I made a videopoem this afternoon for Moving Poems based on a text at The Poetry Storehouse, a new site offering “great contemporary poems for creative remix”: in this case, “Giacometti’s Pears” by Donna Vorreyer — one of my favorite poets. I’ve been involved with the Storehouse as an adviser, but I’m as interested as anyone in taking advantage of the remix potential of the works there.
Vorreyer’s own reading, available for download at the Storehouse, struck me as more than adequate, and I combined it with a snippet from a soundscape I found on freesound.org from someone called Deneb al Giedi, who describes it as “one very long deconstructed recording of a string quartet with metallic stereo and echo effects.” For footage, I had the idea of searching the Prelinger Archives for videos of canyons in the American southwest, thinking I might find some sensuous curves to complement the imagery in the poem. Imagine my delight when I found an old home movie that combines wind-sculpted rock with hard angles: Glen Canyon Bridge, from 1958.
This is the tenth videopoem for a text at The Poetry Storehouse. You can watch them all at the group page on Vimeo.
Thanks, Dave. What a unique visual to accompany this piece! I’m always amazed by the visual interpretations people have of poems. Maybe I’ll try my hand at a videopoem on my winter break from school…
Oh, you should! It’s a lot of fun and a great way to get inside a poem, akin to translating it into another language.
Nice work, Dave – love the images. And Donna, yes – you absolutely have to try your hand at this. It’s a whole separate universe of poetry learning, in my view.