REDEFINING POETRY IN THE AGE OF THE SCREEN

TOM KONYVES

Video poetry, poetry-film, poetry video, cine-poem, filmpoem, videopoetry, etc. What’s in a
name?

The fact that there exist numerous words and phrases referring to this time-based, hybrid art
form that has for its materials voiced or displayed text, captured or found images and a
soundtrack, not only speaks to the infancy of the art form; if prose is indeed ‘words in
their best order’, assigning the designation ‘poetry’ to precede or follow ‘film’ or
‘video’ (hyphenated or not) tends to favour one or the other of the arts. The way I see it, the
writer who uses “poetry film” automatically designates the work as more film than poetry. I
myself began to create what I called “videopoems” when I was more a poet than a video artist, so I
naturally considered these works as “poetry”.

Man Ray’s “cinépoème” and Maya Deren’s "filmpoem" sang the praises of film at a time
when commercial/entertainment ventures first threatened the aesthetic potential of the new art
form of film; it was not about exploring a new form for poetry. In the early ‘80s, William C. Wees
recognized that the use of poems had become prevalent in short films; he differentiated these
“poetry-films” from “film poems’, i.e. poetic films, including films without words.
Substituting "video" for "film" effectively deflected the "mystique" of celluloid from the
conversation.

So much for semantics.

What is perhaps more important is the notion that videopoetry – rendering poetry as an object
to be experienced through the medium of video – is in the process of re-defining poetry
for future generations.

For videopoetry to succeed, our definition of poetry has to change. In essence, the poetry that
emerged from a succession of words read or heard becomes, in videopoetry, a different type
of poetry that emerges only from the inter-relationships of its elements– text, image and sound.
It is generally agreed that these inter-relationships not be illustrative.

When the text is a previously-written poem, it is still only one element of a videopoem; to bring
this one element to the "big screen" (without direct illustration) requires a previously-
unapprehended "context" that is provided by the image (and to a lesser but not insignificant
effect by the soundtrack). The image not only reflects or, more accurately, frames the text "in a
new light" – it subverts accepted signifier-signified relations; certain words, phrases,
statements, exclamations, intended to be understood/experienced in the “closed system”
of the page acquire new meanings when presented in an unexpected visual context.

Note that not all unrelated, unexpected images can be expected to produce the desired new
meaning.

Similarly, not all texts, including written-poems, can be expected to produce a desired new
meaning when juxtaposed with images. If the written-poem was originally perfect, it would
not need to be completed with images. Yet videos are made to promote these written-poems and
are most worthwhile; otherwise these poems would not reach a wide public. Their "meaning" is
not intended to change nor will it change in a visual context.
The ideal videopoem experience results in the response, "This was... pure poetry." (The
‘poetry’ reference here would not have been made about the displayed or voiced text in the work
– after all, it was only one element.) From each "turn" or appearance of a new element, be it
text, image or sound, we should be able to discern an intended new-meaning that is the direct
result of the juxtaposition. I call that poetry.

Jan. 15, 2016