Notes on poetry animations

I’ve been making notes on some of the poetry animations I’ve seen – noting what I like/seems to work for me etc.

I like it when the animation takes metaphors from the poem and explores these ideas with lots of metamorphoses and transformations. For example in Billy Collins’ ‘Forgetfulness’, there is a mix of live action and animation playing with the concept of things disappearing – eg birds flying away, images being rubbed out, the map being folded up, a person shrinking to a dot, boats floating away. They are all illustrations of what’s in the actual poem but the way they merge into each other is satisfying. They complement each other very well, so that it doesn’t feel that the poem takes over or the animation takes over.

This is not the case with ‘Hunger’ where the images seem to reflect the mood of the poem rather than the words of the poem. In ‘Hunger’ the words are written on walls in stark concrete carparks and bleak modern faceless places. I found myself concentrating on the words – looking at the way they appeared (beautifully) on the screen. I found the meaning of the words very far removed from the visual representation. Not such a bad thing as it left me searching for meaning, but it was less satisfying for some reason.

Suggestions from Ginny Head:

‘Ah Pook is Here’ narrated by William Burroughs (not strictly poetry but well worth a look)
‘The Raven’ by Edgar Alan Poe (on Youtube)
‘The Cat Piano’ narrated by Nick Cave
‘I would like to be a dot in a painting by Miro’ by Moniza Alvi
Flanders Animation – 15 animated shorts based on Flemish poems