seasons

The Book of Hours is a calendar of poetry films. There is a poetry film for now and for different times of day, for every month of the year.

The Book of Hours is a contemporary re-imagining of a Medieval book of hours. These were collections of exquisitely hand-illustrated religious readings and accompanying images. They were created in a handy size so they could be carried by the owner and read on a daily basis. They can also be seen as interactive texts as these books were not intended to be read chronologically. This Book of Hours is secular but the general mood is contemplative and reflective.

All the films have been made in collaboration between Lucy English, a UK based spoken word poet, and an international community of film makers. 

As a poetic mediation on place and experience, Window encourages you to explore the things at the edges. The ordinary moments—sounds, sights, memories, thoughts—that make an environment familiar, that make it ‘home’. My inspiration came, and continues to come so often, from John Cage—and I made this work in 2012, the centenary of his birth. His music, writing, and thinking—the way he lived his life—are a wondrous integration of art and ordinary experience. Interwoven with fragmentary texts, themselves hidden at the edges, and only available through exploration, are a separate series of short essays. Some are about John Cage and some are personal reflections as I looked, listened and collected the sounds and images that provide the material for this piece. I did this over a period of a year—listening, looking, snapping photos and recording sounds. Arranged in ‘months’, there are various ways to interact with Window. The choice is yours—listening, reading, looking, and travelling from one time of year to another. For each month the images and sounds were actually recorded in the month concerned. So by moving the sounds around, louder or softer or from left to right, you may come to notice how subtly sound changes as time, and life, goes on. More information on Katharine Norman's work at www.novamara.com

This “reactive” (a.k.a. responsive or interactive) poem does an admirable job of representing the haiku in digital media, much like “Basho’s Frogger” by Neil Hennessy. Built upon a looping image of a drawing of a tree changing through the seasons, while a stick figure walks across the screen representing its shifting mood through body language. As the reader moves the pointer on the screen, different words emerge, allowing for the discovery of different phrases, depending upon one’s mouse movements. Juxtaposition of images and a connection to nature along with the speaker’s “posture” towards the material are all represented in this brief poem. The question of the title remains: is this a “free haiku” because it is offered gratis or because it has somehow been liberated from convention? Both readings are plausible, given the politics and poetics of Dada.

(Source: Leonardo Flores)

In the early days of the web, Marsha cheerfully launches a home page devoted to her favorite angels and invites them to come and play. They do, and they are not friendly. The Fall of the Site of Marsha shows three states of her site, captured in Spring, Summer, and Fall, each getting progressively darker as the angels haunt the beleaguered Marsha, reveal her husband's infidelity (from clues found on the site), and drag Marsha and her home page into madness and Gothic ruin.

(Source: Author description, Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 1.)

The Fall of the Site of Marsha by Rob Wittig is an interactive electronic literature experience presented in the form of a late-nineties web site. The piece follows Marsha, an eccentric woman who creates a website centered around her obsession with angels. Things begin to get strange, dark, and a little creepy when the Angels Marsha loves so much make an appearance on her web site. Three different versions of Marsha’s site are available for view: Spring ’98, Summer ’98, and Fall ’98. Each version of the site is very different. The sites get progressively darker as the angels take control. At first, the page is just a goofy site about a woman’s angel obsession, but it eventually becomes nearly unrecognizable. As time goes on and the tone gets progressively darker, the site begins to fill with eerie messages from the angels. Each version of the web site is equipped with a variety of links and pages that contribute to the overall story. The user views the story organically through message boards and secret areas of the site. There is much to be discovered, from Marsha’s husband’s infidelity to sinister implications regarding her father’s death. For full effect and the complete story, each version of the site should be fully explored. The site isn't just the way the story is presented; it is the story itself. (Source: Electronic Literature Directory, http://directory.eliterature.org/node/3942)