Day is done

For poetry day & week (here in Belgium & The Netherlands) Johan de Boose wrote a poem.
The 'Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen' and 'Het Poëziecentrum' gave me a commission to make a videopoem for it.

During these days filled with poetry, Johan is visiting schools, showing the video, reading the poem and talking with the students...

Some things speak for themselves.
Loud and like crystal.

DAY IS DONE

1.

 ‘Mijn voet een wandelende tak

Mijn stem een rollend hol vat

Mijn ziel een gevlekt bloedend dier

Ik ken de stille snik van Vlaamse winters

Zoete angst, schuldige stilte

Elk kind in elke kooi is een prooi

De kooi heet: Everything at once

Over vlakten valt de schaduw van een berg,

    van lange nachten

Het leven is een weg die onder mij verdwijnt

Ik trek het laken van de mist over me heen

Ik breek in de kaken van de regen

Ik lees de lijnen van het lot:

    Fruit tree, fruit tree

    No one knows you

    but the rain and the air

Ik ben één met het wenend land, met de grijze zee

Ik ben de tiener van het jaar

Straks spring ik naar de andere kant van het licht

Wie springt is altijd beter dan voorheen

Wie valt valt veilig in een lange diepe slaap

Een val van vijftien jaar, van twintig eeuwen

Spring ik? Ik zie de tong van mijn schoen.

Vlieg ik? Onder mij een vlakte van braaklanden,

groeiend donker, een weg die verdwijnt.

Roep ik? Een stem als een vat.

Wie luistert? Wie is zo doof als een god?

    Life is but a memory

    happened long ago.’

2.

Er zijn twee manieren om naar deze ochtend te kijken:

In het landschap ligt een lichaam

In het lichaam ligt een landschap

De derde manier is

hoe land en lijf samen

Er is dromen en dromen:

Een heuvel wil berg zijn

Een beek wil zeewaarts

Er zijn ook dromen die men oplegt

(alsof de toekomst een straf is):

Een gazon in een bos?

Een eik op een varen?

Er zijn akkers en oevers die sterven

Dieren die zichzelf vergeven

Hoor

Iemand speelt viool op een boom

    Day is done

De krant zegt: het is vijftien graden

en een jongen stapte uit het leven.

Er is stappen en stappen.

(This is the third poem by Johan de Boose as 'countryside' poet of Oost-Vlaanderen 2012 - ©Johan de Boose)

Johan also did a translation and a strong reading.

  

 DAY IS DONE

1.
‘My foot a walking-stick
My voice a rolling hollow barrel
My soul a stained bleeding animal

I know the silent gasp of Flemish winters
Sweet fear, guilty silence
Every child in every cage is a prey

The cage is called: Everything at once

Over plains falls the shade of a mountain,
  of lasting nights
Life is a road that dissappears under me

I pull the sheet of mist over my body
I break in the jaws of the rain
I read the lines of fate:

     Fruit tree, fruit tree
     No one knows you
     But the rain and the air

I am one with the weaping land, with the grey sea
I am the teenager of the year
In a while I’ll jump to the other side of the light
He who jumps is always better than before
He who falls falls safe in a long deep sleep
A fall of fifteen years, of twenty centuries

Do I jump? I see the tongue of my shoe.
Do I fly? Under me a plain of waste lands,
growing darkness, a road that dissappears.
Do I shout? A voice as a barrel.
Who listens? Who is as deaf as a god?

      Life is but a memory
     happened long ago.’

2.
There are two ways of looking at this morning:
In the landscape lies a body
In a body lies a landscape

The third way is
how land and body together

There is dreaming and dreaming:
a hill wants to be a mountain
a brook wants seawards

There are also dreams that were imposed
(as if the future is a punishment):
A lawn in a forest?
An oak on a fern?

There are fields and banks that die
Animals who poison themselves

Hear
Someone plays the violin on a tree
    Day is done

The newspaper says: it is fifteen degrees
and a boy stepped out of his life.

There is stepping and stepping.

I found this beautiful composition to use as a base for the soundtrack;
It was clear from the beginning that I wanted someone young to feature in this video. And I found the perfect
one. Filming and editing was made easy with her natural expression and Johan's strog words.



