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A curated selection of videos, including book trailers, brief interviews, and other literary curiosities updated daily.
Poet and founder of UbuWeb, Kenneth Goldsmith, speaks about the "conceptual writing" movement and the art of transcription. "There can be no such thing as writer's block, there's no lack of inspiration—there's always something to transcribe, there's always something to rewrite, there's always something to refrain."
"We're all going to die—and poems can help us live with that." In this TED talk literary critic Stephen Burt uses his favorite poems to help convey how poetry (simply a set of techniques used to make patterns that put emotions into words) can help us further understand and cope with what it means to be a person.
In this video, author Ron Rash offers words of encouragement to writers and emphasizes the importance of patience. (Rash was in his forties when his first book was published.) Although the publishing landscape may seem discouraging, he says, you go back to writing because "there's something in it that gives you a kind of satisfaction that nothing else in your life does."
The Sonnet Project combines cinematic art with the poetry of William Shakespeare, set against the backdrop of New York City. The goal of the project is to film all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, each performed by a different actor in a carefully chosen New York City location. This is their sixty-seventh film.
"I have come from farming to poetry." Amit Dahiyabadshah is the founder of the poetry movement Delhi Poetree. In this video for TEDx Tughlaq Rd, he performs and speaks with humor and gravity about his experiences in the fast-growing city of Delhi. "I gave you the green revolution from just two acres of land, you have left me with a wallpaper village of posters, and just two acres of sand."
"Patience smiles patiently for a déjà vu spectacle." British poet and artist Dean Pasch's short film "Into the Room of Waiting," based on his poem "To Smile," was recently screened at the 2014 ReVersed Poetry Film Festival in Amsterdam. Through snippets of scenes and recollections pieced together in a video collage of impressions, Pasch attempts to further explore the understanding of existence.
"Among the many reasons that I think we all so treasure Dr. Maya is that she was a truth teller,” says Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, and close friend of celebrated poet Maya Angelou, who died yesterday at the age of eighty-six. Angelou is the author of more than thirty books, including her influential memoir of the Jim Crow South, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She received numerous awards throughout her lifetime, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was presented to her by President Obama in 2011.
Judith Chernaik founded Poetry on the Underground for the London Underground public metro system in 1986. This seven-minute documentary explores the project's evolution through poetry readings and an interview with Chernaik, who says the Underground is the perfect place to promote poetry because "you're in a strange place, and it's nice to have the comfort of language which is human and humane."
The Gazette in Montreal takes a look at the writing space of author David Homel as he speaks about his process. "I write out loud, I say everything I'm writing as I write it... prose fiction has its own music, just like the blues, just like jazz, just like poetry. I think you've got to hear that music if you're gonna write well."
"And never let go / never unclench your fist." Adam Ragan filmed this inspirational short film of Nikolas Croker reading his poem "Never Let Go," with music by Tal Wieczorek, on the scenic beaches of West Port, Oregon.
