15th October 2016
Our hearty congratulations to Canadian filmmaker Kayla Jeanson from Winnipeg, whose superb film Descrambled Eggs is Ó Bhéal’s 5th poetry-film competition winner, announced at the IndieCork Festival awards ceremony. Kayla’s film won amid very tough competition from 30 other shortlisted entries, representing 13 countries, the details of which you can view here. Our special thanks to all the poets and filmmakers who submitted this year. A bumper yield of 186 films arrived from 29 countries.
Poem: Descrambled Eggs by Steve Currie
Synopsis – Poetry, dance, and eggs collide in this short film by Canadian artist Kayla Jeanson. Poet Steve Currie grapples with the origins of his existence and limitations of his corporeality.
Director: Kayla Jeanson (Canada)
Kayla Jeanson is a Winnipeg-based filmmaker who specializes in producing screendance and work on the edge of documentary. A producer/director for her company Parachute Media Lab, she has developed a wide range of work including broadcast and commercial web video. She is also a trained contemporary dancer and choreographer.
“The standard across the board with the poetry films was incredibly high and we had a genuinely tough time making the final selection. There were lots of submissions with amazing visuals, but their respective poems were not crafted, featured tired language or had polemic and a tendency to preach. Others had well-crafted poetry but the film did not work with the poem. There were some very special ones where both poem and film were well crafted, edited, and worked together — and from these it was very hard to choose just one.
Kayla Jeanson’s Descrambled Eggs took both mediums into account and tells a bold, original, engaging and funny story. It’s a really entertaining piece and there are many small touches that demonstrate that the creators really put thought into the visuals and delivery of the poem while they were planning and shooting it. The poetry-film competition is about both mediums working together. With that in mind, the winner has made a huge effort to be a thoroughly cohesive piece with choreography, timing in camera, locations, props, performances etc.”
Our congratulations to John Baylis Post, winner of the 4th Five Words competition, for his poem Identifications. John will read at Ó Bhéal’s 10th anniversary event on April 10th 2017, along with other contributors to Five Words Vol X. Our congratulations also to all of the shortlisted entrants, and for highly commended entries from Siobhan Campbell (who will also attend) and from Five Words Alumna Tamara Miles. A huge thanks to everyone who took part this year, and to judges Afric McGlinchey and John W. Sexton for their selection of excellence.
| Identifications | by John Baylis Post (Ireland) winner |
| Milk | by Siobhan Campbell (Ireland) highly commended |
| The Safety | by Tamara Miles (U.S.A.) highly commended |
| Eve | by Siobhan Campbell (Ireland) |
| LOVELOCKS | by Jane Boxall (U.S.A.) |
| Only Connected | by Margaret McCarthy (Ireland) |
| Perspective | by Ted O’Regan (Ireland) |
| THE ZOMBIE-MAKER | by Derek Sellen (England) |
| Minor Deities | by Tamara Miles (U.S.A.) |
| A fickle god | by Margaret McCarthy (Ireland) |
| STITCHES | by Jane Boxall (U.S.A.) |
| The Buttonhole | by John D. Kelly (Northern Ireland) |
These poems will appear in Five Words Vol X, which will be launched at Ó Bhéal on Monday the 10th of April 2017, along with an award presentation and readings from available contributors. The 5th Five Words International Competition will commence at noon on Tuesday the 11th of April, 2017.
followed by the open-mic
For anyone who missed our phenomenal end-of-year event with Ian Duhig, we have all 11 of his poems on video plus 16 more from the open-mic, with huge thanks to Lovisa Cosgrave! What a night!
And a big thanks to all on the open-mic, Bernadette McCarthy, John Mee, John Nyhan, Mary O’Connell, Seamus Harrington, Ray Hanrahan, Jason Fisher, Patricia Walsh, Michal Weber, Charles Clarke, Pat Cotter, Mary Sutton, Rab Urquhart, Cédric Bikond, Michelle Delea, Janie Sparks, Patrick Loughnane, Teresa Honan and Ciarán MacArtain (with Michal).
(or via the Ó Bhéal Youtube channel).
