What is this about?

The why FAQ page goes a long way to explain this. But for the sake of being concrete, I'll say this website is about seeing and hearing poetry in various ways. It's not just about documenting live performances. It's not merely about creative renditions of poetry in video. It's not just about stagecraft. It's not strictly about experimental media. But it certainly is about all these things in part, particularly as they commingle and communicate between each other.

This site is a repository of visual media where I have the prerogative to publish it, particularly where the media and the poetry within it speak to unique experiences in my own life. It samples ways that video impinges upon poetry, and vice versa. Contributing elements are exposed to the critiques of the others.

Because video may capture images and sounds, and because it communicates in time, performance poetry is a significant element of this site. It is not a necessary presence, but owing to my own experiences, and the context of my own life, it is significant here.

I could make this site a kind of manifesto of ideas on poetry video. I won't. That manifesto-creating duty is left to others. That said, I don't lack critical motivations. I am interested in creating a kind of sampler or primer. I want to create a document that reveals varieties of poetry video to others. Watching the different ways that poetry and video intersect can broaden critical concern. I hope this document will take poetry video out of the rather flat discourses that too often compartmentalize the form and so narrow its relevance, all in the name of understanding or advancing critique.

- Kurt Heintz, 2012