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Quick Stats

We’ve been in 34 different venues, from inside the loop to beyond the beltway, organized 136 poetry events involving over 500 poets, among them a Poet Laureate of the United States, 4 Texas State Poet Laureates and 2 Pulitzer Prize nominees. Since launching in 2011, our web site, newsletter and social media has impacted roughly 135,000 people, locally, nationally and internationally. In our work as a presenting organization we feature both hearing and deaf poets. (updated July 2023)

Mission Statement

Public Poetry showcases the enduring power of poetry, conveying poetry’s range, relevance and reach throughout the year. Working locally, nationally and internationally, we sustain diverse minority voices, layer multiple genres, encourage collaboration, commission new work, and create new opportunities and paid work for poets. We initiate collaborative partnerships and engagement to enrich the community and to deliver poetry to audiences in Houston and beyond.

Inclusivity and Diversity

Public Poetry is committed to inclusivity and diversity as a core value that determines how we operate as an organization; how we develop and implement our programs and projects; and how we activate our community outreach. We actively strive to create a social ecosystem where mutual respect thrives; where cultural and physical differences are acknowledged and enabled; and where social justice and anti-racist values are manifest.

Vision Statement

Our vision is to explore the power of poetry; to spread appreciation and enjoyment of poetry, to bring high quality poetry events to public venues; to promote a diverse mix of poetry including academia, spoken word, youth, featuring well-regarded local poets, as well as regional, national and international voices, and to increase awareness of poetry’s varied forms and applications among non-poets and poets alike.

Nominating Committees

Programs

2022 Program

REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2022 ~ FESTIVAL PROGRAM

*NOTE: will be streaming on all tabs

OPENING NIGHT – All times are given as CST (GMT-6)

Friday, February 25, 2022

6:30-8:00 PM ONLINE ONLY: “Deaf Poetry” (interpreted live in English)

Screening poetry videos by deaf artists Willy Conley, Sabina England, Meridith Gray plus conversation about deaf creatives and poetry’s influence

7:00-9:00 PM LIVE EVENT: “Write About Now REELpoetry Showcase”

Curator: Amir Safi

9 spoken word artists performing live simultaneously with their videos + Open Mic

Location: Avant Garden, 411 Westeimer, Houston TX- 77006

9:00-10:00 PM LIVE EVENT “Location: Houston”

Curated Collaboration between Public Poetry & Aurora Picture Show

Screening commissioned filmpoems with poets and filmmakers present to discuss

Location: 2442 Bartlett Street, Houston TX 77098

Location: Houston Screening – Click Here

DAY ONE: ONLINE ONLY– All times are given as CST (GMT-6)

Saturday, February 26, 2022

Noon-12:50 PM REELcafe

Here’s where you can meet people who are as enthusiastic as you are about poetry video and film. Talk about what you are doing, future projects etc. Offer up ideas and suggestions. Find people to collaborate with.

12:45-12:55 PM Welcome to REELpoetry 2022 from Director, Fran Sanders

1:00-2:00 PM Steve Smart, Curator– Stravaig

A ramble through film poems from Scotland and around the world that look firmly at the idea that humans are not separate from other life on this world, just one out-of-kilter part of the whole planet.

2:00-3:00 PM Judges’ Open Call Selections: Part 1

You can vote for audience choice award

3:00-4:00 PM giovanni singleton, Curator– moment by moment: portraits of attention

Frame by frame, visual and poetic explorations of time, create revelations of epic proportions as they move meditatively in and out of view to create an experience of expanded consciousness

4:00-5:00 PM Ian Gibbins: Curator– distURBANce

No idyllic pastorals here. Instead we have a program of urban stories, distorted by the power of advertising, social media, celebrity, with more than a hint of corruption, crime and miscellaneous bad behaviour.

BREAK

6:30-7:30 PM Judges’ Open Call Selections: Part 2

You can vote for audience choice award

7:30-8:30 PM Hélène Matte, Curator: ZumTrobaR and international collaborations

ZumTrobaR experiments with the poems of Paul Zumthor, energized by children’s animations, theatrics and play. Poets and video artists from Mexico City to Montreal, via Paris are also in her orbit.

8:30-9:00 PM Location: Houston Screening of five collaborative commissioned filmpoems by diverse Houston poets and filmmakers.

Location: Houston Screening – Click Here

9:00-10:00 PM REELcafe & open mic: Network and have fun.

DAY TWO: ONLINE ONLY– All times are given as CST (GMT-6)

Sunday, February 27, 2022

Noon-12:50 PM REELcafe

Here’s where you can meet people who are as enthusiastic as you are about poetry video and film. Talk about what you are doing, future projects etc. Offer up ideas and suggestions. Find people to collaborate with.

12:45 -12:55 PM Welcome to REELpoetry 2022 from Director, Fran Sanders

1:00-2:00 PM Colm Scully, Curator – Poetry Film in Ireland

An eclectic selection of recent poetry films from Ireland, from “Murder after the Fair” to “WB Yeats in the City,” their themes and tones considered.

2:00-3:00 PM Judges’ Open Call Selections: Part 3

You can vote for audience choice award

3:00-4:00 PM VIP Green Room Package

Special ticketed event for exclusive access to festival director, curators and judges

3:00-4:30 PM Deaf Poetry (Interpreted in English)

Screening poetry videos by deaf artists Willy Conley, Sabina England, Meridith Gray plus conversation about deaf creatives and poetry’s influence

4:30-5:30 PM Film & Panel Discussion

BREAK

6:30-7:30 PM Sabrina England, Host – Deaf Open Mic (Interpreted live in English) The creativity of deaf poets performing their work is not only exciting to watch, but also contributes in its own right to the power and possibilities that poetry holds.

7:30-8:30 PM Amir Safi, Curator Write About Now REELPoetry Showcase

Watch poetry come alive from the page to the screen to the stage. Featuring, Xach Blunt, Chibbi, LeChell “The Shootah Cristina Martinez, Nikkhoo , Bill Moran, Amir Safi, RJ Wright”

8:30-9:00 PM JUDGES‘ AWARDS and AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS

Four cash prizes totaling $1000 given for best poetry video or film submitted in Category 1 or Category 3 open call. All ticketolder votes count.

9:00-10:00 PM REELcafe + open mic

Final opportunity to network with festival-goers and participate in an open mic

Publications

Wicked Wit

Please try to purchase from your local independent bookseller before you shop on Amazon.

COVER ARTIST: Lydia Bodnar Balahutrak

Mister Bubbles (from Boxed series)

“Mr. Bubbles” is part of a series intended as visual plays on words or phrases …By association, Mr. Bubbles presents a deceptive appearance of [a]… pseudo strongman who hides behind the bull’s head in order to intimidate … a bullheaded bully. However, his body is flaccid and bulbously round, a laughable empty plastic shell with air bubbles in his groin, and no guts. Mr. Bubbles is obviously full of hot air, with bubbles that can be easily popped. Although the series dates from ten years ago, it’s almost uncanny how my work speaks to 2020. Now, due to the pandemic we’re all finding ourselves” boxed” in, one way or another, and in our own personal bubbles. I’ve discovered that this art work exhibits its own “Wicked Wit”! Enjoy!

www.LydiaBodnarBalahutrak.com

2022 ALL SCREENINGS

* – Accessible to Deaf and Hard of Hearing

FRIDAY – February 25th

6:30-8:00 PM CST (GMT -7) : ONLINE ONLY
Deaf Poetry

Willy Conley 5 videos

[2:07] Introduction to Willy Conley‘s creative process on deaf poetry*

[2:21] A Visual Meditation on Natural Gestures *

[1:05] A Deaf Baptism*

[0:46] Hawk Haiku *

[2:33] VGC Storytelling*

[3:41] Working Translation, performed by Carrie Suggs*

[2:00] Meridith Gray’s Studio Painting Process*

Sabina England

[1:21] Sabina England’s Poetry Dance Studio Session*

[3:03] Abode of Felicity*

[2:11] Moon Sufi Poem*

[1:39] The Lotus of Bodhi*

[1:33] Happiness: A Poem for You*

–[5:00] BREAK–

[25:00] Panel Discussion with Willy Conley, Sabina England, Meridith Gray, hosted by Fran Sanders

7:00-9:00 PM CST (GMT -7) : LIVE EVENT
Right About Now – REELpoetry Showcase

9:00-10:00 PM CST (GMT -7): LIVE EVENT
“Location: Houston” Commissioned filmpoems

[5:00] Houston I Hold – Filmmaker Marcelese Cooper + Poet Kinza Muzahir

[5:00] Narrow slender up the bluebonnet way – Filmmaker Brenda Cruz-Wolf + Poet Đức Quang Võ

[5:00] Here, We Move – Filmmaker Ivan Olivia + Poet Zarlasht Niaz

[5:00] Untitled – Filmmaker Fred Schmidt-Arenales + Poet Gabriella Iacono

[5:00] Cancer: Born 21 July 2019, Midnight, Houston – Filmmaker Krista Steinke + Poet Nick Rattner

SATURDAY – February 26th

12:00-12:50 PM CST (GMT-6)
REELcafe – Networking and Open Mic

1:00-2:00 PM CST (GMT-6)
stravaig – Curated by Steve Smart

[00:44] stravaig: Steve Smart

[11:53] The Life-breath Songs: Kathleen Jamie, Alastair Cook and the people of Scotland

[01:22] The Mirror: Jonny Randall & Em Strang

[04:20] a tree speaks: Steve Smart

–[5:00] BREAK–

[10:34] The animal that therefore I am: Bea de Visser

[01:33] Lie on a field on your back: Jesse Adlam and Greta Stoddart

[04:28] Meristem: Alisha Anderson

[02:24] The Wave: Janet Lees & Lucia Sellars

2:00-3:00 PM CST (GMT-6)
JUDGES’ SELECTION: Category 1

[1.07] Anna’s Haiku: Kathryn Darnell*

[2:10] Light Throwing Light on Nothing but Itself: Luke Morgan

[1:08] Concrete: Claire Rosslyn Wilson*

[4:40] Pattern Noster: Yves Bobbie Bommenel*

[1:48] The Cherry Tree: Suzie Hanna, poem by Vicki Feaver

[4:00] Ghosts: Kyra Clegg*

[1:36] Lairs: Emma Penaz Eisner

[3:40] These Days: Ian Gibbins*

–[5:00] BREAK–

[3:27] The Ballad of Diamond Bessie: Kelly Ann Ellis

[1:04] You Are Who You Say You Are: Jeanine Rogers

[2:58] Utility Pole: Mary McDonald & Fiona Tinwei Lam

[2:45] I Love You: Endre Farkas*

[3:30] Price: Jim Hall

[3:24] The Weight of Illusions: Margot Stutts Toombs*

[1:33] Flight: Vanessa Zimmer-Powell*

[2:56] Waxing Gibbous 97% Illuminated: Mitchell Collins & Yolanda Movsessian

[7:00] See Me: A Walk Through London’s Gay Soho: Lee Campbell

3:00-4:00 PM CST (GMT-6)
moment by moment: portraits of attention
Curated by giovanni singleton

[1:05] A Little More Red Sun on the Human: Gillian Conoley

[2:44] In the Winter the Newts: Denise Newman

[0:49] Morning Ritual: Domenic Stansberry

[3:55] Day and Night: Ronaldo V. Wilson

[1:48] Supermarche: Lee Ann Brown

[1:23] The Time of Letter Keeping: Devereux Fortuna

Language has been a surrogate sensorium that gives more refined access points to features of
reality than do my senses. Painting, I am visually anticipating the effects of language in my eyes’
desire for, and failure to perform, temporo-syntactical maintenance.

