features:

artists catalog

composed videos

documenation videos

related sites:

e-poets.net home

Book of Voices

about the Videotheque

Contemporary poetry takes many forms, the most prevalent "breakout" form being performance. As recently as 1990, the public generally understood poetry as a written artform that was published in books, magazines, or journals. Today, though, performance, the cinema, and new media have broadened the public's understanding of poetry as a living art. People attend poetry revues. People watch poetry. People surf and interact with hypermedia collections of poetry. And with that shift, there comes the need to publish poetry in a time-based form.

The e-poets network responds to this need by presenting poetry videos here, in the Videotheque. It's our own modest collection of clips that we feel are worth sharing with audiences the world over, to help them enjoy, understand, and possibly study the poets in our community.

There are two broad categories of poetry videos, documentation videos and composed videos, and this website's organization reflects that. The composed videos are directed, cinematic productions. They show efforts by the filmmaker, poet, and/or any number of other artists collaborating on the video, to produce a highly composed experience in sound, image, and language. These videos are deliberate compositions that draw on all the video medium's abilities to present the poem as a key aesthetic experience.

Documentation videos are, by comparison, much simpler productions. These are video clips that focus on the poetry and performance, to record them for posterity. There may be some aesthetic activity in a documenation process, but the main goal is to capture a live performance as fully as the medium allows. In this category, the finished video is not the object of the poet's work, but merely the medium for it.

Both categories offer excellent prospects for study, and do much to expand the understanding of contemporary poetry. Poetry video emerged as a recognized genre in the early 1990s, and made significant advances in the United States and Canada all through that decade. However, the critical groundwork for the genre was established well before that, with important collaborations between poets and filmmakers since the 1940s and even earlier.

We hope you enjoy the Videotheque, and can afford to spend a little time browsing here. If you have questions about this website, or would like to submit a poetry video of your own for presentation among our collections, see the contact page. Thanks for "tuning in!"

- Kurt Heintz, founder, e-poets network