Words, tanslation & voice: Johan de Boose
Piano & composition: Lunova Labs
Concept, camera, editing & additional music: Swoon
Thanks: Hanne Jacobs, Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen & Het Poëziecentrum.

Another slow day

Within a few weeks I will be attending the fifth anniversary event by LPS.
London Poetry Systems is, in their own words, an open cross-media poetry organisation committed to showcasing poetry in performance both at their multimedia live events and growing online archive.

During the next event Alastair Cook, Luca Nasciuti and I will show and perform several of our video- and filmpoems. It's going to be a blast (I hope)

Henry Stead (poet, translator and classicist) "My research is in the reception of classical culture in the Modern world." is the co-founder and director of LPS.

Henry is also joining us on stage. He will do a live reading against the backdrop of a new videopoem I made for one of his poems.

Another slow day
After contemplating ceilings
and what kind of creative genius I was

I stood on my feet
turned on the light
ate sunflower seeds and homegrown
gooseberries from a cage in the garden
sliced off my ears with a butcher's blade
so that I might better collect bee-like
the anesthetic honey from a Durex Performa
to soothe the pain in my head
I stopped and listened
My nicotine white smoke alarm
spoke out again and again shrill
but like it was in a rubber jar said
DO NOT PAINT
I googled NOT PAINTER
it came up with Frank O'Hara
"I am not a painter, I am a poet"

I read it a hundrehundred thousand times
all I know for sure is
I smoked a cigarette and thump
was told that smoking kills and thump
harms people around me
I'm alone but I couldn't swear to that
the blood where my ears were
keeps me warm like shirodhara thump
I can no longer feel the urgency of advice
I look down and thump
the floor is painted red like really red
like fire engine red and thump
I've written nothing and thump
no one's coming

The music I used for this one founds its origin in this older track I had:

To go with the almost languid reading I wanted images that expressed some kind of restlessness, boredom and even sulk. Once I had those, the video practically made itself...

Anyway, enjoy;

words & voice: Henry Stead
concept, camera, editing & music: Swoon
Thanks: Katrijn Clemer

Badend, biddend, snoeiend, loeiend, schenkend, verwenst

Delphine Lecompte has a new book out soon.
‘Schachten en amuletten’ (De Bezige Bij Antwerpen, 2013) is already her fourth collection.

Last year Delphine did a live reading (against soundscapes I provided) as part of the presentation of 'Uitgesproken', a vinyl record with 10 poets (Deus Ex Machina)
One of the poems during that performance was 'Badend, biddend, snoeiend, loeiend, schenkend, verwenst'
It was (at that time) a brand new poem read against (at that time) a brand new track.
They fitted and I decided to make a videopoem for it.

Very proud I was when I heard that Delphine, (because I liked the poem so much) decided to put it in her new collection. Very happy I am that she was willing to do another reading of the poem for the video.

Badend, biddend, snoeiend, loeiend, schenkend, verwenst

In de badkuip van een valse touwslager denk ik
Aan mijn vader, het is niet de eerste keer
Dat ik naakt aan hem denk
Maar vanavond is er tenminste water tussen ons
Lauw water en een korst op mijn sinistere knie.

De gedachte aan mijn vader is genadig:
Hij is parmantig en fluwelig gekleed
Denkend aan een gekwelde leeuw snoeit hij rozen
Terwijl zijn derde vrouw in de keuken een spin vermorzelt
Met het voorste wiel van haar ongewenste tombolaprijs.



Mijn vader heeft ook iets gewonnen
Het is nog meer ongewenst dan de schildpad op wieltjes
Ik droog mij af met mijn jeansbroek
De valse touwslager wilde mij geen handdoek geven
Nog halfnat bel ik de derde vrouw van mijn vader op.

Het is nacht
En ik heb haar niet wakker gemaakt
Ze vraagt of ik mijn vader nodig heb
Ik antwoord met dezelfde vraag
Maar ze denkt dat ik háár vader bedoel.



Haar vader was gisteren jarig
Ze heeft hem een slede gegeven
Hij associeert slede met sneeuw
Sneeuw met kleinkinderen
Kleinkinderen met prikkeldraad.