Laying paint thinner over ruled lines, post-words’ hilly drifts magnetize prolonged looking. I end
up wanting to see what I only have when I read: in the habit of attending language without
comprehending, in a readerly rhythm that I want to feel.

[3:04] Backtalk Blues: Regarding a Gentle Giant Eye (or the work of Virgie Ezelle Patton): Julie Ezelle Patton

[0:46] Poisson Rouge: Lee Ann Brown

[6:19] cracked: the dirt in it: giovanni singleton

excerpts from This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire (W. W. Norton & Company, 2020): Nick Flynn

[1:00] ASTEROID: Nick Flynn

[0:59] SWIFTS: Nick Flynn

[1:00] ANNIHILATION: Nick Flynn

[4:16] Home: Brittny Ray Crowell

4:00-5:00 PM CST (GMT-6)
distURBANce – Curated by Ian Gibbins

[0:51] 42nds: Ian Gibbins

[5:37] Human Condition: Rich Ferguson & Mark Wilkinson

[5:00] On Loop: poet: Christine Hooper & Victoria Manifold

[3:00] We Are the Device: Mark Niehus

[4:08] Bayside Reporter: Ian Gibbins

–[5:00] BREAK–

[5:41] Selfie with Marilyn: Heidi Seaborn & Sarah Tremlett

[3:19] Profile: R.W. Perkins

[3:54] Red Watch: Kyla Kennedy & David Kennedy

[7:41] Heist: Ian Gibbins

6:30-7:30 PM CST (GMT-6)
JUDGES’ SELECTION: Category 1 continued

[2:50] Dark Myriad 7: Eta Dahlia

[1:35] Runwunsch: Jim Hall*

[1:28] Arctic Flight: Endre Farkas*

[2:40] Stitch: Caroline Rumley

[2:00] Legacy: Pamela Falkenberg and Fiona Tinwei Lam

[3:54] Colony Collapse: Ian Gibbins*

[1:19] Beat Heart: Margot Stutts Toombs*

[2:22] The Real Thing: Janet Lees*

[1:00] If Any: Adam E Stone

–[5:00] BREAK–

JUDGES’ SELECTION: Category 3

[2:11] Double-Handed Backhand: Alfio Leotta

[2:16] Pollinating waves: University of Houston students*

[1.30] What you Can’t Take With You: Shirley Camia

[4:58] Dulce et Decorum Est: Walter Haussner

[2:35] Palette of Love: Olga Zhmievskaya*

[1:30] I am Soil Breaking Off: Paloma Sierra*

[4:17] Hop Along Hang On: Cobra Collins

[1:51] Steps: Alison Glennie

[4:02] Masterpiece Rivals: William Carpenter

[1:20] Every Word I say to You: Paloma Sierra*

[3:52] One Old, One Young: Jeffrey N Johnson

7:30-8:30 PM CST (GMT-6)
Hélène Matte, Curator

[1:47] My Pen (Mon crayon): Hélène Matte & children*

[4:08] Sailors at sea 2020: Hélène Matte, poems by P. Zumthor and Adèle Grant (10 years old)*

[8:04] Babel: Hélène Matte , poem by Paul Zumthor*

[6:40] Youth Garden (Jardin de jeunesse): Hélène Matte, poems by P. Zumthor and a children’s collective*

–[5:00] BREAK–

[4:04] Love: Hélène Matte, Nuria Menchaca*

[3:20] Fou!: Hélène Matte, Nuria Menchaca*

[0:27] Bla-bla: Hélène Matte, Olivier Breton*

[2:04] The Black Sheep: Hélène Matte, Olivier Breton*

[7:00] In the Meadow: Hélène Matte, Marion Collé, Marco Dubé*

[4:00] The Lamb: Hélène Matte, Marion Collé, Marco Dubé*

[-:–] The Shepperd’s daughter: Hélène Matte, Alexandre Fatta*

[2:16] Fragiles Vehicles: Hélène Matte, Alexandre Fatta*

8:30-9:00 PM CST (GMT -7)
“Location: Houston” Commissioned filmpoems

[5:00] Houston I Hold – Filmmaker Marcelese Cooper + Poet Kinza Muzahir

[5:00] Narrow slender up the bluebonnet way – Filmmaker Brenda Cruz-Wolf + Poet Đức Quang Võ

[5:00] Here, We Move – Filmmaker Ivan Olivia + Poet Zarlasht Niaz

[5:00] Untitled – Filmmaker Fred Schmidt-Arenales + Poet Gabriella Iacono

[5:00] Cancer: Born 21 July 2019, Midnight, Houston – Filmmaker Krista Steinke + Poet Nick Rattner

SUNDAY – February 27th

12:00-12:50 PM CST (GMT-6)
REELcafe – Networking and Open Mic

1:00-2:00 PM CST (GMT-6)
Colm Scully, Curator

[9:24] The Lammas Hireling: Paul Casey, Ian Duhig

[3:27] The One about the Bird: Melissa Diem

[2:25] Innisfree: Don Carey, W.B. Yeats

[2:10] Light throwing light on nothing but itself: Luke Morgan, Michael Martin

–[5:00] BREAK–

[2:30] Mrs Xavier: Stan Notte

[2:10] Virginia gave me Roses: Fiona Aryan, Lani O’Hanlon

[1:10] A Man is only as good: Pat Boran*

[2:10] Yesterday’s Wardrobe: Colm Scully*

[2:42] At the mid hour of night: Colm Scully, Thomas Moore*

[4:31] Lón: Ciaràn MacArtain, Michelle Delea*

2:00-3:00 PM CST (GMT-6)
JUDGES’ SELECTION: Category 3

[1:12] The Possible Poem: Desiree Jung*

[9:04] The Animal: Nora 6592

[4:45] The Combine: Bill Ratner, Micah Chambers Goldberg

[10:00]The Most Charming Creatures: Catherine Heard

–[5:00] BREAK–

[4:58] The Endless Wasteland: Samuel Mitchell*

[6:24] Winter Sleep: Chad Galloway

[16:24] I Sheep: Teresa Murjas, James Rattee, Jack Thacker

3:00-4:00 PM CST (GMT -7)
VIP Green Room Reception

3:00-4:30 PM CST (GMT -7)
Deaf Poetry

Sabina England

[1:00] Introduction to Sabina England‘s creative process on deaf poetry*

[1:21] Moon + Sufi Poetry Dance Studio Session*

[2:11] Moon Sufi Poem*

[3:03] Abode of Felicity*

[1:37] Flowers in My Hair*

Willy Conley 5 videos

[1:00] Introduction to Willy Conley‘s creative process on deaf poetry*

[2:21] A Visual Meditation on Natural Gestures *

[1:05] A Deaf Baptism*

[0:46] Hawk Haiku *

[2:33] VGC Storytelling*

[3:41] The Universal Drum, performed by Carrie Suggs*

–[5:00] BREAK–

[25:00] Panel Discussion with Willy Conley, Sabina England, Meridith Gray, hosted by Fran Sanders

4:00-5:00 PM CST (GMT-6)
FILM & PANEL DISCUSSION

[16:22] Love Letters In Light: Natalija Vekic, Christian Bruno

[30:00] Panel Discussion with Helen Dewbery [UK], Leila Hamidi [LA], Amir Safi [Houston], Yesika Salgado [LA], Fran Sanders [Houston], and Sarah Tremlett [UK].

6:30-7:30 PM CST (GMT-6)
DEAF OPEN MIC – Hosted by Sabina England*
Interpreted in English*

7:30-8:30 PM CST (GMT-6)
Write About Now – Curated by Amir Safi

8:30-9:00 PM CST (GMT-6)
JUDGES‘ AWARDS and AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS

[20:00] Announcing awards and rescreening award winning films and videos

9:00-10:00 PM CST (GMT-6)
REELcafe – Networking and Open Mic

2022 Program

REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2022 ~ FESTIVAL PROGRAM

*NOTE: will be streaming on all tabs

OPENING NIGHT – All times are given as CST (GMT-6)

Friday, February 25, 2022

6:30-8:00 PM ONLINE ONLY: “Deaf Poetry” (interpreted live in English)

Screening poetry videos by deaf artists Willy Conley, Sabina England, Meridith Gray plus conversation about deaf creatives and poetry’s influence

7:00-9:00 PM LIVE EVENT: “Write About Now REELpoetry Showcase”

Curator: Amir Safi

9 spoken word artists performing live simultaneously with their videos + Open Mic

Location: Avant Garden, 411 Westeimer, Houston TX- 77006

9:00-10:00 PM LIVE EVENT “Location: Houston”

Curated Collaboration between Public Poetry & Aurora Picture Show

Screening commissioned filmpoems with poets and filmmakers present to discuss

Location: 2442 Bartlett Street, Houston TX 77098

Location: Houston Screening – Click Here

DAY ONE: ONLINE ONLY– All times are given as CST (GMT-6)

Saturday, February 26, 2022

Noon-12:50 PM REELcafe

Here’s where you can meet people who are as enthusiastic as you are about poetry video and film. Talk about what you are doing, future projects etc. Offer up ideas and suggestions. Find people to collaborate with.