The 4th Winter Warmer festival at the Kino was an enormous success, with far larger audiences throughout thanks to the space, although perhaps a little chilly for the Winter Warmer, we thought. Nonetheless a special privilege to host the festival in this iconic, soon-to-be-lost cultural space.
A whirlwindy, delightful two days and superb line-up of local and International poets from seven countries, in three continents, featuring Raina J. Leon, Ross Donlon, Michael Augustin, Josep Lluis Aguilo, Jos Smith, Emily Cullen, Catherine Walsh, Billy Mills, John Fitzgerald, Paul McMahon, Roisín Kelly, Martín Veiga, Eibhlís Carçione, John Ennis, Kerrie O’Brien, Elaine Feeney, Seán Dennehy, Tara Bergin, Gerry Hanberry, Paula Cunningham, Jessica Traynor, Annemarie Ní Churreáin and performance artist Francesca Castellano.
We have 30 videos from the festival (in order of appearance), followed by poems from the closed-mic session poets.
Guest Poet and Open-Mic videos
(also on the Ó Bhéal Youtube channel)
A fantastic jazz-poetry event with Sarah Clancy accompanied by The Jazz Messengers, followed by a vibrant open-mic for our 9th jazz-poetry night. This year’s 28 videos were filmed by Lovisa Cosgrave and include eight of Sarah’s poems and the following open-mic.
The complete video playlist is here
16th October 2016
Congratulations to Marie Craven, whose brilliant film Dictionary Illustrations has won Ó Bhéal’s 4th poetry-film competition award at the IndieCork Festival of Independant Cinema & Music. Marie’s film was in competition with twenty-eight other shortlisted entries representing 15 countries, which you can read all about here. Our thanks to all the filmmakers and poets for submitting, there was a record entry of 163 films from twenty-eight countries this year. We’re already looking forward to what 2017 will bring!
Poem: Dictionary Illustrations by Sarah Sloat
Synopsis – Searching for a word, I set off browsing the dictionary illustrations.
Director: Marie Craven (Australia)
Marie Craven assembles short videos from poetry, music, voice and moving images by various artists around the world. Created via the internet, the pieces are collaborative in a way that belongs to the 21st century. Social networking and open media licensing are key to the process. Since 2014, Marie has put together many video poems, most often in association with The Poetry Storehouse and Pool creative group.
She has also collaborated for several years as a vocalist with electronic musicians globally, also via the internet. During the 1990s and early 2000s she wrote and directed short narrative and experimental films that were screened and awarded widely at international film festivals. Her earliest involvement in media was in the mid-1980s with super 8 film-making in Melbourne.
“Dictionary Illustrations was a perfect film poem because, remembering it, we can’t distinguish which parts were the words, which the images, which the sounds: each element harmonised perfectly with the others to create one discrete artwork. This effect is so rare, and so rewarding.”
grant awarded to Ó Bhéal
Ó Bhéal is thrilled to announce becoming the recipient of a generous, once-off, ‘Belonging ’16’ grant from The Community Foundation for Ireland, to host a series of eight events throughout the year, each dedicated to celebrating the centenary of The Rising, through poetry in Irish and English. The majority of these evenings will feature a number of poets who have developed work in response to 1916, celebrating poets and poetry from the time, and contemporary significance.
Poets will be mostly accompanied by one or more musicians and silent film from 1916. Additional verse written during the period will be read by local poets at each event. The schedule beneath will be updated on an ongoing basis. The Five Word Challenge is likely to be influenced by the prevailing themes and members of the public are encouraged and welcome to share related poems during the usual open-mic session.
11th January – Breakfast with Padraig
28th March (Easter Monday) – Blood on the Rose / Fuil ar an Rós
23rd May – Eastrogen Rising: A Rebel Cabaret
18th July – Our Proclamation
22nd August – 1916 Women the World Over
10th October – The Memory of the Present
7th November – Rising to the Rising (bonus event)
25th November – Winter Warmer Festival poets reading centenary poems
5th December – Mo Pheann Ag Rince: Tionscadal An Ríordánaigh (IMRAM)
This grant has also enabled Ó Bhéal to purchase its own digital video projector, so we’ll be able to return the temporary projector on loan, generously provided by the Cork Film Centre.
