29th March 2025
10am – 4pm
TAFE South Bank Campus, Brisbane.
Leonard Cohen writes: ‘forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in’. Award winning artist, poet, and experimental filmmaker Anna Jacobson would like participants to carry this quote with them throughout this full day workshop that melds poetry and art: the power of video poems. Create your work filled with cracks, with honesty, with observations only you have seen from your unique perspective, and they will be light filled with truth.
Anna’s primary motivations for creating video poems are to process, to understand, to document, and to capture in ways that speak more to the truth than the truth itself using metaphor and the magic of light. Poetry is such an experimental medium that it lends itself wonderfully to video poems. Maya Deren states that film ‘lends itself particularly to the poetic statement, because it is essentially a montage and, therefore, seems by its very nature to be a poetic medium.’
Anna will guide participants through three different approaches to video poetry that she has harnessed over the years as an experimental filmmaker: visual poetics, spoken word, and textual play. Participants are encouraged to spend the first part of the workshop writing poetry through guided prompts, as well as drawing an object of their choice. The second part will see participants break out of the room and explore the outside world to capture soundscapes, photographs, and footage, before coming back to explore how these soundscape and image gatherings can be melded into either individual or group video poems. Participants can choose to focus on one of three approaches: visual poetics, spoken word, or textual play in their video poem, or try them all if they are feeling adventurous.
What to bring
- an object of your choice (could be something found in nature or from your home)
- any device that can capture sound, image, and/or video eg. a smart phone
- a laptop and headphones (optional)
In the event a participant does not have any free or basic video editing software on their devices, Anna will try to ensure there are ways to download these to create a group video poem, using iMovie on her own device. All participants will be credited in any final works created. The workshop will conclude with a sharing circle and screenings from those who wish to share their work-in-progress.
Venue
TAFE South Bank Campus, Brisbane. You will be notified of the exact room location closer to the event.
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