12:45-12:55 PM Welcome to REELpoetry 2022 from Director, Fran Sanders

1:00-2:00 PM Steve Smart, Curator– Stravaig

A ramble through film poems from Scotland and around the world that look firmly at the idea that humans are not separate from other life on this world, just one out-of-kilter part of the whole planet.

2:00-3:00 PM Judges’ Open Call Selections: Part 1

You can vote for audience choice award

3:00-4:00 PM giovanni singleton, Curator– moment by moment: portraits of attention

Frame by frame, visual and poetic explorations of time, create revelations of epic proportions as they move meditatively in and out of view to create an experience of expanded consciousness

4:00-5:00 PM Ian Gibbins: Curator– distURBANce

No idyllic pastorals here. Instead we have a program of urban stories, distorted by the power of advertising, social media, celebrity, with more than a hint of corruption, crime and miscellaneous bad behaviour.

BREAK

6:30-7:30 PM Judges’ Open Call Selections: Part 2

You can vote for audience choice award

7:30-8:30 PM Hélène Matte, Curator: ZumTrobaR and international collaborations

ZumTrobaR experiments with the poems of Paul Zumthor, energized by children’s animations, theatrics and play. Poets and video artists from Mexico City to Montreal, via Paris are also in her orbit.

8:30-9:00 PM Location: Houston Screening of five collaborative commissioned filmpoems by diverse Houston poets and filmmakers.

Location: Houston Screening – Click Here

9:00-10:00 PM REELcafe & open mic: Network and have fun.

DAY TWO: ONLINE ONLY– All times are given as CST (GMT-6)

Sunday, February 27, 2022

Noon-12:50 PM REELcafe

Here’s where you can meet people who are as enthusiastic as you are about poetry video and film. Talk about what you are doing, future projects etc. Offer up ideas and suggestions. Find people to collaborate with.

12:45 -12:55 PM Welcome to REELpoetry 2022 from Director, Fran Sanders

1:00-2:00 PM Colm Scully, Curator – Poetry Film in Ireland

An eclectic selection of recent poetry films from Ireland, from “Murder after the Fair” to “WB Yeats in the City,” their themes and tones considered.

2:00-3:00 PM Judges’ Open Call Selections: Part 3

You can vote for audience choice award

3:00-4:00 PM VIP Green Room Package

Special ticketed event for exclusive access to festival director, curators and judges

3:00-4:30 PM Deaf Poetry (Interpreted in English)

Screening poetry videos by deaf artists Willy Conley, Sabina England, Meridith Gray plus conversation about deaf creatives and poetry’s influence

4:30-5:30 PM Film & Panel Discussion

BREAK

6:30-7:30 PM Sabrina England, Host – Deaf Open Mic (Interpreted live in English) The creativity of deaf poets performing their work is not only exciting to watch, but also contributes in its own right to the power and possibilities that poetry holds.

7:30-8:30 PM Amir Safi, Curator Write About Now REELPoetry Showcase

Watch poetry come alive from the page to the screen to the stage. Featuring, Xach Blunt, Chibbi, LeChell “The Shootah Cristina Martinez, Nikkhoo , Bill Moran, Amir Safi, RJ Wright”

8:30-9:00 PM JUDGES‘ AWARDS and AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS

Four cash prizes totaling $1000 given for best poetry video or film submitted in Category 1 or Category 3 open call. All ticketolder votes count.

9:00-10:00 PM REELcafe + open mic

Final opportunity to network with festival-goers and participate in an open mic

2022 Curators

6:30-7:30 PM CST (GMT -7) FRIDAY:

ONLINE: “Deaf Poetry” videopoetry & panel(interpreted live in English)

Willy Conley’s latest book is The World of White Water – Poems (Kelsay Books). His other books are: Listening Through the Bone – Collected Poems, Visual-Gestural Communication: A Workbook in Nonverbal Expression and Reception, The Deaf Heart – a Novel, and Vignettes of the Deaf Character and Other Plays. Conley, born profoundly deaf, is a retired professor and former chairperson of theatre arts at Gallaudet University. For more info about his work, please visit:www.willyconley.com

Sabina England is a filmmaker, playwright, and sign language poet who has won multiple awards. She has performed at New York International Fringe Festival and her plays have been produced in London, UK. Her non-fiction piece, Amor Indocumentado has been published in Untold: Defining Tales of the Uprooted (2021). She will collaborate with Missouri Botanical Gardens in the summer of 2022 and explore sounds of plants through sign language, poetry and dance.

Meridith Gray is an artist, interpreter and educator. One of four siblings, she is the second child with hearing loss after her brother, succeeded by a deaf nephew. She began painting at 15 and earned a bachelor of arts in drawing and painting in 2012. Her work explores the poetic allegory that permeates our world. She is interested in depicting relationships in the cosmos, nature and anatomy, as well as using symbolism.

9:00-10:00 PM CST (GMT -7) FRIDAY:

LIVE EVENT “Location: Houston” Commissioned filmpoems

Filmmaker Marcelese Cooper + Poet Kinza Muzahir – Houston I Hold

Filmmaker Brenda Cruz-Wolf + Poet Đức Quang Võ – Narrow slender up the bluebonnet way

Filmmaker Yvan Olivia + Poet Zarlasht Niaz – Here, We Move

Filmmaker Fred Schmidt-Arenales + Poet Gabriella Iacono – Untitled

Filmmaker Krista Steinke + Poet Nick Rattner – Cancer: Born 21 July 2019, Midnight, Houston

7:00-9:00 PM CST (GMT -7) FRIDAY:

LIVE EVENT Write About Now REELpoetry Showcase

Amir Safi is a writer and community organizer based in Houston, Texas. He is the Founder of Write About Now and his work has been featured by Upworthy, HuffPost, A plus, Whataburger and more. He is also a winner of the Poetry International Prize.

Write About Now (aka WAN or WANPOETRY), a community of poets + poetry lovers, has a weekly Houston show every Wednesday at 7:30.In8 years, WAN produced over 1000 short poetry films to help share poetry across the world

1:00–2:00 PM CST (GMT -7) SATURDAY

“Stravaig”

Steve Smart is a poet and artist living in Angus, Scotland. Places his poems have appeared include Atrium, Firth, The Poetry Shed, The Writer’s Café, The Curlew, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Poet’s Corner, Poetry Scotland and others. As well as ecological themes Steve is interested in memory and technology, both working and dysfunctional.

3:00–4:00 PM CST (GMT -7) SATURDAY

moment by moment: portraits of attention

Giovanni Singleton is the author of Ascension, informed by the life and work of Alice Coltrane, which won the California Book Award Gold Medal and AMERICAN LETTERS: works on paper, a collection of visual poetry. She is founding editor of nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, a journal dedicated to experimental work of the African Diaspora and other contested spaces. Her writing has been exhibited at the University of Arizona, Tucson, in the Smithsonian Institute’s American Jazz Museum, and on the building of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Recipient of the African American Literature and Culture Society’s Stephen E. Henderson Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry, singleton has been awarded an inaugural c3: Initiative Letterpress Residency and her dreamography is forthcoming from Noemi Press.

4:00–5:00 pm CST (GMT -7) SATURDAY

distURBANce

Ian Gibbins is a widely published and exhibited poet, video artist and electronic musician living in South Australia. His video poetry, video art and audio art have been shown to acclaim at festivals, exhibitions and installations around the world. He has published four poetry books crossing diverse styles and visual formats. Before he retired in 2014, Ian was an internationally recognized neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia.

7:30–8:30 pm CST (GMT -7) SATURDAY

ZumTrobaR and international collaborations

Hélène Matte has been working in Québec City’s cultural scene for over twenty years as a slasher: writer /poet /curator /mediator /performer /visual artist /mother /citizen. Her artistic practice examines the notions of voice, encounters and experimental poetry.

1:00–2:00 pm CST (GMT -7) SUNDAY

Poetry Film in Ireland

Colm Scully is from Cork, Ireland. He is an engineer and poetry film maker, as well as poet. He has been published in Cyphers, Crannóg, Philosophy Now and many other magazines and anthologies His poetry films have been shown in festivals around the world, including The Film and Video Poetry Symposium Pasadena, The International Film and Video Poetry Festival Athens, REEL Poetry Houston, Carmarthen Bay Film Festival, Dublin International Short Film Festival and Cork Indie Film Festival. His films have won prizes at Rabbits Heart Poetry Film Festival 2018 and MicroMania Film Festival, New York 2021 You can watch them at https://vimeo.com/user29903251

2022 REELresources

The Poetics of Poetry Film
Sarah Tremlett
Intellect Books, UK, June, 2021
also available through The University of Chicago Press, USA

‘A ground-breaking, encyclopedic work and industry Bible, comprising nearly 400 pages, with multiple contributors … it explores the history and different types of poetry film, a must for students, researchers, poets, filmmakers, across the fields of media, filmmaking, literary and cultural studies, art and philosophy and sheds light on the fast- growing genre … it has become mandatory reading at universities worldwide ’

https://www.intellectbooks.com/the-poetics-of-poetry-film

Sarah Tremlett www.sarahtremlett.com is a prize-winning, international poetry film-maker, poet and theorist particularly interested in the philosophy of practice in audio-visual media and poetry film. A director and editor of Liberated Words online www.liberatedwords.com she has given numerous talks on the subject, is a curator and juror at leading poetry film festivals and shows her work worldwide.

