April Poetry Month

Events | Celebrating National Poetry Month : Venice of the Mind

We almost at the end of April : we celebrate the end of 2011 "National Poetry Month"with visual poetry a collaboration between a poet and video artist.

Events | Celebrating National Poetry Month

According to an essay by David Orr (“O! Poetry,” The New York Times Book Review, March 17, 2011), “ …poetry can’t approach mass culture with any sense of swagger.” Orr was referring to the April 2011 issue of The Oprah Magazine: “Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets.”

Most poets, however, don’t have to worry about outfits or about how to extend poetry beyond the literary culture so that it reaches Everyman - because there is National Poetry Month to bring poetry home, at least in April, all springing buds being equal.

National Poetry Month is a movement begun in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets. Its mission is to foster an appreciation of poetry within the popular culture, and the Academy advocates ways in which this may be done: put a poem in your pocket, chalk a poem on the sidewalk, attend a poetry reading or festival, enclose a poem with your letter, memorize or recite a poem, and, of course, buy poetry books and poetry broadsides.

To become acquainted with broadsides, for example, you may wish to view “Seduction,” the first series of four broadsides, wrought as a collaborative effort between poet Irene Mitchell, and artist Daniela Bertol.

There is also that increasingly captivating aspect of poetry, its connection to the visual, or “visual poetry.” You are invited to view excerpts from the visual poem, “Venice of the Mind.” The the video is by Daniela Bertol, the text by Irene Mitchell.

Irene Mitchell

thoughts | dysfunctionality, public art agency and culture production

"Dysfunctional is the talent du jour" was the comment of a friend of mine to my list of professional frustrations.

I cannot complain in these times of cosmic disorder, considering what is going on the planet: earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, tornadoes, floods...But still there is so much which could be accomplished just with some logical reasoning and respect/consideration of others, which could truly improved the quality of life.

Being involved in cultural production for several years (often working on it over 10 hour a day, without being able to make a living) I have been involved in too many episodes of dysfunctionality, mainly coming from academia or so called "public art" agencies.

I am mentioning only the most recent episode, regarding for the Big Screen, a supposedly public display of video works. The web site encourages to submit work related to the month specific themes; for April the topics list included cheese, jazz, and diversity, not including poetry ---in fact, April is National Poetry Month. We queried about our interest in submitting our visually poetry project and we encouraged to do so. We submitted stills, and links to the low resolution video. We are asked to mail or drop off the high resolution video. With the understanding that the video was selected for broadcasting —the submitted material was more than sufficient to make a selection— I dropped off the full resolution video work at the Big Screen office. A week later after asking for broadcast schedule we receive a quick reply "Unfortunately we will not be showing your work at this time" with no explanation of the reasons. The other reply after my inquiry of the reasons for the work rejection was "we need to see 100% of a video before it is selected, this only makes sense as we are a public video screen and have to make sure that the videos being shown are appropriate."

Besides being upset for waste of time caused by this submission I am also concerned (and this is not my first experience in regard) of how public space for art Public Art is administered and managed. How are the curators/administrator selected? Making decision about public space comes with responsibility: a justification for rejecting work which has been highly priced is due.

However luckily we live in a time where the largest public art space of the world is available:
View and judge yourself how Venice of the Mind was appropriate for public viewing!