Our congratulations to John W. Sexton, winner of the 3rd Five Words competition, for his poem The Dancehall on the Summit of the Bloodiest Head of the Twenty Six Headed Giant. John will be the guest poet at Ó Bhéal’s 9th anniversary event on April 11th. Our congratulations also to all of the shortlisted entrants, and for highly commended entries from Beth Somerford and Janet Lees. Thanks to everyone who took part this year, and to judges Marie Coveney and Colm Scully for their careful and considered selection.
| The Dancehall on the Summit of the Bloodiest Head of the Twenty Six Headed Giant | by John W. Sexton (Ireland) winner |
| Tuesday on a Fulcrum | by Beth Somerford (England) highly commended |
| Commuter | by Janet Lees (England) highly commended |
| The Night of the Nightjar | by Mary Anne Smith (England) |
| Tribes | by Pam Szadowski (England) |
| An awful hush | by Jenny Pollak (Australia) |
|
Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Fire Monkey |
by Tamara Miles (U.S.A.) |
|
An unread novella in a charity shop |
by Janet Lees (England) |
| Igloo | by Shirley Bell (England) |
| Ragwort | by Derek Sellen (England) |
| A Coin in the Soft Machine | by John W. Sexton (Ireland) |
| Sky, an Open Window | by Tamara Miles (U.S.A.) |
These poems will appear in Five Words Vol IX, which will be launched at Ó Bhéal on Monday the 11th of April 2016, along with an award presentation and readings from available contributors. The 4th Five Words International Competition will commence at noon on Tuesday the 12th of April, 2016.
at Ó Bhéal
– How can Poetry-Films widen the intersection shared by captive literature and film audiences?
It’s perhaps too early yet to tell, but there’s a strong indication that punters have been arriving earlier since Ó Bhéal invited the poetry-film muse of audio-visual word dimensions into its weekly event: a high-quality, discretely mounted … (dervish whirl now) … DV projector and ceiling screen (the screen in the image appears quite large in reality). Which means, that beyond opening the programme to an array of previously inaccessible poetry-based multimedia works, and since Ó Bhéal’s first film-with-live-poetry event was held on January 11th (Breakfast with Padraig), we’re now confident that we’re suitably able to present poets who concentrate in the ekphrastic and/or concrete realms (we have confirmed readings with poets who excel in both of these genres for later in 2016).
Ó Bhéal’s by now buRSTing! archive of poetry films, steadily growing since 2010, includes over 300 poetry films ranging from thirty seconds to ten minutes in length, and these are being screened in random from 8.30pm, every Monday played on reduced volume as people arrive. They run for an hour, until the usual proceedings commence, at 9.30pm. A single poetry film is also highlighted on the night to start off the open-mic section, the final part of the event. These include all shortlisted films entered into the annual Ó Bhéal/IndieCork International Poetry-Film Competition.
Are there any enthusiasts, entities or fans out there we wonder, who would consider sponsoring the annual Ó Bhéal poetry-film award? We’re seeking to implement a single cash prize for the winner of Best International Poetry-Film, presented at the IndieCork awards ceremony to accompany the physical award. This will attract more entries and further validate Ireland’s first such accolade. The rapidly growing genre is gradually taking hold locally too, with more and more regional entries arriving to compete each year with the world’s leading innovators in the dance of film and word. One of the two 2015 competition judges: local filmmaker Padraig Trehy {Shem the Penman Sings Again (2015); Seamus Murphy: A Quiet Revolution (2014-)}, has been having his film students translate poems into poetry-films at the Crawford College of Art and Design. Poetry and Film? It’s a truly remarkable combination of forces. When it works, it is something to behold. With two multilayered art forms working their magic in rhythm, it does seem like anything’s possible.
followed by the open-mic
For those who missed our end of year reading with Philippe Beck we have all 6 of his poems with English translations on video for you. Philippe gave a wonderful reading followed by a brilliant and large open-mic to end off the year. With thanks to Shane Vaughan for capturing the footage.
(or view on the Ó Bhéal Youtube channel).