De touwslager betreedt de badkamer
Om te melden dat het tijd is voor zijn injectie
De naald ligt op zijn nachtkastje, naast een aangebeten wafel
Buiten verwenst een toerist zijn folkloristische klompen
Hij voelt zich log en bekocht, zijn vrouw eet iets vertrouwds
Maar ze wil niet delen.

The track for the videopoem stayed the same as the one used during the live performance;

The images for this one came from 'Silent Night, Bloody Night', a 1974 horror film which was also released as Night of the Dark Full Moon and re-released in the 1981 horror boom as Death House. It was directed by Theodore Gershuny. I re-edited some parts, added another layer and changed the colour.
Combined with the music, Delphine's poem and reading...It is a match. See for yourself;



Words & voice: Delphine Lecompte
Concept, add. camera, editing & music: Swoon
Footage: 'Silent Night, Bloody Night (Theodore Gershuny)

2013 coming up...

Just starting to roll, 2013 is already trying hard to overthrow its predecessor.

Some of the things that are coming up this year, lined up;

Day is done
A collaboration with Johan de Boose (with the support of Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen and Het Poëziecentrum)
Johan wrote a beautiful poem especially for 'Gedichtendag'
I was happy to be given the chance to make a video for this piece. The video and poem will be presented at schools during poetry week. Later this year I will make a second videopoem for one of the poems Johan writes for Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen.

Cirkel / Circle
My most ambitious project up to now.
Cirkel/Circle is a film based on 11 poems by 11 different Flemish writers.
Thanks to the financial support of The Flemish Fund For Literature and City of Antwerp and the production of Michaël Vandebril (Vonk&Zonen vzw) this project will be a collaboration with 11 poets (Michaël Vandebril, Stefan Hertmans, Stijn Vranken, Charles Ducal, Lies Van Gasse, Xavier Roelens, Delphine Lecompte, Jan Lauwereyns, Leonard Nolens, Marleen de Crée, YM Dangre), 3 actors (Michaël Pas, Vic De Wachter and Karlijn Sileghem) and different musicians (Hank Tilbury, Lunova Labs)
The film will have subtitles thanks to the professional translations of Willem Groenewegen.
The film will have its world premiere at STANZA 2013 (Michaël Vandebril and I are invited to show and tell) and its Belgian premiere at Felix Poetry Festival.
This is a project I am very proud of.
Proud and humble that all those great talents are working together.

Reiziger
Belgian band Reiziger kicks of te new year with a brand new album.
Kodiak Station (Birch&Broom / PIAS / Red Plane Records) will be released 04/02/2013.
It was a great joy to make three musicvideo's for the album and even more so to create visuals for their upcoming live shows.

Workshops videopoetry
Creatief Schrijven organises a course in literary writing (basic).
Together with 3 other artists (Lies Van Gasse, Michaël Brijs and Maja Jantar) I was asked to give a small series of workshops to let the aspiring writers get to know videopoetry and give them a chance to work with me producing and creating a video for their own words.
This will be a first for me and I'm looking foreward to this.

Georg Trakl for Art, Visuals & Poetry
Art Visuals & Poetry invited me to make 3 videopoems for poems by Austrian writer Georg Trakl.
The video's will appear on a dvd (together with works by...)  in the fall of 2013 presented and produced by Sigrun Höllrigl of Art Visuals & Poetry.

London Poetry Systems have invited me to introduce a few of my videopoems on their next live event (16/02/2013) in London. Happy to do so! At that event (in the Edel Assanti Gallery) Alastair Cook, Luca Nasciuti and I (among others) will show and perform film- and videopoems.
I even made a brand new videopoem for 'Another slow day' a poem written and read by Henry Stead (of LPS)

Hard // Hoofd asked me to make a contribution to their wonderful site. Yes.
It's going to be a collaboration with Laura van der Haar, who just won the Dutch poetryslam championchip 2012.

In between all that there will be new festival entries, videopoems and collaborations with Delphine Lecompte, Dena Rash Guzman, David Tomaloff,...and hopefully many more...