Deaf Poetry:

Poetry Video and Film Festival:

ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival – Berlin, Germany
October 13 – 16m 2022

Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival – Vienna, Austria
Winter 2023 (Biennial)

International Poetry Film Festival – Athens, Greece
March 10, 2022

Cadence Video Poetry Festival – Seattle, WA
April 21-25, 2022

Festival Photogenia – Mexico City
November 22-24, 2022

Liberated Words, Bristol, England
TBD

Lyrical Visions, Poetry Film Festival – Aukand, New Zealand
December, 2022

International Poetry Film Festival – Venice CA
TBD

Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Poetry Festival – Ireland
25th-27th Nov 2022

Online Sites for Poetry Video and Film:

Film Poetry

https://filmpoetry.org

Poetry Film Live

https://poetryfilmlive.com

Moving Poems

https://movingpoems.com

Motion Poems

https://www.motionpoems.org

Liberated Words

https://liberatedwords.com

Helen Dewberry:

Poetry Film Workshop & Training

Cancer: Born 21 July 2019, Midnight, Houston

“Cancer: Born 21 July 2019, Midnight, Houston” – Shot on Super 8mm film, “Cancer: Born 21 July 2019, Midnight, Houston” is a video poem that depicts, in mythic terms, a parent’s attempt to share with their child the beauties and depravities of the city of their nativity: Houston.

Krista Leigh Steinke, Filmmaker, is a lens-based artist and educator working in photography, moving image, and installation. Her work, situated between the photographic and the abstract, presents poetic reflections on time, place, perception, and the interconnection between human experience and the natural world. She regularly exhibits and screens her work in museums, galleries, and film festivals across the country, as well as internationally. She currently divides her time between Houston, TX and rural New York State.

Nick Rattner, Poet, is Editor-in-Chief of Gulf Coast. He is a former basketball journalist and Editor for Ugly Duckling Presse. New work has appeared / will soon appear in Colorado Review, The Cortland Review, Sixth Finch, Pleiades, Asymptote, and Denver Quarterly. With Marta del Pozo, he has translated the work of poets Yván Yauri and Czar Gutiérrez. At present, he is translating Spanish poet Juan Andrés García Román and Mexican novelist Salvador Elizondo.

Judges

JUDGES: ENOUGH Anthology (2019)

Robin Davidson is a poet, translator, and professor of English at the University of Houston- Downtown. She is author of Luminous Other, recipient of The Ashland Poetry Press’s 2012 Richard Snyder Memorial Publication Prize. She is co-translator with Ewa Elżbieta Nowakowska of The New Century: Poems by Ewa Lipska (Northwestern UP)as well as two poetry chapbooks, Kneeling in the Dojo (Finishing Line Press) and City that Ripens on the Tree of the World (Calypso Editions). She has received, among other awards, a Fulbright professorship at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and an NEA translation fellowship.

In May 2015 she was named Houston’s second Poet Laureate by Mayor Annise Parker.

Roy G. Guzmán is a Honduran poet whose first collection is coming out from Graywolf Press in 2020.

Raised in Miami, Florida, Roy is a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. They are also the recipient of a 2017 Minnesota State Arts Board Initiative grant and the 2016 Gesell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Their work has been included in the Best New Poets 2017 anthology, guest-edited by Natalie Diaz, and Best of the Net 2017, guest-edited by Eduardo C. Corral.

Roy also participated in the first Poetry Incubator, sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Crescendo Literary, and was invited to run a workshop during the Incubator’s second year. After the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, their poem “Restored Mural for Orlando” was turned into a chapbook with the help of poet and visual artist, D. Allen, to raise funds for the victims. With poet Miguel M. Morales, Roy edited the anthology Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando, published by Damaged Goods Press.

In 2016, Roy was the recipient of a Scribe for Human Rights Fellowship, focusing on issues affecting migrant farm workers in Minnesota. That same year, they were chosen to participate in the fourth Letras Latinas Writers Initiative gathering, sponsored by Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, in partnership with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the MFA Program at Arizona State University. Roy returned to Arizona as a Letras Latinas Scholar in 2018.

In 2015, they were awarded a GRPP Graduate Research Fellowship to investigate trauma caused by violence in and migration from Honduras. In 2018, Roy was awarded a second GRPP Graduate Research Fellowship to travel to Honduras for research.

Roy holds degrees from the University of Minnesota, Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and the Honors College at Miami Dade College. They currently live in Minneapolis, where they are pursuing a PhD in Cultural Studies (Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society) at the University of Minnesota.

Carmen Giménez Smith is an American poet and lyric essay writer. She has won a number of awards for her poetry including the Juniper Prize for her third collection of poems, titled Goodbye, Flicker, published in 2012. The following year her collection called Milk and Filth won the National Book Critics Circle Award (Poetry). In 2010 she was awarded the American Book Award for her memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds. Around the same time she produced three chapbooks” Glitch (2010), followed by Reason’s Monster and Can We Talk Here in 2011.

She joined the creative writing program at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, gained a Master of Fine Arts degree and joined the teaching staff as a Teaching-Writing Fellow. Her latest academic post is at the New Mexico State University, as assistant professor in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing and editing the university literary magazine, Puerto del Sol. She also champions women in the literary world as a committee member of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-director of Canto Mundo, a national organization that cultivates a community of Latinx poets.

Patricia Spears Jones’s poetry collections include Painkiller (2010), Femme du Monde(2006), The Weather That Kills (1995), and several chapbooks. Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies, including Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (2013), Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days (2010), Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009), and Best American Poetry (2000).

A contributing editor at BOMB magazine, Spears Jones has also served as a program coordinator for the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and led the New Works Program for the Massachusetts Council of Arts and Humanities. Her honors include an appointment as senior fellow for the Black Earth Institute, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Art and the New York Community Trust, and residencies at Yaddo, Bread Loaf, the Millay Colony, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

A resident of New York for more than 30 years, Spears Jones has taught at LaGuardia Community College and Queens College CCNY, Parsons, The New School, and the College of New Rochelle. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

JUDGES: POWER (2018)

Cyrus Cassells’ has five poetry collections: The Crossed-Out Swastika, More Than Peace and Cypresses (both from Copper Canyon Press); Beautiful Signor which won the Lambda Literary Award; Soul Make a Path Through Shouting , which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and received the William Carlos Williams Award; and The Mud Actor , his first book, which was a National Poetry Series selection. Cassells is the recipient of a 1995 Pushcart Prize, the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Award and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has worked as a translator, film critic, actor and teacher. He is a professor of English at Texas State.

TONY HOAGLAND has authored 5 books of poetry, most recently Application for Release from the Dream: Poems (2015). Other titles include Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, Sweet Ruin, winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets, and What Narcissism Means to Me, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as two collection of essays about poetry, Real Sofistikashun, & Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays all published by Graywolf Press. He has received the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, the Mark Twain Award from the Poetry Foundation, and the O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, as well as NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships among others. He teaches at the University of Houston and in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

RAINA J. LEÓN is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, CantoMundo and Macondo, and has been published in over 50 publications in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and academic scholarship. Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize and the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Her second book, Boogeyman Dawn was a finalist for the Naomi Long Madgett Prize. In 2016, her third book, sombra: dis(locate) and a chapbook, profeta without refuge, were released. She has received fellowships and residencies with Macondo, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Montana Artists Refuge, the Macdowell Colony, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale. She is currently an associate professor of education in the Kalmanovitz School of Education at St. Mary’s College of California.

SASHA WEST‘s first book Failure and I Bury the Body, was selected by D. Nurkse for the National Poetry Series, and published by Harper Collins. Her poems have appeared in the Southern Review, Ninth Letter, Forklift, Ohio, Third Coast, Born, and elsewhere. She holds graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Houston, where she was editor of Gulf Coast. Her work has garnered awards including scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Rice University’s Parks Fellowship, Pushcart nominations, and Inprint’s Verlaine Prize. She lives in Austin and teaches writing at the University of Texas’s LBJ School of Public Affairs.

JUDGES: WORK (2017)

Niki Herd is the author of The Language of Shedding Skin (Main Street Rag). Herd co-edited with Meg Day Laura Hershey: On the Life & Work of an American Master (Pleiades Press). Herd’s poetry, essays, and criticism appear in or are forthcoming from Oxford University Press, Copper Nickel, Academy of American Poets (Poem-a-Day), Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and Salon, among other journals and anthologies. Her work has been supported by the Ucross Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Newberry Library, and Cave Canem.

Lily Hoang is the author of four books, including Changing, recipient of a PEN Open Books Award. Her choose-your-own adventure love story Old Cat Lady is forthcoming from 1913 Books in October 2015. With Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she edited the anthology The Force of What’s Possible: Writers on Accessibility and the Avant-Garde. She teaches in the MFA program at New Mexico State University, where she is Associate Department Head. She is Prose Editor at Puerto del Sol and Nonfiction Editor at Drunken Boat.

Yerra Sugarman is the author of three poetry collections: Forms of Gone, which was a National Book Critics Circle “Favorite First Book,” The Bag of Broken Glass, which was a National Book Critics Circle “Recommended Book,” and Aunt Bird Her poetry, translations, and critical articles have appeared in numerous journals. She has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, PEN American Center’s PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, a “Discovery”/The Nation Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award and its Cecil Hemley Memorial Award, a Canada Council Grant for Creative Writers, a Chicago Literary Award, and a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award.

Elizabeth Lyons holds an MFA from Purdue University and is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Houston. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Indiana Review, New South, and Salt Hill. A recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Vermont Studio Center, the I-Park Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets, she lives in Houston, TX.

Programs

Library Reading Series

REELpoetry

WORDFIRE!

