Poetry and Avant-Garde Film: Three Recent Contributions

Abstract

This article begins with an overview of the relationship of poetry and independent film. It proceeds to focus on three independent films that use the cinematic apparatus as a means of publishing poetry. Waterworx, a film by Canadian Rick Hancox, recycles Wallace Stevens's “A Clear Day and No Memories” in a manner that confirms the accomplishment of the original poem while embedding it, subtly as well as evocatively, within the filmmaker's personal context. nebel (mist), by German filmmaker Matthias Müller, re-presents a cycle of poems by Ernst Jandl, Gedichte an die kindheit (Poems to Childhood). Müller's film carefully weaves a recitation of the Jandl poems together with a variety of “found” visual images, including shots from The Wizard of Oz and home movies made during the 1960s by the filmmaker's father, in a manner that provides evocative confirmations and counterpoints to Jandl's text. Canadian Clive Holden's Trains of Winnipeg republishes a set of the filmmaker's own poems from a book by the same name; it is the first feature film I am aware of that is entirely devoted to the presentation of poetic texts.