But it was the advent of film that brought new possibilities to poetic collaborations by opening up both fronts–visual and auditory–at once. One of my favourite examples of the successful intermarriage of film and poetry is a segment of the 1987 German film “Wings of Desire” that incorporates Peter Handke’s poem “Als das Kind Kind war” (“When the Child was a Child”):

The advent of interactive online media made poetic collaborations of a different type accessible worldwide. A favourite in this regard is Marvin Bell’s poem “Why do you Stay up so Late?” arranged as an interactive Flash piece by Ernesto Lavandera circa 2005. Here the observer is in control of the pace of the poem, as looped sound segments accompany written words and abstract images served up click by click.

The recent prevalence of video sharing and social media has birthed a new form of collaborative art, so new that the term has yet to be standardised. A Google search as of this writing for the following terms yielded these number of results: poem-film (32k), poemfilm (8k), film-poem (99k), filmpoem (30k). For now, I am going with the majority in referring to these works as “film-poems”.

Aesthetically, these pieces tend to feel like a music video of the spoken word. It is a tricky mix, where both the perils and possibilities are great, owing to both media being intense forms in their own right. Done well, both the film and the poem take on greater impact. But the extent to which the combination seems disjointed or drawn out, the form can quickly feel pretentious or silly. Sparing you that, I will give an example of two very different approaches that seem to work.

American poet Michelle Bitting has been working on a series of “poem-films” this summer in collaboration with her husband. People appear in each of them–both live and through photographs. “In Praise of My Brother, the Painter” is a poem about the speaker’s brother, an artist who committed suicide. The poem-film introduces and emphasises new elements distinct from the poem, using footage of Houdini to draw visual analogies, and special effects, such as the three colourised words at the end, to emphasise their impact.

Scottish poet Andrew Philip collaborated with lens artist Alastair Cook in “MacAdam Takes to the Sea” as part of Alastair’s “Filmpoem” project. This piece is more visually abstract. Despite being about a man, only the back of a head in silhouette appears. The majority of the video is composed of recurring sea imagery. These visual loops create their own texture and rhythm in accompaniment to Andrew’s words.

The film-poem is a nascent but promising form, bringing together one modern and one timeless art, exploring both the visual and auditory possibilities of each. Gaining notice on both sides of the Atlantic at once, it will be interesting to see how this mode develops and matures, and how the audience for poetry will be affected by its rise.

I have my own relationship with each of these poems. The first poem in this collection tells a lot about the purpose I have found in writing poetry. That is why I put it first. The Scottish poet Andrew Philip, who also lost his first-born son, says near the end of his poem “Lullaby,” “this is the man you fathered.” Indeed, my experience with the birth and death of our son James was an initiation into fatherhood–that I was “fathered” by him, just as one might be “knighted” by a sovereign. I came away with a charge.

But how to fulfill the charge of fatherhood without a child of one’s own? This is a question I have been answering in many ways. One of those ways is poetry. James did not get to experience this world with me. One of the most difficult aspects of grief is not that he is gone, but that he is everywhere. And so, I have decided to go on “speaking” to him–about the beauty and poignance of this world–by speaking to everyone.

What began as a language for processing grief has become a language for processing the mystery and paradox of the world in which I live, and of sharing it. I experience it as a paternal act, an outlet for everything I would have wanted to show to our boy. More than going through the motions, this “speaking” to him by speaking to others, to myself, and to the world around me, is a reason to keep writing poetry. It is a way of fathering the one I am with, even when I am alone. And that is something that I know will go on–as long as I live.

Individual Video Tracks:

• Part 1–Publication and Its Surprises (06:23)
• Part 2–The Medium of Language (08:52)
• Part 3–The Music of Poetry (09:06)
• Part 4–The Importance of The Page (03:23)
• Part 5–Grief and Hope (07:17)

Complete Audio Version (35:00)

For More Information:

• Andrew Philip’s Website
• The Ambulance Box Virtual Tour Page
• About Salt Virtual Book Tours
• Salt Publishing Website

“Even the pick / of those we share our pulse with shares this jolt / beneath the ribs, this double click of love. / How could they cope with even just one heart?”

I have Jilly Dybka to thank for sending Andrew Philip my way. Since I have written openly about the difficult and transformational experience of losing our first-born son, she must have recognized the the rare opportunity our being in touch provides. I am glad she did. It is an experience Andrew and I share.

Naturally, I was keen to read his debut book. What I discovered was not only personally moving, but profoundly accomplished work. Andrew writes in both English and Scots, placing himself in a tradition stretching back to John Barbour and encompassing Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns. As an American, I feel under-qualified to comment on the unique cultural and socio-political implications of this dual-language approach. (And, I must admit that I gave the online Dictionary of the Scots Language a good workout in making my way through some of the poems.) However, both as a poet in love with lyricism, and a father who lost an infant son, I can not resist adding my praise and commendation to the acclaim this book is gathering.

Andrew writes not only in Scots, a Germanic (not Gaelic) language, but in German as well. In “Berlin / Berlin / Berlin” he combines all three. If it is true, as Robert Frost tells us, that “Poetry is what gets lost in translation,” there is a poetry uniquely found between the languages by Andrew Philip. Wildly associative, and at times experimental, the musicality of these poems lend congruity and veracity even as they burst with linguistic mischief. This is, above all, a collection full of life–which is what makes the moments in which poems touch, lightly but unflinchingly, upon grief, all the more profound. From the premonitory vision of a “difficult, unasked-for joy” in “Pedestrian” through the incredible moment in “Still” when grief rewrites the resurrection, announcing in broken lines across the page, “he is not here / he is not here / he is not here,” these poems are rapturous even in despair. Sentimentality and easy words seem as though they might never have been invented in the remarkable worldview Andrew hands us in this book, “in a language,” as he says at the end of “Tonguefire Night,” “yet to be born.”

As part of Salt Publishing‘s innovative cyclone virtual book tour, I will have the pleasure of interviewing Andrew in about a month. I hope you will join me. Salt has also recently launched a highly successful “just one book” campaign to save this well-regarded imprint from financial doom. If you do choose to support world-class poetry publishing by purchasing just one, or one hundred, books from Salt, be sure to make your first The Ambulance Box.