Six Video Poems

weyake says...

Over the past month I've started playing with the concept of mixing poetry and video. Lots of questions come up. To what extent should the poet appear in the video? A mix of images with or without the poet? It there a role for music? If so what? What enhances and what distracts?

Here are several attempts, with several approaches. In some the audio is set too low, so you will probably have to crank up the speakers a bit. I'd appreciate feedback -- as I'm always a beginner:

Barbed Wire: a simple recording of a poem read at King's books in Tacoma WA with video from a point-and-shoot camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjP1IQ71mjo

The Tree as Verb: audio from the same reading as above, but with images (my photos) as the visual component: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIHVeNJftrs

The Mouth of the Columbia: a more professional video and audio recording but of poet only with no added visuals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdYEFTGcXyo

Praising the Fish: Same source as above, but with some still images added. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6OVT2RrsCQ

Feeding, the whales of Hecate Strait: a combination of stills, video and seperate audio, with some back ground music. The audio level of this one definately needs to be increased. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-So0mLnWvys

Thanks for watching, thanks especially for commenting....

Linton Robinson says...

And doesn't reflect much knowledge of the video poetry communtiy.
For instance, US Poet Laureate Billy Collins does vid poems.
There are several sites that really celebrate this stuff, and show beautiful, integral vid poems not crude walk-throughs like this.

Hell, take a look at some of mine... http://linrobinson.com

Wish they'd get pet people like me to write this sort of thing.

I just read an article by Cory Doctorow about his early work, said: "That was way back when somebody thought it made since for print mags to try to tell people about the web."