Filming a poem with a mobile phone and an intensive multiplicity: A creative pedagogy using stylistic analysis

Abstract

A film poem is a cinematic work which uses a written, often canonical poem as its inspiration. Film poems frequently exceed the likely intentions of the poet, becoming something new; one creative work is used as a springboard for another. Typically, however, in film poems the poem’s stylistic detail is largely irrelevant to its cinematic execution. In a previous article, I spotlighted how this oversight/limitation can be addressed by bringing film poems into stylistics teaching and assessment. That article showed how stylistic analysis of a poem can be used to drive generation of a screenplay for a film of the poem. But, it did not show how the film could be produced on that basis. In contrast, this article does just that, modelling how a student could make a film from a poem, with their mobile device, where stylistic analysis has been used to stimulate the screenplay. Accompanying this article is a film that I made on a mobile phone. This is of Michael Donaghy’s poem, Machines. In developing this approach for producing film poems via stylistic analysis, I incorporate ideas from the philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, and from his collaboration with the psychoanalyst, Félix Guattari, in their book A Thousand Plateaus. In particular, I make use of their concept of ‘intensive multiplicity’. Generally, this article highlights how common ownership of mobile devices by university students, in many countries, can be used, in conjunction with stylistic analysis, to foster a different approach to interpreting poetry creatively which, in turn, can extend students’ natural capacity for creative thinking.