 David E. James and Sarah Neely are two academics who have sought to explore the relationship between poetry and film. James writes of the idea of the poet ‘In the modern world, poet designates a preferred medium; but the word also implies a mode of social (un)insertion. It bespeaks a cultural practice that, in being economically insignificant, remains economically unincorporated, and so retains the possibility of cultural resistance.’ Of Stan Brakhage, David E. James writes ‘The installation of the filmmaker as a poet had, then, both theoretical and practical components. It involved the conceptualization of the film artist as an individual author, a Romantic creator-a conceptualization made possible by manufacturing a tradition of such out of previous film history; and it necessitated a working organization, a mode of production and distribution, alternative to the technology, labour practices, and institutional insertion of Hollywood.’ Examples  of a film that fits in to the first is Manhatta (1921) by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand using the poem by Walt Whitman, while in the second is Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammmid. Film Poems was a touring programme of films exploring the relationship between films and poetry curated by film maker Peter Todd and screened at the National Film Theatre London in February 1998 and which screened the following year as a touring programme at various venues supported by The Arts Council of England and the BFI Touring Unit (and would be followed by a further three Film Poems programmes). This programme included two films by film maker and poet Margaret Tait which displayed the range and texture of her work with one film Hugh MacDiarmid A Portrait (1964) featuring the poet MacDiarmid reading his own work, while the other Aerial (1974) is without words and which author Ali Smith described as ‘a tiny poem’. Sarah Neely also writes of this film ‘For this film, Tait moved away from the inclusion of spoken word on the soundtrack: instead the film’s poetry comes wholly from image and sound’ emphasising ‘Aerial seems a perfect distillation of Tait’s idea of a film poem. Sophie Mayer in How British Poetry Fell In Love With Film said Margaret Tait created her largely self-made films where she lived and would be described as ‘the only British artist truly making film poems’. Work(Country-wise) India Stark Electric Jesus See also The Blasphemers' Banquet (1989) The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992) Prometheus (1998)
History David E. James and Sarah Neely are two academics who have sought to explore the relationship between poetry and film. James writes of the idea of the poet ‘In the modern world, poet designates a preferred medium; but the word also implies a mode of social (un)insertion. It bespeaks a cultural practice that, in being economically insignificant, remains economically unincorporated, and so retains the possibility of cultural resistance.’ Of Stan Brakhage, David E. James writes ‘The installation of the filmmaker as a poet had, then, both theoretical and practical components. It involved the conceptualization of the film artist as an individual author, a Romantic creator-a conceptualization made possible by manufacturing a tradition of such out of previous film history; and it necessitated a working organization, a mode of production and distribution, alternative to the technology, labour practices, and institutional insertion of Hollywood.’ Examples Examples of a film that fits in to the first is Manhatta (1921) by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand using the poem by Walt Whitman, while in the second is Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammmid. Film Poems was a touring programme of films exploring the relationship between films and poetry curated by film maker Peter Todd and screened at the National Film Theatre London in February 1998 and which screened the following year as a touring programme at various venues supported by The Arts Council of England and the BFI Touring Unit (and would be followed by a further three Film Poems programmes). This programme included two films by film maker and poet Margaret Tait which displayed the range and texture of her work with one film Hugh MacDiarmid A Portrait (1964) featuring the poet MacDiarmid reading his own work, while the other Aerial (1974) is without words and which author Ali Smith described as ‘a tiny poem’. Sarah Neely also writes of this film ‘For this film, Tait moved away from the inclusion of spoken word on the soundtrack: instead the film’s poetry comes wholly from image and sound’ emphasising ‘Aerial seems a perfect distillation of Tait’s idea of a film poem. Sophie Mayer in How British Poetry Fell In Love With Film said Margaret Tait created her largely self-made films where she lived and would be described as ‘the only British artist truly making film poems’. Other notable film-poems The Indian film Stark Electric Jesus The Blasphemers' Banquet (1989) The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992) Prometheus (1998)
A
History
A
Examples
R
Work(Country-wise) India
Other notable film-poems The Indian film
D
See also