Wicked Wit

REELpoetry: Day 3 Juried Selections

10:30-11: 20 PM FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26

Details (Austria) Filmmaker Judith Lava Poet Isabel Walter [2:20]
Bearing Witness Triptych: Just Breathe the Air (USA) Filmmakers Jack Cochran & Pamela Falkenberg Poet Jack Cochran [3:58]
Zuerst/First (USA) Filmmaker Jim Hall Poet Sophie Reyer [2:50]
Deternity (Austria) Filmmakers Mersolis Schöne & Evi Jägle Poet Friedrich Nietzsche [2:45]
From Father to Daughter: The Cuba Film (USA) Filmmaker Margo Stutts Toombs Poet Germaine Welch [4:00]
Elecrified (Ireland) Filmmaker & Poet Colm Scully [1:10]
Ono No Kochami (Germany) Filmmaker Mascha Dilger Poet Clara Sondermann[2:44]
The 90s (USA) Filmmaker Elisabeth Flenniken Poet Kathleen Flenniken [1:50]
Pregnant with the Dead (USA) Filmmaker Tova Beck-Friedman Poet Susan Rich [3:37]
This Window is not for Looking Out (Australia) Filmmaker Peter Aland Poet Michael O’Dell [1:31]
And the People (USA) Filmmakers Julia Ngeow & Marion Bergin Poet Kitty O’Meara [3:33]
Pislia/After (Ukraine) Filmmaker & Poet Sophia or Sophie Holovetska or Sophie Lenartovych [2:07]
Dad by Numbers (Australia) Filmmaker Diane Charleson Poet Carolyn Masel [3:07]
Tornado (Canada) Filmmaker & Poet Kathryn Mockler [2:08]
Blue (USA) Filmmaker Vanessa Zimmer-Powell Poet Carrie Garns Kornacki [1:16]

DECONSTRUCTED & RECONSTRUCTED

Public Poetry created a contest for REELpoetry whereby poets used 5 pre-selected short film and video clips to inspire their poems. A panel of judges selected the best ekphrastic pieces. Selected poets chose their own music, typeface, person to read, – choices normally left to the filmmaker. Mary McDonald and Sarah Tremlett used this information to create the filmpoetry & videopoems based on the poets’ choices:

Apologies: Linda Goin [1:30]
To Live Once More: Juliane Tran [1:30]
A Moving Portrait: Linda Eve Diamond [1:30]
Unspeakable: Connie Levesque [1:30]
Washed out dreams: Sarah Mental [1:30]
City of Stone, City of Trees: Linda Nemec Foster [1:30]

REELpoetry: Workshop

FRIDAY: 7:00-8:00 PM CST

Live Talk: Behind the Scenes — Creating Immersion Limit 30

Join Mary McDonald, award winning media artist for a live talk with Q and A on the possibilities offered by Augmented and Mixed Reality, 360 and binaural sound, and mixed media layers. Learn tools, techniques, tips and tricks for going beyond flat video to create immersive artistic experiences. Explore the ways to expand the boundaries of your art. McDonald will demonstrate the tools and techniques used to create her three most recent projects — Times in Sound, a 360 Binaural Sound experience, Augmented Reality poetry installation, On the Margin of History and the multilayered poetry film, Wishing Well, for River Revery, an outdoor Augmented Reality poetry installation.

SATURDAY: 10:30 AM – noon CST

**Hands On Workshop: Mobile Editing Tools (No Prior Experience Necessary – Limit 20)**

Join award winning media artist and poetry filmmaker Mary McDonald for a hands-on workshop on how to use accessible mobile editing tools for video and photos. These mobile apps allow you to easily perform sophisticated editing of film and photos, opening the door to all poets and artists, no experience necessary. Bring your smartphone or tablet, photos and video clips, and your unique vision and creativity. We will walk through the process of creating film from a variety of media using free/low cost apps. To participate in this hands-on workshop, please download the mobile video editing app prior to the workshop. Videoleap (iPhone) or Vivacut (Android)

Mary McDonald is a Canadian writer and multimedia artist whose work explores word through sound, image, and movement. McDonald is passionate about creating with digital technology, bringing text and multimedia art directly into community, historic and natural spaces through AR (augmented reality). McDonald’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses text, photography, poetryfilm, music and sound, interactive AR (augmented reality) installations, and community participatory arts projects. Her poetry films and AR installations have been exhibited widely in Canada and internationally. McDonald’s poetry film and AR installation, On the Margin of History, created from the collaborative poem of Syrian poet Mohamad Kebbewar and Serbian born poet, Natasha Boskic, was exhibited at the Glucksman Gallery in Cork, Ireland; in Novi Sad, Serbia for the Fortress of Peace platform; in Bath, UK; in Porto, Portugal and at the Surrey City Art Gallery, BC, Canada where her work was awarded first prize in new media, performative and digital work. Poetry films from her River Revery work were screened at Wordsfest, London; Houston’s Reel Poetry Film Festival, and Newlyn International Film Festival, UK. McDonald’s play, 13 inches of closet space was performed through the London One Act Festival and her poly-vocal poem, “It’s all in the telling” was performed as part of Whissper. Her writing has been published in Occasus and The New Quarterly. Mary was awarded a city of London’s Community Arts Investment Program grant by the London Arts Council for, River Revery AR/poetry film/transmedia storytelling collaboration with poet, Penn Kemp. McDonald’s most recent project is Times in Sound, Letters of War, a 360 binaural sound work composed of over 700 fragments of WWI letters.

https://www.facebook.com/marymcdonald.ca/

https://www.instagram.com/marymcdonaldmixingthearts/

https://twitter.com/MaryMMc3

https://marymcdonald.ca

REELPoetry: Segments

FROM Fran Sanders:

Welcome

FROM Matvey Rezanov:

Happy Time: Watercolor Artist & Filmmaker Matvey Rezanov

FROM Sarah Tremlett:

Firewash [UK] Filmmaker & Poet Sarah Tremlett 4:07]

Lockdowning I [UK] Filmmaker & Poet Sarah Tremlett [3:37]

Selfie with Marilyn (UK/USA) Filmmaker Sarah Tremlett Poet Heidi Seaborn [5:40]

FROM Mary McDonald:

Talk on Mixing the Arts [1:30]

Wishing Well Creative Concept, Photography, Animation, Music and Sound Mary McDonald Poem Penn Kemp [4:11]

On the Margin of History Creative Concept, Artist and Filmmaker, Mary McDonald Poem Mohamad Kebbewar & Natasha Boskic [9:46]

FROM Helen Dewbery:

On the Ills of Smoking (UK) Filmmaker Shauna Robertson Poet Shauna Robertson [2:59]

Fecund (UK) Filmmaker Kathy Gee Poet Kathy Gee [1:15]

Territory (UK) Filmmaker Nina Lewis Poet Nina Lewis [1:47]

Complicity (UK) Filmmaker Tom Sastry Poet Tom Sastry [2:06]

Bound and Gagged (UK) Filmmaker Dominic Weston Poet Dominic Weston [2:39]

FROM: Eleanor Livingstone:

Poetry reading and talk

FROM Sabina England:

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heavens (USA) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: WB Yeats [02:47]

Allah Earth: Costa Rica (USA/Costa Rica) Filmmaker & Poet: Sabina England [05:23]

Into the Woods, Love is Death (USA) Filmmaker & Poet Sabina England [1:36]

Salomé (USA) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: N/A [00:57]

Love Poems by Kabir in Sign Language (USA) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: Kabir [01:42]

A Poem at the Romain Ruins (USA/Italy) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: Sabina England [01:56]

FROM: Lucy English:

I Want to Breathe Sweet Air (USA) Filmmaker Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran Poet Lucy English [8:00]

FROM: Chaucer Cameron:

Extracts from I Live My Life through windows (UK) Filmmakers Helen Dewbery & Chaucer Cameron Poet Chaucer Cameron [11:00]

FROM: Reynaliz Herrera

Wind Commissioned Music Composition [1:30]

Jungle Commissioned Music Composition [1:30]

Excerpt from Ideas Not Theories [4:00]

REELpoetry: Helen Dewbery - Poems, Poets & Poetry Films

For two years, Helen Dewbery has been collaborating with poets published by Nine Arches Press to create poetry film. Showing some of these poetry films, Helen will talk about how she approaches this work, the challenges that have arisen, and some of the key processes used to create these unique works.

Song of the Soil (UK) Filmmaker Helen Dewbery Poet Jessica Mookherjee [2:21]

Metaphysician (UK) Filmmaker Helen Dewbery Poet: Gregory Leadbetter [4:20]

Woman Running Alone (UK) Filmmaker Helen Dewbery Poet Maria Taylor [ 1:54]

Bowing Out (UK) Filmmaker Helen Dewbery Poet Rosie Garland [3:15]

Neap Tide (UK) Filmmaker Helen Dewbery Poet Abegail Morley [2:36]

Helen Dewbery talks about, writes about and creates poetry films, and established Poetry Film Live, the online poetry film journal. Her poetry films have been shown at poetry events and festivals in the UK and internationally. She provides training and support for new practitioners of poetry film and has worked with poets to make collaborative work. Helen is co-director of The Big Poetry Weekend festival in Swindon, UK.

REELpoetry: Juried Selections

1:00 – 1:47 PM and 7:00 – 7:47 PM THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25

Karl Lost His Car Keys (USA) Filmmaker & Poet Jim Hall [1:42]

Girl Lessons (USA) Poet & Filmmaker Vanessa Zimmer-Powell [ 1:08]

Window to Bucharest (Romania) Filmmaker & Poet Teodora Tudose [ 1:49]

Behind the Music (USA) Filmmakers Charles Sapp & Trisha LaCoste, Poet Charles Sapp [ 3:03]

Posthumous Echoes (Australia), Filmmaker Fiona Walsh Poets Kelly Lee Hickey, Kumalie Riley, Veronica Perurrle[ 7:16]

Call it Ours (UK), Filmmaker Matt Kynaston, Poet Desree [ 2:30]

The Dealer (UK), Filmmaker Stephanie Cobban, Poet Chloe Jacquet [ 3:15]

Seasonal Nights (USA) Filmmaker & Poet: William Carpenter, Animator Byron Olson [: 2:00]

A Summary (Zimbabwe) Filmmaker & Poet Ntombi Masuku, [ 1:24]

Elegy for Unfinished Lives (USA)Filmmaker & Poet Adam E. Stone, [2:00]

Scent of Dreams (USA) Filmmaker Mitchell Collins, Poet Yolanda Movsessian, [ 1:59]

Novena (Canada) Filmmaker & Poet Shirley Camia, [Runtime: 1:58]

Bass Pro Shop (USA) Filmmakers Doug Lehmann & Maria or Po Silver, Poet Chet Weise [2:22]

Leaves of City (Spain)Filmmaker Carles Pamies, Poet Walt Whitman, [ 4:00]

Gettin’ On with it (Denmark) Filmmaker & Poet Elizabeth Torres (Madam Neverstop) [ 3:40]

Borderland (Ireland) Filmmaker Seamus and Jim Mc Dermott, Poet Seamus Mc Dermott [ 5:00]

