London Poets Video Series, 2009. See it at the Online Festival @ litup.sg

With Karen McCarthy (Exec Producer), Fiona Melville (Videographer), Suzanne Alleyne (Producer) and Chris Mooney-Singh (Writers Connect) July 23 09.

To see the videos go to the Lit Up Online Festival

Writers Connect: What are you thoughts about the value of an on-line lit fest?

Karen: The Net allows us to be international. It’s quick and easy access for all, or for many.

Suzanne: An online festival allows global access, it especially appeals to the younger generation who use technology naturally. The online festival allows a global access through a common format.

Fiona: We can also introduce a wider audience.

Karen: We can do things on the Net that weren’t so easy before – making or distributing films.

Suzanne: An online festival also has a sense of immediacy.

Karen: And it allows us to be more interactive too, through comments and communities. People from all over the world can be together and apart at the same time. It’s a great way to communicate with people from different cultures in different locations. We can use the many media platforms the web supports in new and interesting ways.

Fiona:  Without any danger of passing on Swine Flu or any other. ☺

Karen: Before the Web, it was often prohibitively expensive to make and distribute film in the way we have done.

Suzanne: The online festival has a sense of immediacy that appeals.

Karen: Recording these kinds of films also allows us to build an archive of oral performance – to record a specific moment in time.

Fiona: Yes, it certainly feels ‘live’.

WC: Even doing a discussion like this is less of an interview and more of an open dialogue.

Karen: Yes, it’s definitely a strong part of the future for poetry. Exactly.

The poetry video as a form.

WC: How is the Net helping to shape and define the form of the short film and especially the lit film?

Fiona: Yes – you only have to look at You Tube to see how many people are getting involved in telling stories. We are able to see snippets of lives from all over the world. And here we’ve been able to see poets ‘in situ’ which gives us an idea about who they are and what inspires them.

Karen: I think that’s important in terms of documentary also.

Fiona: We all enjoyed finding out about the poets as well as hearing their work and seeing them perform their work.
Karen: And the films are less governed by the kind of commercial, thus aesthetic parameters.. they can be more ‘true’ or pure – to the subject as person and idea.

Fiona: Absolutely.

Karen: It gives poetry a new life and space it might not have had before.

Suzanne: I think the Net allows more people access to the technology that documents and distributes information. In effect it means everybody has a chance to be a documentary maker and spread their own “very true” view.

Fiona: And as you were saying, Karen, they have access to a previously extremely expensive form of expression. People are editing at home.

WC: Suzanne you project-managed the London shoot. How does it feel to now see it suddenly live.

Suzanne: The Net is also a more true indication of what people want. It’s very easy to see how popular something is because viewing is defined by people deciding to look rather than being persuaded to view something through advertising or PR.

Karen: I think also to go back to your question the shape and format: 3 minute shorts can be viewed as groups or individually – they are very freestanding…we are more used to viewing concise nuggets of info and image….and that suits poetry…

Suzanne: The thing that I love about being a producer is hearing something and then seeing something come to life. The beauty of the net is how fast something can come to life, this project has been one of the strongest examples of this. We talked on Tuesday and by the following Tuesday the work was up and live and being spread around.

WC: yes, one of the advantages is the guerrilla speed of the venture.

Karen: Ah ha! that might be your special mojo  not the Net.

WC: well, we at litup.sg had a special need to expand the concept of the festival online due to the restrictions of the H1N1 Virus of bringing authors to Singapore and having to quarantine them! Through our good supporters in Melbourne, Australia project, we were able to engineer a sister project alongside yours from London.

Fiona: Thanks to you and Karen bringing lots of people together.

Suzanne: I love seeing how projects manifest themselves – we could never have known how beautiful the interviews would be, they took a life on of their own.

A school of London poets?

WC: So, does this selection of poets represent a movement?

Karen: I’m not sure they represent a movement as such although I would say for the most part the poets selected are all very open to the web and use it actively – some as part of their creative work as well as for networking and communication.

