Swoon's "Today I will be a compensated spokesperson"

The wonderful Marc Neys, aka Swoon, has posted a new videopoem that uses, as text, a poem of mine that was originally published in Opium titled "Today I will be a compensated spokesperson."

I really like what he did with it. It's a beautiful collage and soundscape that makes me think about the poem a little differently.

That's the scary thing about posting work to the Poetry Storehouse (see below) for anyone to remix. You don't know what will emerge from their work. It's out of your hands. You hope that it goes well, but passing off something you care about make you (read: me) instinctively believe that things will go terribly awry. This piece, for me, represents one of the great potentials that exists in that Not-Knowing: it might produces new associations, new juxtapositions to tease something different out of the text than how it existed on the page/screen. You might find something unexpected in your own work.

My poem was taken from The Poetry Storehouse, an platform for multi-media artists to find poems for raw material and remixing. I donea couple videos with other poets' work from there as well. It's a good place with good poems and good videos.

Today I will be a compensated spokesperson from Marc Neys (aka Swoon) on Vimeo.

Tuba Player

Here's a new videopoem using the poem "Tuba Player" by Robert Wood, read by Nic Sebastian, all taken from the Poetry Storehouse. Archival footage taken from the Prelinger Archive.

I had five poems up with the Poetry Storehouse recently. They post poems that are available for remix, interpretation, and mutilation by video and sound artists working with poetry as raw material.

The Poetry Storehouse

The good people at The Poetry Storehouse have shared five poems of mine, with audio, at their site. It's an interesting project where the poet must give up control of their work for others to reinterpret through video or audio work. (Or other things that I have not heard of or do not yet exist.) These poems are there for other artists to mold to their own designs, which is a weird (read: valuable) experience, realizing that you've crafted these words and you're going to let others mess with their balance and meaning.

They've have some great "re-mixes" of poems up there now from other video artists and poets that are worth checking out. Excited to see what happens with this little bunch of poems.

Thanks to Nic and the folks who run and commune on the Poetry Storehouse for letting me be a part of the project.