See the Voice: Visible Verse 2005

Video poetry hits the big screen

By Catherine Rolfsen - December 2006 in The Thunderbird - used with permission

The stereotypical poet is more likely to be scribbling with a pencil nub in a worn notebook than directing digital videos.

But Bowen Island artist Heather Haley is challenging the notion that hers is an archaic art form, using new technologies to literally change the way we look at poetry.

Haley is a video poet, and the organizer of an evening devoted to the art form held November 16th at Vancouver’s Pacific Cinémathèque.

See the Voice: Visible Verse 2006 was an exhibit of video poetry ranging from the hilarious to the profound to the disorienting.

Media mix-up

Haley describes video poetry as “a wedding of word and image.” Spoken or written poetry is layered over visuals from a computer or camera.

But that is where the similarities end. Over the three-hour evening, 33 videopoems from across the world were shown.

Some looked like music videos, others evoked surrealist cinema, while a few resembled PowerPoint presentations.

The young, artsy audience was small but devoted, sitting through technical malfunctions and less-than-professional camerawork in anticipation of the gems that shone through.

“The marriage between video and poetry is inspiring,” commented Anah Teele, a multimedia artist who attended the show. “Some of the pieces worked beautifully, others failed to capture the potential of either medium.”

Haley acknowledges that the results are not always perfect.

“You’re trying to infuse language, poetry, into a visual medium,” she said. “It’s a very difficult thing to do, that integration.”

videopoems combine spoken word poetry, written text, digital or video images, and music

Poet pioneers

Poets have been experimenting with film for generations. In the early twentieth century, Jean Cocteau, the French surrealist poet and filmmaker, considered all of his films to be poetry.

But, he said, “Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.” That day may have arrived, thanks to the proliferation of affordable cameras and digital technology.

“Poets are notoriously broke, which is why digital video has been a real boon to the genre, because almost anybody can afford to use that technology,” said Haley.

Search YouTube and you will find hundreds of videopoems made by every angst-ridden teenager with a video camera.

The website has certainly helped popularize the genre. Video poetry is also making inroads as a teaching tool. High school classes made several of the films shown at Pacific Cinémathèque.

Technology is creating new formats for poetry. Online poetry networks such as e-poets.net provide a place “where spoken word lives on the web.”

Some are interpretations of another poet’s work, like this one of Anne Sexton’s “The Touch”

Pagebabies and cinephiles

Not everyone is thrilled with poetry’s leap off the page. Some traditionalists resent technological trends merging with the purity of poetry.

Haley calls them pagebabies. “They can’t even abide seeing it in any other milieu other than on a page in a book,” she said.

Desmond Hussey, co-founder of Vancouver’s Spectral Theatre Company, might fall into that category.

“Technology grates away the intuitive beauty of words,” he commented after the show, where he experienced video poetry for the first time.

Video poetry attracts criticism from all angles. “Poets don’t understand why I’m doing it. The general public doesn’t understand why anybody would write poetry in the first place,” Haley joked.

“I am drawn to the genre simply because it's natural for me to employ film or video. I grew up with moving images and love cinema,” she explained. “It's a powerful medium. Why not express my poetry through it?”

Work in progress

Haley has made two videopoems: Dying for the Pleasure and the just-released Purple Lipstick.

Six-minute-long Purple Lipstick took Haley two years to create, and its credits include eight collaborators. She compares the process of making a video poem to adapting a novel into a movie. It is quite the change from the isolation of composing poetry.

“Writers and poets, what we do is very much a solitary pursuit. But, I think that’s why I like to collaborate with other artists,” said Haley. “It’s a way to get me out of my office and my writing studio.”

Regardless of her medium, Haley approaches her work like poets always have, with a passion independent of popular conceptions.

"It’s a crazy thing to do, but I guess I’m crazy," she concedes. "There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money either.”