A Day of Poetry! A Night of Films! A day and night of poetic films!

Yesterday's poetry events reminded me of why I love this genre, why I love to teach, why I love to be involved with the Henry Miller Memorial Library, both as a board member and as editor of Ping-Pong magazine of art and literature.

The day started off with Christine Hamm, Francesco Levato and Jenn Hope Stein doing a poetry workhshop for my students. Christine introduced them to fragmentation, and many wonderful poems emerged from this exercise wherein they take five poems, exchange them with a partner, that partner picks out 3 lines from each poem, and then they create a poem out of the fragments. A rebirth of wonder for sure.

Next Francesco talked about Cinepoetry and then showed them this most amazing form through two short films, one made by yours truly (you can watch it below if you click the "Chronicles on Violence" link under the Verrückter Schwanz Cinépoetry schedule. We also watched J. Hope Stein's wonderful film based on her manuscript collection, The Inventor's Last Breath, that includes archival footage of the first moving pictures ever made.

Then we moved on to the Poetic Voices Poetry Festival, now in it's 11th year. This festival awards prize money to student poets. The Faith Webster Fraser award doles out 500.00 to two students, not bad. This year's recipients were Karina Hernandez and Alisa Rodriguez. Circo Award winners included Sergio Perez, Galdino Guijosa and Andrei Juezan. The student readings were followed by readings from Francesco Levato, J. Hope Stein and Christine Hamm.

Then we were off to Big Sur and an early dinner at Nepenthe. Big Sur is like this gift you give to everyone who's never been there before. No one can be unimpressed by the power of this beauty.
We went to the Henry Miller Memorial Library where we grooved to the band, Songs that Hotbox Harry Taught Us, munched on sushi, drank wine, and then watched the Cinépoetic masterpieces.

All in all and spectacular way to spend a day.

Verrückter Schwanz Cinepoetry Festival Schedule

Verrückter Schwanz (Crazy Cock) Cinepoetry Festival Schedule: Henry Miller Memorial Library

First Hour 

Variations on Want: Sequence II,  by Francesco Levato 

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, by Antonello Faretta, poem by John Giorno 

Mirror, by Kylie Hibbert, poem by Sylvia Plath 

Love Song for Cells, by Jillian Brall 

Sucks Her with Fiddle, by Jillian Mukavetz 

Two films from The Pond, by Zachary Schomburg 

The Inventor’s Last Breath, by J. Hope Stein 

The Three Organizations of L.R. Levato, by Chris Hefner 

Die Pretty, by LaDonna Witmer 

Who Says Words with my Mouth, by D J Kadagian, poem by Rumi 

Chronicles on Violence, by Maria Garcia Teutsch 

Passage, by Kurt Heintz, poem by Quraysh Ali Lansana 

Tyger, by Guilherme Marcondes, based on The Tyger by William Blake 

Short Intermission/Poetry Reading by Christine Hamm

Second Hour

Entanglement,  by Ed Bowes, poem by Anne Waldman 

PRESS RELEASE

Verrückter Schwanz Cinepoetry Festival at the Henry Miller Memorial Library

The Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California is pleased announce the

Verrückter Schwanz  Cinepoetry Festival, on May 12^th at 7:30 pm, it will be an evening where audience members will meet visual artists at the intersection between cinema and poetry. Cinepoetry is a relatively new genre of visual poetry where the audience is taken on a journey through words and images shot on film. 

This event is brought to you by Ping-Pong, the magazine of art and literature published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library. The evening’s films will begin at dark and will be preceded by live music provided by Songs that Hotbox Harry Taught Us.

The film festival will feature works by Anne Waldman, Jenn Hope Stein, Francesco Levato and many others. The focus of cinepoetry is as a genre of visual poetry made into a short film and shown on a screen focusing its images and sounds around the poem. This event is curated by Francesco Levato and directed by Maria Garcia Teutsch.

The Verrückter Schwanz festival will take place at the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California on Thursday, May 12th, and will feature many films from around the world.   The festival begins at 7:30 pm. The event is free and open to the public. Food and wine will be served.

The evening of short films also serves as a kick-off of sorts for the soon to start 6th Annual Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series. The final selection of films for 2011 will be posted on www.bigsurfilm.org on May 20. The first screening in our twelve week series is Thursday, June 9th.

Magnus Toren 667-2574 (Henry Miller Library)

Highway One, Big Sur, CA 93920

www.henrymiller.org/ping_pong.html

Poet, translator, and filmmaker Francesco Levato is the author of three books of poetry: Elegy for Dead Languages; War Rug, a book length documentary poem; and Marginal State. He has translated into English the books of Italian poets Tiziano Fratus, Creaturing, and Fabiano Alborghetti, The Opposite Shore. His work has been published internationally in journals and anthologies, both in print and online, including Drunken Boat, The Progressive,Versal, and many others. His cinépoetry has been exhibited in galleries and featured at film festivals in Berlin, Chicago, New York, and elsewhere.

Maria Garcia Teutsch is Editor-in-chief of Ping-Pong magazine. She also serves as president of the board of directors of the Henry Miller library in Big Sur, Ca. She is widely published, most recently her poems have been anthologized by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press’ Eighteens, with forthcoming publications by McSweeney’s Conversations at the Wartime Café, and the Sylvia Plath anthology, Fat Gold Watch. She is the author of three chapbooks: Chronicles on Violence being the latest. mariateutsch.blogspot.com

Think Big Sur needs more sushi, art, and poetry? Then there won't be much in this blog that you'll disagree with

Think Big Sur needs more sushi, art, and poetry? Then there won't be much in this blog that you'll disagree with