video poetry

Thinking about this new form, in which video art and poetry combine to create a mini-theatrical or film experience. Two sites have interested me in this light. Blue's Cruzio Cafe, the brainchild of JJ Webb, uses animations of cartoons and artwork to combine with audio readings for a kind of graphic novel effect. Entertaining and light-hearted.

Another take, a more filmic one, on this evolving form is Dave Bonta's Moving Poems. The site has a stunning video poem by expatriate Burmese poet Kyi May Kaung, with striking scenes of puppets and dancers miming puppets, scenes that heighten the intensity of the poem.

Both are now in my blogroll. I'll be checking them often to see what's happening with this new form. And (slight plug) I may be doing another recording for Blue's Cruzio Cafe. The link above takes you to the page where my reading of my poem "One Night Light" is animated by JJ using Patricia Wallace Jones' wonderful artwork.

The Habitual Poet & Interviews

At Poemeleon's blog, publisher Cati Porter has started a cool new feature called The Habitual Poet. Past contributors answer an entertaining sequence of poetry related questions, ending with adding lines to what sounds like it will become a collaborative ghazal posted at Poemeleon at some point. Great fun to read, great fun to do!

Adding Susan Schultz's blog (Tinfish Editor's blog) to the blogroll today. Good reading. I liked today's entry: Chant 15 (way after Whitman).

Submission

A curious word, yet perhaps apt for poetry. Recently I've heard a lot of talk about submitting to magazines, and I've been doing a lot of submitting while thinking that the act of sending poems out into the ether (better known as the USPS) is metaphorical. We try to become still enough to receive ideas through internal channels we little understand. Sending them back out the same way is appropriate, it seems to me. Conception and like giving birth are all about surrender. Meditation and writing are the same.

Bloghopping: added to my blogroll recently Shannon Cain's The Literary Activist and Vince Gotera's The Man With the Blue Guitar.