There’s now a larger, HD version of the video I made for Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers…” last year — the one using a Nic S. reading and clips from an old Encyclopedia Brittanica educational film about the American Civil War, which was going on when Dickinson wrote her poem 150 years ago. (Vimeo permits users to swap one file for another, so this will replace the earlier version in all embeds that may be out there. Neat, eh?) The difference in quality may not be all that large, however, due to the limitations of the source file at archive.org. An artists’ collective in Athens requested a projection-quality version for an upcoming festival/exhibition of poetry videos, which intrigues me because of their approach: a number of screens playing videos in different rooms, museum-style, rather than scheduled screenings as in a typical film festival. I find longer videos rather tiresome to watch in a museum gallery, but since most videopoems are quite brief, this approach should work well, I think, and expose any given video to many more viewers. One of the four rooms in this two-day poetry event will be devoted to the work of four master poets: Dickinson, Blake, Plath and Bukowski — some interesting company for the Belle of Amherst! “Void Network thinks that Poetry Nights are a chance to create a vibrant place in the hurt of the Metropolis,” they told me. Well, one can always hope.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.