Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This study by poetry filmmaker, poet and theorist Sarah Tremlett, centres on her identification of a category of new narrative voice in the poetry film, as part of her five-year research encapsulated in her 400-page ‘industry bible’ The Poetics of Poetry Film. Tremlett’s area of research is the philosophy of poetry film in audio-visual practice, and her interrogation of subjectivity and voice are central to this subject. Poetry films are short films which include poetry, the moving image and soundscape, and are often a collaborative form. As a researcher since 2005, the author identified that there were no books on the category of poetry film and its formal characteristics. Importantly, the voice, and the role of the poet in the poetry film are unique in relation to other forms of short film. Many poetry films include the poet as voiceover, and this creates an interesting problematic in terms of diegesis and narrative in this largely lyric and subjective form. Equally, the poetry film is often a form of adaptation where a filmmaker interprets a poem; in this way a new dialogic form can be in play. Whilst including the importance of other voices, for example Spanish, Portuguese and Argentinian video poets, Tremlett establishes the characteristics which make a poetry film a unique form of short film whilst primarily focussing on her theories relating to voice, diegesis. and a new dialogic.