoique dans une moindre mesure, par certains réalisateurs eux-mêmes comme Jean Epstein, Jean Cocteau, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Maya Deren ou Andreï Tarkovski, pour ne citer que quelques références incontournables. Outre ces discours autorisés, les occurrences triviales foisonnent aussi dans le champ critique, journalistique et promotionnel pour désigner tel ou tel film comme un « poème », voire comme un « haïku », ou pour louer les qualités « lyriques » de telle ou telle séquence, en particulier pour des œuvres faiblement narratives. Cette communication se propose de poser les questions suivantes pour comprendre la persistance du paradigme poétique dans ce contexte. S’expliquerait-il par certaines spécificités médiologiques du cinéma ou répondrait-il avant tout à un besoin persistant de légitimation du medium ? Quelles sont, dans le contexte filmique, les valeurs associées au poétique ? Par sa labilité, la notion de poésie servirait-elle avant tout à mobiliser un système de valeurs, plus qu’un corpus cohérent de principes esthétiques ? En termes pragmatiques, quels effets l’étiquette « poétique » cherche-t-elle aussi à produire sur la réception des films ?

The life and writing of poets Anne Carson and Nicole Brossard do not invite comparison: Brossard has engaged in formal experimentation at the forefront of an anglophone-francophone dialogue about the personal and political, centred on feminism; whereas, Carson is unaligned with ...