An invitation by Canadian poet Tom Konyves to consider Vidpo. And so I did.



Ron Silliman, Tom Konyves and Geof Huth

I was pleasantly surprised not too long ago to receive an email from Canadian videopoet Tom Konyves, Visual Poetry, screenwriting, journalism teacher at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia, who asked me if I'd ever considered videopoetry. I wondered if the email wasn't a sort of 'mass letter' sent to many Silliman readers at once, more self-promotion than a personal invitation. I thought I'd heard the name before and when he told me he'd met American poets Ron Silliman and Geof Huth at a poetry conference in Manchester, England, last year I instantly recalled an article Silliman had written on videopoetry in his Tuesday, May 12 2009 blog post ,one that's very supportive of Konyves and his work in general though he seems to feel also that the form hasn't fully found its stride yet, still waiting (as Silliman puts it) for its Baudelaire.

The article came with a very arresting picture of the three of them, the caption reading "Langpo, vidpo, vispo: RS, Tom Konyves, Geof Huth". Konyves, not knowing perhaps that Silliman has given his readers til the end of October to retrieve comments from his site, said it was a shame I couldn't now follow the discussion that had followed the article, a place where a lively exchange of viewpoints about vidpo was certain to be found. "After meeting Silliman and Huth in Manchester last year, he wrote a brief piece on my "mission"; interestingly, now that the comments have been removed, so has an exchange you would have enjoyed."So off to the comments stream I've gone to examine some pretty invaluable commentary by Konyves (and other readers) on the art form for which he is becoming known. I will return the courtesy of his invitation (whatever the intention) by considering the Vidpo genre here.

The theory (extracted from Silliman's article, & Konyves's own formulations of it in the comments stream and at http://discussion.movingpoems.com/tag/tom-konyves and http://www.vehiculepoets.com/videopoem.htm) can be stated fairly unambiguously. In reply mostly to objections from readers of Silliman's May 12th blog post that it's really a type of music video or just another fanciful poetry genre of no interest to anyone except creative writing students, Konyve gives in a May 15, 2009 response the following very useful characterization of videopoetry:

Music videos are commercials, aimed at promoting the song, the artist. (Mind you, my Buenos Aires poet friends would create playlists of music videos to dance to.)
 
Videopoetry is a genre of poetry. It is the inextricable, integrated blending of text, image and sound that produces a "poetic experience". This poetic experience emerges when the viewer's engagement with the work leads to an awareness of the "inner meaning" of the work - what Geof Huth calls the 'poem identity'. (If the imagery in a videopoem illustrates the text, it is no longer a videopoem.)

What differentiates videopoems from experimental (non-narrative) films is that videopoetry is based on the considered, sometimes curious juxtaposition of language (spoken or visual text) with images and sound. It is the text that drives the work; its presence is the essential link between the identifiable parts (edits or scenes). It is also the source of inspiration for the work.

It is true that many narrative and non-narrative films are often called "poetic" for no other reason than a lack of adequate descriptors to identify and give closure to feelings/perceptions of a "higher order". Andre Breton called poetry what all the other arts aspire to.

In a June 12, 2009 discussion at Silliman's blog with skeptics and detractors, he provided both a history and defense of the "innovation of videopoetry", even aligning it with other cognate forms like the "videohaiku":

To my knowledge, the "vigorous period of experimentation" began in the mid-70s, sputtered in the '80s, established itself as a viable form in the '90's and, with the distribution afforded by the web, has produced a body of work whose categories and features are now discernible and a valid field of study. The 'doing' - as in "definition comes AFTER the doing" - has been done. But, how well? That's a different discussion.

"Visually compelling and sophisticated poetry films may not constitute a new literary hybrid unless they rest on good literature." - Completely false. The innovation of videopoetry has been one of introducing the "poetic integration" of visual, textual and sound elements to create a unique entity whose "poetic quality" does not reside in the visualization (illustration) of 'good literature' but in the curious, non-illustrative juxtaposition of text with image. When successful, these works produce the effect of a poem, whose elements are incomplete until integrated into the finished work. It is in the process of blending text, image and sound that a transformation takes place, a transformation of not-necessarily-poetic texts into poetic elements.

Of "videohaiku": a few months ago, I came across the work of Eric Cassar. In his short (30 sec or less) videopoems, the introductory thought, thesis, or observation of the haiku – often the function of the first 12 syllables or two lines of the traditional western written haiku – is presented as a brief video image that is subsequently "tagged" with a verbal poetic comment. He has made a number of these, establishing a videopoetry-equivalent of a haiku.