Suzanne: I think they very much represent a movement. I think the poets represent a slice of life and they show a slice that life in exaggerated form.

Karen: Of course we’re all writing out of London at the same time and there may be geo-cultural influences that the writers share even if their work is dramatically different. In fact I think when putting something like this together one is often looking for contrast as much as congruence.

Fiona: Their work is varied.

Karen: Yes…very different voices, form very different writers with different concerns. I think that in itself represents London. It is an extremely multicultural, multi-faceted city.

Fiona: What about the written word as opposed to the ‘spoken’ word?

Suzanne: Because they can communicate they show us exactly what is going on in the world, but just in a small space and in an articulate voice. I think they are a representation of everything going on around us, and when you add the internet factor, then a small group of people (poets and writers) show exactly what is going on around the world.

WC: There are a mixture of performative poets and text-based writers. but they seem to happily co-exist. Is that a new development with the London /UK scene?

Karen: You mean instead of the old page versus stage thing?

Suzanne: They happily exist to a degree only.

Karen: Many of the poets featured are absolutely committed to the development of the work on the page.

Fiona: The ’spoken word’ lends itself well to video but what about the writers who write for the page?

Karen: Not at the expense of performative value either necessarily. A good poem should stand up on page and stage in my opinion.

Fiona: The good thing about this medium is that you can watch it over and over as you might want to read a poem more than once.

Karen: However, depending on what you are writing into – one may dominate the other in terms of an aesthetic paradigm – so some poems may work better on the page.

Suzanne: Spoken word, performance poet and page poets mean very different things to different people. For many being called a performance poet can mean they don’t know their craft, for others they see a performance poet as allowing them to express their skill in a different way whilst still being “crafted” one of the amazing things about the interviews we did was to see who the poets/writers view themselves and their work in terms of being a “performance or page” poet or in some cases both.

Fiona: And as Suzanne was saying with the interviews you may want to listen to the poetry again after finding out more about the writer.

Karen: However I think that poets tend to have ‘communication’ at the heart of what they do.

WC: To curate both together in an online festival like Lit Up, Singapore is kind of making a statement for a shared platform. Would you agree?

Fiona: Yes.

Karen: The shape, form and presentation of the poem will feed in to the complexity of the poem and also the accessibility for audience.

Suzanne: It’s also interesting to see how people came to poetry and how that influence guides their work and the crafting of their work. Maxwell Golden, for example the written page influence. Francesca Beard meanwhile has come from the page influence but loves the performance element and includes being able to dialogue with the audience as part of the pleasure of being a performance poet.

Fiona: I think it’s a great opportunity for a ‘master class’ – the sort of thing you get on a course but open to everyone.  You can see the work and hear from the artists.  And perhaps even interact via a forum like this one.

Karen: Indeed, whereas writers like Bernardine Evaristo who is a verse novelist have different concerns about narrative and structure.

Fiona: In other words the festival is giving a huge audience access to the poets.

WC: What is interesting about the shooting technique is that even though some are reading from a text they still do well to communicate alongside the performative examples.

Fiona: I thought that too. And the more complex work you can listen to over again if you wish.

Suzanne: I think the poets and writers themselves are able to co exist reasonably happily, I do think that more traditional and staid elements of the writing scene like to categorise and differentiate between what they consider to be the literary skills of the performance- yes – the page poet and this is where any problems or issues tend to occur.

WC: Any final comments about the project?

Suzanne: Producing a project is always like giving birth to something, you can speculate and you can plan but the best projects end up taking their own life form, not necessarily what you expected but beautiful and relevant. I always feel quite humbled and proud to work on projects like this as I feel like we document a slice of history.

Fiona: Yes, you know a project works when it takes on its own life.

Karen: I absolutely agree.

WC: Many thanks. Meet you online.

To see the videos go to the Lit Up Online Festival