Pandemic (USA) Filmmaker & Poet Ijeoma ‘E&J’ Eke Artist Mattia Adorni [ 1:18]

Solicitude(USA) Filmmaker & Poet Arianna Dubauskas, [4:00 ]

Offering (USA) Filmmaker Dominique Nguyen, Poet Kelly Ann Ellis, [4:00]

This is Just to Say (Germany)Filmmaker Christiane Hitzermann, Poet William Carlos William, 2:00]

Lukomorye (Russian Federation) Filmmaker Nick Rybnikov, Poet Alexander Pushkin, [3:00]

REELpoetry Day 4 Juried Selections

1:00-1:42 PM CST SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27

Food Medicine (USA) Filmmaker & Poet Lani Cupchoy [3:28]

What is the Virus? Really? (USA) Filmmaker & Poet Margo Stutts Toombs [2:24]

Life Without Moon (Spain) Filmmaker & Poet Carles Pamies [4:00]

#Black Lives Matter (USA) Filmmaker & Poet Ijeoma ‘E&J’ Eke [4:00]

Knot Waking (USA) Filmmaker & Poet Lauren Flinner [3:38]

Lullaby (United Kingdom) Filmmaker Wendy Pye Poet Maria Jastrzebska [4:00]

An Afternoon in May (USA) Filmmaker & Poet Dominic Traverzo [2:30]

Yesterday’s Wardrobe (Ireland) Filmmaker & Poet Colm Scully [2:08]

Requiem for a Spoken Word (USA) Filmmaker Jim Hall Poet Marc Zegans [3:10]

My Black-eyed Canada (Canada) Filmmaker & Poet Hélène Matte [2:47]

Rattle (Australia) Filmmaker & Poet Mark Niehus [2:00]

DECONSTRUCTED & RECONSTRUCTED

Public Poetry created a contest for REELpoetry whereby poets used 5 pre-selected short film and video clips to inspire their poems. A panel of judges selected the best ekphrastic pieces. Selected poets chose their own music, typeface, person to read, – choices normally left to the filmmaker. Mary McDonald and Sarah Tremlett used this information to create the filmpoetry & videopoems based on the poets’ choices.

Wild Calls Us Into Being: Laura Grace Weldon [1:30]

My artist friend: Stefan Martin [1:30]

The Crossing: Carolyn Dahl 1:30]

Musings: Keb Fillipone 1:30]

Lost: Ann McCrady 1:30] 3

REELpoetry: Eleanor Livingstone: Best of StAnza International Festival

2:00 – 3:00 PM THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25

Since 2007 StAnza has offered a film program as part of each spring festival, showing the cutting-edge medium of the filmpoem as well as filmed readings and performances. For REELpoetry, Festival Director, Eleanor Livingstone, has collected a selection of short films from recent festivals, ranging from the playful to the poignant and interrogating themes from climate crisis to folklore. These include films commissioned by or created for StAnza, and also sourced from across Scotland and beyond – Sweden, Romania and the Netherlands. StAnza 2021 will take place online from 6–14 March at www.stanzapoetry.org

De Van Man Taal (Netherlands) directed by Juan de Graaf, from il Luster, Ruben van Gogh [1.47]

Leavings (England) filmed by the Society of Authors, Jaqueline Saphra [1.41]

Being Home (Romania) animations by artist Raluca Popa, curated by Simona Nastac and produced by the National Museum of Romanian Literature Matei Hutopila [0.38]

The North Torn in Two (Romania) animations by artist Raluca Popa, curated by Simona Nastac and produced by the National Museum of Romanian Literature Matei Hutopila [0.58]

Room 309 (Romania) animations by artist Raluca Popa, curated by Simona Nastac and produced by the National Museum of Romanian Literature Livia Ștefan [1.45]

Sausages (Romania) animations by artist Raluca Popa, curated by Simona Nastac and produced by the National Museum of Romanian Literature Andrei Dosa [0.51]

What Pushed Me into Darkness (Romania) animations by artist Raluca Popa, curated by Simona Nastac and produced by the National Museum of Romanian Literature Victor Țvetov [1.43]

The City (Sweden/Syrian) by film maker Marie Silkeberg, Ghayath Almadhoun [6.59]

Raaga (Scotland) film also by Roseanne Watt, Roseanne Watt [3.03]

Trawl (Scotland) by Steve Smart, music composted and performed by Alex South, Matthew Caley [2.06]

Bright Coast (Scotland) Images by Bryan Angus, Music by Pete Stollery, Martin Malone [3.16]

When I think of my mother (Scotland) Jinling Wu, Music Orbit by Corbyn Kites, Jinling Wu [1.38]

Homefound (Scotland) Video by Catherine Wilson, Catherine Wilson [5.48]

Eleanor Livingstone is a Scottish poet and editor. She is the Director of StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival (www.stanzapoetry.org). Her first full collection, Even the Sea (Red Squirrel Press, 2010), now in a second edition, was shortlisted for the 2010 inaugural London New Poetry award for first collections. Her other publications include The Last King of Fife (HappenStance, 2005), A Sampler (HappenStance, 2008) and as editor Skein of Geese (The Shed Press, 2008), Migraasje: Versions in Scots and Shetlandic (Stravaigers, 2008), Bridging the Continental Divide (StAnza, 2015), Necessarily Looking Backward (StAnza, 2018) and The Arch (StAnza 2019).

REELpoetry: Open House

it would look like this if it could…

Here’s where you can meet up with people who are as enthusiastic as you are about videopoetry and poemfilms. Introduce yourself to each other. Talk about what you are doing now, future projects etc. Offer up ideas and suggestions. Find people to collaborate with. Share information about your experiences with other festivals. Let others know about opportunities to show work in different parts of the world. Network and have fun.

REELpoetry: Sabina England - Signed Poetry

Sabina England’s specialty is combining sign language, poetry, and performance art in her films. Using deaf sign language, she injects a compelling element that animates her work and speaks to us in new ways. Sabina is including a new videopoem in progress that will premier at REELpoetry, and has also curated this selection of films that samples some of her work.

Poetry by Rumi in Sign Language (USA) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: Malawa Rumi [02:11]

Abode of Felicity (USA) Filmmaker & Poet: Sabina England [02:55]

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heavens (USA) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: WB Yeats [02:47]

Deaf Brown Gurl (USA/India)Filmmaker & Poet: Sabina England [08:12]

Wild Whispers: New Mexico (USA) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: Chaucer Cameron [4:59]

Shanghai Sabz-2200 / Cyberpunk TechDream (USA/China) Filmmaker & Poet: Sabina England [01:58]

Seasons / Mawsam (USA) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: N/A [06:12]

Poema 15 Por Pablo Neruda (USA) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: Pablo Neruda [05:13]

Into the Woods Love is Death (USA) Filmmaker & Poet: Sabina England [01:36]

Namaz Ki Udasi (India/USA) Filmmaker: Sabina England, Poet: N/A [07:17]

Allah Earth: Costa Rica (USA/Costa Rica) Filmmaker & Poet: Sabina England [05:23]

Sabina England is a filmmaker, playwright and performance artist. She studied at London Film Academy and received a certificate in filmmaking. She originally started out writing stage plays, a few which were performed in London, UK, at Soho Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, East 15 Acting School, and Tristan Bates Theater. She then pivoted to filmmaking, releasing silent comedy shorts on Youtube, which got the attention of famed movie critic, Roger Ebert, who praised her works in one of his newsletters. Sabina then wrote, directed and produced her first narrative short, Wedding Night, which premiered at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City. Over the years, Sabina has won several awards for her short films and multimedia projects.

You may visit SabinaEngland.com for more information and follow her on Instagram @Sabina_England to stay updated on her works

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REELpoetry Videopoetry Rising

3:00 – 3:15 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25

Dave Bonta: “I picture a poem in my mind when I’m writing or reading a poem, picture it semiconsciously, as like a room or a house without any furniture, and the reader furnishes it.” In this conversation we learn about creating content, communicating, overcoming technical barriers and more. Dave has assembled the go-to site to see and think about filmpoetry and videopoems, Moving Poems, which is accurately tagged as “the best poetry videos on the web.”

REELpoetry Future Vision: Shaping Hybrid Festivals

Noon- 1 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28

The genie’s out of the bottle and there is no going back. There’s a whole world that’s capable of watching us. So, how do we incorporate virtual elements into live festivals as we go forward? Join panelists Chaucer Cameron, Helen Dewbery, Sabina England, Lucy English; Eleanor Livingstone, Mary McDonald, Fran Sanders and Sarah Tremlett as they think out loud, speculate and conjecture, explore and experiment, and wrestle with their collective thoughts of this hybrid hydra that becomes a new form of festival with infinite possibilities.

REELpoetry GREENROOM

We’d love to have you join us. For supporting REELpoetry by buying a VIP ticket, you’ll get to experience an exclusive Green Room Reception with presenters, festival director & select filmmakers & poets; complementary 2022 Open Call submission; new basic or upgraded membership in Public Poetry, presenting organization for the REELpoetry Festival.

If you are a new or current Public Poetry member, you’ll receive a 20% discount on your VIP ticket. Membership details are HERE

REELpoetry: Lucy English - Book of Hours

DAY 3 – FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26

The Book of Hours is a calendar of poetry films inspired by medieval books of hours. The themes are our complicated relationship with landscape, the unreliability of memory, and the unexpected beauty of moments in our lives. This selection follows the seasons through one year. The Book of Hours was shortlisted for the New Media Writing Award in 2018.

