** COVID-19 UPDATE: As the state of film exhibition and physical gathering remains uncertain during the pandemic, Cadence will take place in April as scheduled. While we are planning for a predominantly online festival, we will host in-person events to the best of our ability given public health recommendations, though it cannot be guaranteed. Whether we gather online, in-person, or some hybrid variation of the two, community, dialogue, and education through media arts WILL persist, during Cadence’s 4th year serving the video poetry artist community! **
Verse meets visuals in motion during a series of cinepoem screenings, ekphrastic responses, and generative workshops celebrating National Poetry Month.
Northwest Film Forum is soliciting video poetry for inclusion in Cadence Video Poetry Festival, with selected submissions screening in April 2021.
Video poetry is language as light. As an art form, video poetry is lucid and liminal—on the threshold of the literary and the moving image. It articulates the poetic image visually, rather than metaphorically—it shifts words from page to screen, from ink to light. A video poem makes meaning that would not exist if text was without image, image without text. It is language-based video work or a video-based poem. Video poetry is a literary genre presented as visual media.
We are looking for works that fit within the following categories of video poetry.
• Adaptations/Ekphrasis: Videos created to bring new meaning and dimension to pre-existing poetry. Any poems used for this purpose must be in the public domain or else used with written consent of the author.
• Collaboration: Video poems created in collaboration between a video artist and writer.
• Video by Poets: Poets creating video from, or as, their writing.
• Poetry by Video Artists: Video artists using text visually or through audio intrinsic to the poetic meaning.
• Wild Card: Video work that’s poetically informed or poetry that’s visually informed that doesn’t neatly fit into one of the other categories.
Cadence Video Poetry Festival is presented by NWFF and programmed in collaboration with Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and Rana San.
Image: "Black Paint" (Hanan Hassan, Seattle, WA)
ABOUT NORTHWEST FILM FORUM
Founded in Seattle in 1995 as an independent film and arts nonprofit, Northwest Film Forum incites public dialogue and creative action through collective cinematic experiences. Each year the Forum presents hundreds of films, festivals, community events, multidisciplinary performances, and public discussions. As a comprehensive visual media organization, the Forum offers educational workshops and artist services for film and media makers at all stages of their development. More information is available at nwfilmforum.org.
Video poems will be eligible for an award within their submission category:
• Adaptations/Ekphrasis
• Collaboration
• Video by Poets
• Poetry by Video Artists
• Wild Card
Award winners will be announced at the April screenings.
Meet the Jury
Catherine Bresner is the author of the chapbook The Merriam Webster Series; the artist book Everyday Eros (Mount Analogue 2017); and the empty season, which won the Diode Edition Book Prize in 2017. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the VOLTA, b l u s h, Sixth Finch, The Offing, Heavy Feather Review, Gulf Coast, Passages North, Paperbag and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Juniper Summer Institute fellowship and the 2019 Cadence Residency through the Northwest Film Forum. Currently, she is the publicist for Wave Books and lives in Seattle, WA.
Caryn Cline is a Seattle-based filmmaker, curator and educator, originally from the Missouri Ozarks. Her short experimental, animated, found footage and “botanicollage” films have been screened at the Venice Biennale, Alchemy, the San Francisco Exploratorium, Antimatter, Experiments in Cinema, Anthology Film Archives, Analogia, and other festivals and venues. Besides making films, she teaches handmade film techniques, is the Executive Director of the Interbay Cinema Society, and co-founder and co-curator of the Engauge Experimental Film Festival.
Roland Dahwen is a filmmaker and visual artist. He has been a recipient of the Oregon Media Arts Fellowship, an artist-in-residence at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Creative Exchange Lab, and a finalist for the Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Award. He has made videos with several poets and writers, including Samiya Bashir (Field Theories), Dao Strom (Traveler’s Ode, Flower Diatribe #1, Love|Object|Treason), and Stacey Tran (Haft-Seen).
Nico Vassilakis writes poetry about reading seeing and draws language that focuses on the visual jettisoning of letters from their word position. He has published several books of poetry and text/art. Most recently VOIR DIRE was published by Dusie Books. Vassilakis co-edited The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 (Fantagraphics Books) and was a curator of several international visual/concrete poetry exhibitions. He currently lives in Greenville, IL with his wife and animals.