Poetry in Motion

‘The “Woodstock” of Poetry!’ (American Film) ‘The greatest documentary film about poetry ever made!’ (Poetryfoundation.org) In the early 1980s, the bad boys of Beat literature were still fierce, albeit now grey-haired gentlemen, and their successors were already preparing for rap. Ron Mann, the documentary chronicler of American pop culture (Comic Book Confidential), undertook his groundbreaking attempt at this time to film North America's best poets as they liberated poetry from the literature seminar and poets from their ivory towers – with obscure, homemade instruments, cassette recorders, a reggae or jazz band, with arms and legs, with and without vocal cords. Ginsberg sings, Charles Bukowski etches, and Tom Waits is filmed for the first time. A treasure trove, a time capsule, a synthesis of countercultural movements with free jazz, punk rock, and the theatre of cruelty. Mann's idea was based on Donald Allen's poetry collection ‘The New American Poetry 1945–1960’. The first poet to express interest in participating was Allen Ginsberg. In the end, nearly 40 poets recited more than 75 poems, and filmmaker Emile de Antonio helped edit the footage down to 90 minutes. A CD-ROM version was released with poems that were never seen in the film. The entire 47 hours of footage is stored at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The film itself features 24 contemporary North American poets reciting, singing and performing their works. Some of them also speak. The film is interspersed with excerpts from an interview with Charles Bukowski. At the beginning, Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and poetry. These poets are energetic performers, and their poems are meant to be heard. They are the spiritual descendants of Walt Whitman and Charles Olson, evocative and rhetorical, radical, sometimes with contemporary political symbolism. Black Mountain Poets, the Beats, minimalists like John Cage, the wordless Four Horsemen, Tom Waits and others capture aspects of poets as troubadours.