The Shadow (USA) Filmmakers Pamela Falkenberg, Jack Cochran Poet Lucy English [4:19]

Do Nothing (UK) Filmmaker Helen Dewbery Poet Lucy English [2:47]

The Retreat (Australia) Filmmaker Marie Craven Poet Lucy English [1:43}

The Woman at the Window (USA) Filmmaker: Marcia Pelletiere Poet Lucy English [2:07]

The River Girl (UK) filmmaker Helena Astbury Poet Lucy English [2:07]

What is Love (Spain) Filmmaker Eduardo Yague Poet Lucy English [3:27]

The Perseids (Belgium) Filmmaker Marc Neys Poet Lucy English [3:01]

Still There (USA) Filmmaker Matt Mullins Poet Lucy English [ 3 :19]

Things I found in The Hedge (USA) Filmmaker Kathryn Darnell Poet Lucy English [3:00]

Solstice Sol Invictus (UK) Filmmaker Sarah Tremlett Poets Lucy English, Sarah Tremlett [2: 57]

Lucy English is a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University where she is head of the Creative Writing Research Centre. She is a spoken word poet and novelist. She is co-director, with Sarah Tremlett, of Liberated Words, a CIC company, which creates, curates and screens poetry films. Lucy’s most recent project is, The Book of Hours, a reimagining of a medieval book of hours in poetry film format. The Book of Hours contains 48 poetry films created in collaboration with 27 collaborators from Europe, America and Australia. Films from this project have been screened at many international poetry film festivals including Visible Verse, Canada; Weimar and Zebra, Germany; Lisbon, Portugal; Newlyn in the U.K and Athens, Greece. The poetry from this project was published in book form by Burning Eye Press in 2018.

REELpoetry: Chaucer Cameron: Wild Whispers

Wild Whispers is an exciting and collaborative transnational poetry film project. It started with one poem and led to 14 versions in 10 languages and 12 poetry films. The films, in different languages, were all ‘whispered’ from the previous one. The project travelled from England to India, Australia, Taiwan, France, South Africa, the Netherlands, Sweden, Wales and the USA, creating poetry films in English, Malayalam, Chinese, French, Afrikaans, Dutch, American Sign Language, Navajo, Spanish, and Welsh. Chaucer will talk about the inspiration behind this project and show some of the films.

Frog on Water (UK: English) Filmmaker and editor: Helen Dewbery Poet: Chaucer Cameron
Vellatthinu Mukalile Thavala/ Paani Par Mendhak (India: Malayalam and Urdu) Filmmaker and editor Rajesh James Translation Jose Varghese

Shadow Lullaby (Australia: English) Filmmaker and editor Marie Craven Translation Jhilmil Breckenridge, Candida Baker

綠金色的陰影躍進我的眼睛 (Taiwan: Chinese) Translation, filmmaker and editor: Ye Mimi

Une ombre vert mordoré est entrée dans mes yeux (France and Morocco: French) Filmmaker and editor: bobie (Yves Bommenel) Translation: Marie Laureillard

’n Brons-groen skaduwee in my oë / bronze-green shadow in my eyes
(South Africa Language: Afrikaans) Filmmaker, director and translation Erentia Bedeker Editor: Diek Grobler

In het woud (Netherlands: Dutch) Translation, filmmaker and director Judith Dekker

no title ( New Mexico, USA: Navajo, American Sign Language and English)
Filmmaker and editor: Sabina England Translation: Meryl Van Der Bergh (Dutch to English translation), World Translation Center (Navajo), Sabina England (American Sign Language and improved English prose).

frog_poem_text.doc (Berlin, Germany & Austin, Texas: English) Filmmaker and editor Annelyse Gelman Translation: Annelyse Gelman / Google Translate

Búsqueda (UK: Spanish) Translation: Cristina Navazo-Eguía Newton

La búsqueda (Sweden: Spanish) Filmmaker and editor: Eduardo Yagüe
Translation: Cristina Navazo-Eguía Newton

Chwiliad (UK: Welsh) Filmmaker and editor: Othniel Smith Translation Sharon Larkin

Sea Change (USA: English) Erasure, filmmaker and editor: Dave Bonta
Translation: Sharon Larkin

Chaucer Cameron is the author of ‘In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered’, which will be published in the Spring of 2021. Her poetry has also been published in journals, anthologies and online. Her poetry-films have screened at festivals, universities and poetry events. Chaucer is co-editor of Poetry Film Live. www.chaucercameron.com

REELpoetry: Sarah Tremlett - The Poetics of Film Poetry

Poetry filmmaker, poet and theorist, Sarah Tremlett, is interviewed by author and poetry filmmaker Dr Meriel Lland, on her leading reference work The Poetics of Poetry Film – Film Poetry, Videopoetry, Lyric Voice, Reflection (April, 2021), commissioned by Intellect Books and The University of Chicago Press [412 pages, 60 col., 20 b/w illus].

‘The first book of its kind, it classifies the different types of poetry film, shedding light on the fast-growing genre and citing works from poetry filmmakers worldwide. A ground-breaking industry bible for anyone interested in poetry, digital media, filmmaking, art and creative writing as well as poetry film-makers.’

In this revealing interview Lland brings to light some of the key questions raised; both in creating such a large work, but also how Tremlett’s thinking develops around subjects such as time, lyric voice, subjectivity, the remediation of the page poem, and audio-visual philosophical practice. The book equally interweaves historical and contemporary facts with numerous artists’ voices, discussing their personal approaches to poetry film, film poetry and videopoetry today.

Selected films will also be screened.

Sarah Tremlett (Poem Film) MPhil, FRSA, SWIP is a poetry film-maker, videopoet, poet and theorist, particularly enquiring into the philosophy of poetry film. She is co-director of Liberated Words Poetry Film events, editor of Liberated Words online, a judge at festivals, and author of leading publication The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect Books and University of Chicago Press, April 2021).

She has given presentations on her own poetry films worldwide. Recent commissions include: Selfie with Marilyn – by American poet Heidi Seaborn, from the Visible Poetry Project; and from Brighton University for – Bird Poem – a family history poetry film by poet Dr Helen Johnson. Curations include the touring screening Uprooted (with films on the refugee crisis) as part of REELpoetry festival, Houston 2020; and Poetry Films for the Environment for LYRA Poetry Festival 2020.

www.sarahtremlett.com www.liberatedwords.com

REELpoetry / HoustonTX 2021 Presenters & Curators

Bio – Chaucer Cameron
Chaucer Cameron is the author of ‘In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered’, which will be published in the Spring of 2021. Her poetry has also been published in journals, anthologies and online. Her poetry-films have screened at festivals, universities and poetry events. Chaucer is co-editor of Poetry Film Live. www.chaucercameron.com

Bio – Helen Dewbery (UK) talks about, writes about and creates poetry films, and established Poetry Film Live, the online poetry film journal. Her poetry films have been shown at poetry events and festivals in the UK and internationally. She provides training and support for new practitioners of poetry film and has worked with poets to make collaborative work. Helen is co-director of The Big Poetry Weekend festival in Swindon, UK.

Bio – Eleanor Livingstone (Scotland) is a poet and editor as well as the Director of StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival (www.stanzapoetry.org). Her first full collection, Even the Sea was shortlisted for the 2010 inaugural London New Poetry award and is now in a second edition. Her other publications include The Last King of FifeA Sampler and as editor Skein of GeeseMigraasje: Versions in Scots and ShetlandicBridging the Continental DivideNecessarily Looking Backward and The Arch.

Bio – Lucy English (UK) is head of the Creative Writing Research Centre at Bath Spa University and a Reader in Creative Writing. Lucy is a spoken word poet and novelist. She is co-director, with Sarah Tremlett, of Liberated Words, a CIC company, which creates, curates and screens poetry films. Their work has been screened many international poetry film festivals including Visible Verse, Canada; Weimar and Zebra, Germany; Lisbon, Portugal; Newlyn in the U.K and Athens, Greece.

Bio – Sarah Tremlett (UK) MPhil, FRSA, SWIP is a poetry film-maker, videopoet, poet and theorist on philosophy of poetry film. She is co-director of Liberated Words Poetry Film events, editor of Liberated Words online, a judge at festivals, and author of leading publication The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect Books and University of Chicago Press, April 2021). She has given presentations on her own poetry films worldwide.

Bio – Mary McDonald (Canada) pursues multidisciplinary practices encompassing text, photography, poetryfilm, music and sound, interactive AR (augmented reality) installations, and community participatory arts projects. Mary’s most recent project is Times in Sound, Letters of War, a 360 binaural sound work composed of over 700 fragments of WWI letters. She also created On the Margin of History, a prize winning digital work, with Syrian poet Mohamad Kebbewar and Serbian born poet, Natasha Boskic.

Bio – Sabina England (USA) is an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, and performance artist. She recently won a Jury Award for her short choreopoetry film, Deaf Brown Gurl. Sabina’s writings will be published in two books in 2021 by Mango & Marigold Press

Brief Overview

Public Poetry’s collaborative programs and projects put hundreds of poets in front of thousands of people at libraries, colleges, theaters, museums, music venues, and more.

Ongoing programs include:
*   a monthly library reading series in partnership with the City of Houston/Houston Public Library with a signature mix of local, national and internationally published poets, spoken word poetry, academics, and youth reading together
*   a monthly “Favorite Poem” open mic
*   REELpoetry/HoustonTX an annual, curated, international poetry film festival
* an annual poetry contest with notable judges selecting poets included in an anthology publication and readings + cash prize for best poem
* The Poetry Ride, a coach trip to the Round Top Poetry Festival with a workshop on the journey by Houston’s Poet Laureate. (pre-covid)

Past highlights include collaborations with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston for ekphrastic contests where museum curators selected artworks to inspire poets plus publishing a gorgeous anthology ART BECOMES POETRY with museum artworks accompanying the poems: Ex Libris essays and podcasts on poetry; “The PM Show: Poets & Musicians,” a collaborative, rehearsed, 90 minute show with great musicians; parties; bringing former US Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky, to Houston to launch his internationally acclaimed “Favorite Poem Project” for our city. To review programs by year click HERE.

Registration

Date: Sat & Sun, JAN 16 & 17 2021
Time: 2:00-4:00 PM
Fee $65
15% Discount for students, military & Public Poetry monthly members, Muse & above (PAY $55)
One $55 scholarship available (PAY $10)
Limit: 12 people
Register below at drop down menu

Registration

Date: Tuesday JANUARY 26, 2021
Time: 7:00-9:30 PM
Fee $40
15% Discount for students, military & Public Poetry monthly members, Muse & above (Pay $34)
One $30 scholarship available (Pay $10)
Limit: 10 people
Register below by January 18, 2021

After you have registered, please email us at Publicpoetryon@gmail.com with the following:

Name

Phone

Please tell us:

What your goals are for this class?