And in response to a charge of artistic frivolousness & of novelty-pandering, videopoetry being just one more among a growing number of course offerings:

"and I am sure there are 10,000 vidpo courses as we speak being in or being added into every "hep" university on the planet" - I would be very surprised if 999 other courses exist. I only know of one.

It's in his own more deliberate (and reflective) pieces on the form that Konyves offers the most detailed rationale and artistic methodology. It's a genre at least 30 years old, as he says in his Moving Poems forum discussion, the product of continuous research, collaboration and related work in the visual and production fields. Liberated from the printed page, videopoetry (or film poems) is an artform "displayed on a screen, distinguished by its time-based, poetic juxtaposition of text with images and sound." Silliman in his own article seems not to have completely appreciated its split from the printed page, making almost snide references to the multimedia "gumbo" of its present state, as though any new artform that wasn't primarily reducible to poetry innovations (of his choosing) were necessarily ill-conceived or hopelessly amorphous: and offers to give it some solidity by emphasizing  its reliance on vispo, visual and concrete poetry, and the influence of a bit of langpo, New York school, Burroughs and even flarf and conceptual poetics. In fact, the only videopoem, worthy of the name, is Frank Film by Americans Frank and Caroline Mouris.

Konyves is eager to distance the videopoem from cinematic technique purely & perhaps this Sillimanesque chauvinism (a type of objection he's encountered already in the comments stream); he emphasizes, in fact, that it's not a matter of visualization only but a "juxtaposition of text with image":  not to be seen in terms of edits and scenes per se, the videopoem combines its elements always with a view to creating a unique "poetic experience". That "poetic experience" phrase seems to be key. As he says, "The poetry is the RESULT of the juxtaposed, blended use of text with imagery and sound."The videopoem relies on the creative juxtaposition of image & sound elements, in loose or more formal arrangements, in the same way the poem on the page emerges from the sum of its sound & sense techniques.

"Juxtaposition" and "judicious blending" are other terms Konyves uses to describe that vital fusion. Even the rhythms result from the creative editing of parts.T.S. Eliot might have said of the textuality of a videopoem (used in Konyves' unique sense) that it represents "a more finely perfected medium" than poetry on the page: perhaps (to extend the famous analogy further) image & sound are the elements of a catalyst for artistic creation. It's likely that for Konyves (as for Eliot) the catalyst is, of course, the poet. Konyves's own "Poem for the Rivers Project" created with his son serves as a good illustration of this vital textual confluence.  Perhaps the poem and videopoem difference (especially in the world of Web 2.0) is an illusion only, ingeniously contrived by its practitioners via the essential interconnectedness & fluidity of its multimedia boundaries.Within the framework of the primacy of the notion of videopoetry as text, Konyves offers 5 principal types according to the way the artist configures textual elements: kinetic text, visual text, sound text, performance and cin(e)poetry."

                                               Poem for the Rivers Project

In his email Konyves had also mentioned an "Anthology of Videopoems" and referred me to the "Vehicule Poets" site where excerpts from an article originally published in "Slope", entitled "Notes for an Introduction to an Anthology of Videopoems" appear. A source for more interesting discussion of its scope and potential for growth as literary genre. It's particularly intriguing to consider the metamorphosis of the filmmaker's art (Konyves' métier) into a new hybrid form, just as concrete and visual poets revolutionized the traditional page, & see now, more than ever, Internet technologies in a partnership with film to produce a radically democratized artform along the lines of avant-garde poetry. Perhaps if Silliman had read the "Slope" article he'd have recognized even better examples of early types of the visionary "poet/filmmaker" such as Marcel Duchamp (Anemic Cinema), Richard Kostelanetz (Video Strings), Augusto de Campos (Cordeiro), bp Nichol (First Screening) and Colin Morton (Primiti Too Ta). A more representative group of pioneer artists than the one or two names he gave.

I hope I've adequately repaid the courtesy of Tom Konyves' invitation to considerVidpo. My discussion of it has been necessarily sketchy, references & illustrations coming from only a few online sites. What are my own views on it? I can't say I'm qualified enough to critique something that I'm only half acquainted with, having written only poetry, & that of a principally traditional type. The language and methodology of Vidpo do seem a little vague in places (particularly where does that significant fusion of text and image & sound occur?) but that may be due to my own relative ignorance of film theory & practice. I can be, at least, grateful to Tom Konyves for the opportunity to learn something new. And I certainly have.