Join us on August 28th at 2pm eastern time for a conversation about poetry film. This year Zebra Poetry Film Festival will celebrate its twentieth anniversary, Liberated Wordscelebrates its tenth anniversary and a new critically acclaimed feature film Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing (John D. Scott, 2022) is being released. I would like to thank John and Leah for inviting me to take part in this discussion which should prove to be really interesting (in terms of John and Thomas at least!) I have written about John’s tour-de-force of a project before, and the painstaking dedication it took; but revisiting it really highlights the numerous examples of cinematic ‘close observation’, following the approach of his subject. I would challenge anyone to find a more poetic approach to a documentary, as well. Since John is a pioneer in this field I would sign up quickly, before the world moves on and he is back submerged in yet another life’s work!
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Attendees will be in conversation with:
John D. Scott, Associate Professor, Documentary Studies, Ithaca College and Director, Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing.

Sarah Tremlett, poetry filmmaker, poet, and theorist, author of The Poetics of Poetry Film
Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, Artistic Director, Zebra Poetry Film Festival
Leah Shafer, Associate Professor and Chair, Media and Society Program, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (moderator)
Co-sponsored by:
the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
and the Center for Media and Society at Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Time:
Aug 28, 2022 02:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Register here for the event:
https://ithaca.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMocO-rrz8iHNO1xUVgigQxYznuKKsscpkk
Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing is a creative feature documentary on poet Elizabeth Bishop that incorporates several poetry films. It will be available online via Eventive for a short window beginning Friday noon August 26th eastern time until Sunday August 28th at midnight at this link:
https://watch.eventive.org/virtualcinemapolis/play/62eca14e1df9d6007842f2fe
Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UobKxA0gVgY
Web:
https://artoflosingmovie.com/
https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.bishop.artoflosing
 

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I never thought I would see the day when a luminary such as Wheeler Winston Dixon would quote someone such as myself. But I truly mean what I say about this prolific filmmaker/artist and sage on experimental film in the USA (see The Exploding Eye, 1997). He is a pioneer, along with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster in this particular field, and works tirelessly on new videos almost every day. See his Vimeo profile for further information.  

Really thrilled to be part of Tom Konyves' major and long-running videopoetry exhibition  Poets with a Video Camera: Videopoetry 1980–2020 in Vancouver 
(September 17th 2022– January 2nd 2023). This is truly a milestone event, and there will also be a very interesting symposium on the subject (in which I am very flattered to say I am the key speaker) on the 5th November, entitled: New Art Emerging: Two or Three Things One Should Know About Videopoetry. My video poem some everybodies is from 2009 and asks questions about place as embodied site, tourism, and passing by. It centres on a corner near a tourist hotspot in historic Bath, England (where incidentally a small accident occurs). Footage was gathered over a year, from a fixed camera, and both the sound and the images have been slowed down to emphasise movement. Conversations have become text-on-screen disconnected from the images and creating a communal poem of the site itself. Wherever a tourist has paused to take a picture, the film has been frozen for a few seconds, and the screen has a graphic coloration to emulate old postcards (which have also been made from  
selected stills, to accompany the film).

​I have to add the promotional image is by Janet Lees (as mentioned in previous post) and actually to me one of her most poignant films – something about the pathos of the birds yet their polite fragility, and the conjuring up of a delicate humour and otherworldliness. There are I think 25 of us in the exhibition. More updates on this coming up in the next month or so but check out SAG if you need more details in the meantime. A not-to-be-missed event.

Many thanks to the wonderfully talented ecopoet Janet Lees for sharing my ecopoetry film with the Deep Adaptation forum on their platform
and thank you to the DAF for being kind enough to like the work, too. It is unfortunate we have to make these films but this is both about the climate crisis and the biosphere and also the loss of my personal pet and companion, who I spent every day and evening with, for most of her life. In terms of this I would recommend the forum if you are struggling with the enormity of what is happening to our climate, and how we are going to change our lives, and force change everywhere. See The Deep Adaptation forum

Another place I would suggest is the Just Stop Oil campaign juststopoil.org/zoom. One of the most inspiring people in that is Zoe Cohen who can be seen bringing the Jeremy Vine TV hosts back to reality in this wonderful interview

I think this shows how we are so schizophrenic. People put on their suits and talk the talk just to get through their day, but know the reality underneath and realise the implication that everything, but everything needs to have a new approach to living. You can't have a frothy chat about a bit of heat when there are such massive implications and you can't sweep it under the carpet. Good for you Zoe!

Very many thanks to The Scottish Centre for Geopoetics who have published my ecopoem 'Villanelle for the Bees and the Birds' based on Dylan Thomas' writing in Stravaig II, the online journal. This issue is unfortunately on Geopoetics and The Climate Crisis and has a great variety of writing on the subject. In designing the cover I feel Caroline Watson has captured the ominous  trepidation of the coming years unless we act to stop imminent devastation. Whilst I am writing I would also like to thank the editorial team for including one of my family history poems in Stravaig 10 last year.
see more at 
http://www.geopoetics.org.uk/
 
​Here is the link for the journal

 
 

Thank you to my publishers for showcasing the book at the Screen Studies conference in July. Sitting alongside some notable writers – a real joy.