this time next year
by Nic Sebastianyour name is Ladislaus
you will come to meas small black boat
on thirst-red seayour sail made of hurricane
and bougainvilleaI will ask you
suddenlyfor September
for the tight promisessold by the daughters
of the equinoxand you will grin at me
in your morninghandsome way
pass me cowrie shellsand solstices
laughing
Footage: ‘Discovery of Kepler-16b’ by NASA
Music: ‘Crotalinae’ by Xcentric Noizz and the Tunguska Electronic Music Society
This time I wrote the poem first then went looking for footage and ended up on the NASA website again (which is where I got the moon footage in this one). Happy that it’s only 57 seconds long. I wish there were more ‘abstract’ footage out there. Everything I find seems to be so definite and concrete. It occurred to me that I should perhaps submit the poem for publication before posting it here, but I realized at the same time that I’ve completely run out of energy for that whole submission dynamic, so I’m going to have me some lazy time.
Nice. Good Poem too.
thanks for stopping by, Marc
I love the concrete footage – especially Prelinger’s home movies section. I find in a way it can be even more abstract than less specific images. Some of those could make wonderful poetic inspirations, too.
This is wonderful, but all your work is
you’re right – I shouldn’t be so closed-minded!
Wonderful poem!
Thanks, Maureen!
There are some markets for videopoems. Qarrtsiluni is one — if we rarely post videos, it’s only because we rarely get submissions. And we treat them the same way we treat image submissions, which is to say, we don’t mind if they’ve already been posted/published elsewhere (YouTube, Vimeo, Moving Poems, your own blog, etc.) — that’s in the nature of embeddable media. The Continental Review is another market, but they seem to prefer to upload the videos to their own channel — not clear how they feel about stuff that’s already out there. Other markets include Cordite, drunken boat, and Verse Wisconsin — see http://discussion.movingpoems.com/76/online-journals-that-take-videopoems/
Thanks for the pointers, Dave – appreciated. In something of a ‘meh’ mode at the moment about submissions & publication, but I’m sure that, like all things, will eventually pass..
I certainly hope so because I would like to publish a couple of these in this issue of tongues of the ocean, as well as interviewing you about the process and the direction you’re taking regarding such poems.
Emailed you already but in the face of vast silence thought I’d post a comment here.
Cheers.
I did respond! But to your ‘webmaster’ address at Tongues of the Ocean, so maybe it got lost. Just re-emailed you – very happy for you to use anything you want – just let me know!
[...] Nic used NASA footage (“Discovery of Kepler-16b”) and music by Xcentric Noizz of the Tunguska Electronic Music Society for this brief videopoem. For the text, see her blog post. [...]