Are you new to reading or performing your poetry? ____YES ____NO If no,

How often do you read or perform your poetry?

Where have you read or performed your poetry?

Anything else you would like us to know?

ALSO: Email one poem with a maximum length of 2 minutes you want to work on; a shorter poem is OK

When we have both your registration and your follow up email, you will receive a confirmation email from us.

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Special Events

Check the calendar above this section.

Contest Information

For VIRUS POEMS we’re asking for your response to the pandemic and the times we’re in now. This contest is free.

As an organization, our purpose is to create new opportunities for poets and poetry, and this is one way we can do that now. While we’re hunkered down, we can also be productive, allowing ourselves to reflect and clean out some of the cobwebs that cling to us, – all good stuff for writing poetry.

Starts APRIL 1 and ends AUGUST 31.

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT

You can pre-order the Virus Poems Anthology for $9 HERE

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Winners and Finalists for the 2018-19 contest on the theme of ENOUGH are HERE

Winners and Finalists for the 2017-18 contest on the theme of POWER are HERE
You can read about the judges HERE:

Winners and Finalists for the 2016-17 contest on the theme of “WORK” are HERE.
Judges for the WORK contest a panel of members of the public with different kinds of jobs and professions.

Wicked Wit

1st: Alice Friman

Shopping with Descartes

Like a supermarket chicken,
a brain weighs about three pounds,
without feathers of course.
Thoughts, like feathers, weigh

next to nothing—whimsies
of no matter. What’s a thought?
A twitch, a little quiver in the jelly
quickened to life by a shock
of electricity before slipping
back into the fold it was born in.

Still, thoughts are important.
If I don’t come up with a thought
for three days, my brain morphs
into a daisy stuck in the vase
of my neck. After two weeks

I could generate a bouquet.
People who think about thoughts
are philosophers. People who
think about thinking about
thoughts are epistemologists.
The book says God once had
a thought which he tucked inside
a word, which makes God a linguist.
It must have been a big word—
an abracadabra word, powerful enough
to create the sun, moon, earth, lions,
tigers, birds and bugs. Imagine,
all in six days. On the seventh day
he rested—so tired from repeating
his word he had to go to bed without
another thought in his head. And that’s
when we got the flowers.

JUDGES’ SELECTIONS:

2^nd Elina Petrova “Pencil”
3^rd Tim Mayo “The Black Wolf of Your Past”

Kimberly Beyers: “Celiac’s Soliloquy” — Lisa Bledsoe: “Not a Poem” — Bill Carpenter: “Ken in Love” — Scott Chalupa: “abc[dot]xyz ( or G is for …)” — Cameron Cocking: “Oneness Is Kind of Symmetry” — Kathleen Cook: “Transient Ischemic Stroke (TIA)” — Barbara Crane: “No, I was the slightest in the house” — Rafaella Del Bourgo: “Crayola Me a River” — Deborah DeNicola: “Carolyn’s Pillow” — Jessica Siobhan Frank: “Erotic Tales from the MLA Handbook” — Alice Friman: “The Eternal Question” — Dean Gessie: “Gram Bonkers” — Dean Gessie: “Islands of Mean(while)” — Joan Gerstein: “The Age of Asparagus” —Joan Gerstein: “My Mother Tells Me What I Must Do — Gene Grabiner: “Frank R. Stockton in Kansas” — Richard Levine: “What … No Chocolates?” — Ellaraine Lockie: “Nomenclature in Montana” — Christina Lovin: “The Female Praying Mantis Eats Her Mate” — Christina Lovin: “Dung Beetles Find Home by Searching the Stars — Katharyn Machan: “Hazel tells LaVerne” — Andrea Messineo: “Logos in Three Movements” — John Milkereit: “On the Occasion of My Boring Death” — Greg Moglia: “DEATH COMES TO MATCH. COM” — Carla Myers: “Chores” — Carla Myers:“You Too Can Make a Golem” — Susan Pashman: “On Hogarth’s ” ‘The Orgy’ from ‘The Rake’s Progress’” — Robert Perchan: “IN ENGLISH THE KOREAN WORD “BOP” MEANS “GLUTINOUS RICE,”or, AT THE WOMEN’S COLLEGE — Clela Reed: “Spend a Day at the Homeliness Shelter” —Michael Schein: “Not Saying the F-Word” — Vivian Shipley Shipley: “Martha Stewart’s Ten Commandments for Cannabis Users” — Vivian Shipley Shipley: “The Poet as Surfer Chick” –Mark Svenvold: “Selfie w/Cathedral” — Bruce Taylor: “MIDDLE-AGED MAN, SMOKING” — Debra Wilk: “MATING WALTZ” —Debra Wilk: “TREE GUYS”

Readings & Workshops

We are delighted to partner with Brazos Bookstore for poetry readings and add workshops at Rudyard’s British Pub by the poets reading. These events are scheduled mid-afternoon on consecutive Sundays. Readings at Brazos Bookstore introduce you to the poet’s latest work, while the two-hour workshops at Rudyard’s are an opportunity to tunnel into the core of their poetry, explore technique and do some writing.

READINGS FREE
$10 WORKSHOP REGISTRATION HERE

WORKSHOP

FILMING YOUR POETRY

This six week, 12 hour, generative cinepoetry workshop series is designed to investigate & experiment with the intersection of cinema and poetry.

Time: Sundays 12-2; last session Tuesday, 6-8 PM

Place: Rudyard’s (upstairs) 2010 Waugh Dr. 77006

Dates: Sept 15, 22, 29 October 6, 13, 22

Fee:* $60 Full Time Students $150 Public Poetry Members (Rhymer and above) $170 Non-Members

i* Help is available for anyone who needs to make payment arrangements. Email Info@publicpoetry.net

To Become a member click HERE

REGISTRATION:

STUDENTS Click HERE
PUBLIC POETRY MEMBERS: Click HERE
NON-MEMBERS: Click HERE

Workshop Details

Session 1 – What is Cinepoetry? A brief history of Cinepoetry and an exploration of what is cinepoetry. Led by Scott Smith.

Session 2 – What is Cinematic? A discussion of what makes narrative and non-narrative story cinematic. Led by Randee Ramsey.

Session 3 – What images can a camera create and what can’t they? Led by Julye Newlin.

Session 4 – What happens after you film? Post production and visual image manipulation and how it can be used. Led by Julye Newlin and Randee Ramsey

Session 5 – Workshopping your cinepoem: A group discussion on ideas and issues around the specific poem you want to work with. Led by Randee Ramsey

Session 6 – Poet & Filmmaker meet-up: Mix and mingle with local filmmakers interested in create new works in collaboration with poets.

Instructors:

Randee Ramsey holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She is a writer, independent filmmaker and an Adjunct Professor. She recently Associate Produced an independent film shot in Houston and is currently an Adjunct Professor of Film at the Art Institute of Houston. She also serves as the Program Director for Southwest Alternate Media Project.

Julye Newlin is an award-winning cinematographer and editor with decades of experience behind the camera. She has shot all styles of film and video. She is the owner of a boutique production company with a long list of international clients. She is currently an Adjunct Professor of Film at the Art Institute of Houston and Houston Community College.

Scott Smith earned an MFA in Poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars and a BA in English from the University of Lynchburg. He was Editor in Chief of the Bennington Review, a Poetry Editor of the Tishman Review and Bitslope. He currently teaches at the Art Institute of Houston.

REELPoetry

REELpoetry/Houston TX is an annual five day, curated international poetry film festival, FEBRUARY 24-28, 2021. The festival will screen juried poetry video and film in five categories, as well as curated themed selections. There will also be feature length poetry films, a Salon des Refusés, talks with poets & filmmakers, Q & A, workshops and more.

Poetry Ride

Travel round-trip on a luxury coach (with restroom) for the main day at the Round Top Poetry Festival, Saturday, April 25, 2020 that includes a full day of readings and poetry events. On the ride to the Festival, Chris Wise will be doing a workshop exclusively for us. Here’s what’s included in our package:

Saturday-Only Festival Registration ($75 value if purchased individually)
Travel to and from The Round Top Poetry Festival
Our exclusive Poetry Ride workshop
Being with Festival Poets including Mark Doty. Alicia Ostriker. Mary Szybist. Jenny Xie. Allison Joseph. ire’ne lara silva. Edward Vidaurre.
Getting one poem published in the Festival Anthology (details HERE)
Morning and afternoon Open Mic on the stunning Concert Hall stage
Catered lunch
Guided tour of Festival Hill grounds and gardens
Afternoon Craft Talk
Afternoon Readings
Pop-up Festival bookstore with featured author signings
Gourmet Dinner at a restaurant in Round Top
8 PM Evening Readings & music.

ALL Contests

For PANDEMIC POEMS we’re asking for your response to the pandemic and the times we’re in now. This contest is free.

You can pre-order the Pandemic Poems Anthology for $9 HERE

Winners will be announced in April 2021

REELpoetry Ekphrastic Contest

Our 2020 contest uses film and video clips to inspire your poems. Selected poems will be made into poetry videos screened at the international REELpoetry Festival, Feb 24-28, 2021 online. Two $250 prizes (Judges’ Award & Audience Award) Here’s how it works:

First, choose from 5 very different one and a half minute video clips … publicpoetry.submittable.com

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Winners and Finalists for the 2019-2020 contest WICKED WIT are HERE

Winners and Finalists for the 2018-19 contest on the theme of ENOUGH are HERE

Winners and Finalists for the 2017-18 contest on the theme of POWER are HERE You can read about the judges HERE:

Winners and Finalists for the 2016-17 contest on the theme of “WORK” are HERE. Judges for the WORK contest a panel of members of the public with different kinds of jobs and professions.

2nd Elina Petrova “Pencil” 3rd Tim Mayo “The Black Wolf of Your Past”

Winners and Finalists for the 2017-18 contest on the theme of POWER are HERE
You can read about the judges HERE:

Winners and Finalists for the 2016-17 contest on the theme of “WORK” are HERE.
Judges for the WORK contest a panel of members of the public with different kinds of jobs and professions.

2^nd Elina Petrova “Pencil”
3^rd Tim Mayo “The Black Wolf of Your Past”