{"id":6470,"date":"2021-06-24T15:48:29","date_gmt":"2021-06-24T15:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/?p=6470"},"modified":"2021-10-23T13:39:24","modified_gmt":"2021-10-23T13:39:24","slug":"gavin-selerie-lines-through-the-lens-the-poem-films-of-david-annwn-and-howard-munson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/6470\/gavin-selerie-lines-through-the-lens-the-poem-films-of-david-annwn-and-howard-munson\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin Selerie: Lines Through the Lens: The Poem-films of David Annwn and Howard Munson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every art form has its own structural and expressive capacities, but there has long been a perceived link between film and poetry. Early filmmakers such as Vertov and Eisenstein thought of their work as in some sense parallel to the rhythms and image-leaps of verse. Germaine Dulac made a short film\u00a0L\u2019Invitation au Voyage<\/em>\u00a0(1927) inspired by Baudelaire\u2019s poem, and in\u00a0La Coquille et le clergyman<\/em>\u00a0(1928) used dissolving superimpositions to create a dream-state.\u00a0Man Ray\u2019s\u00a0L\u2019Etoile de Mer<\/em>\u00a0(1928) was loosely based on a poem by Robert Desnos and his\u00a0Le Myst\u00e8re du chateau des d\u00e9s<\/em>\u00a0drew on motifs from Mallarm\u00e9\u2019s \u2018Un coup de d\u00e9s\u2019.\u00a0Before that Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand had made\u00a0Manhatta<\/em>, a more literal fusion of text and image: shots of New York City were juxtaposed with lines or paraphrases from poems by Walt Whitman. Cocteau\u2019s\u00a0Le Sang d\u2019un po\u00e8te<\/em>\u00a0(1930) is an allegory of a poem\u2019s origin, attempting the freedom\u2014from literalness\u2014of a cartoon. It includes a poetic voice-over narration. Cocteau\u2019s\u00a0Orph\u00e9e<\/em>\u00a0(1950), less episodic, has a similarly poetic expression of sound and image, at one point featuring lines of poetry emitted from a car radio, words that prove crucial to the narrative. A more direct collaboration between poet and filmmaker is found in Harry Watt\u2019s and Basil Wright\u2019s\u00a0Night Mail<\/em>\u00a0(1936), in which W.H. Auden voices his poem of that title over the last three minutes of footage. The text, heavily cut, imitates the rhythms of the train\u2019s wheels. Very different in feel is\u00a0Geography of the Body<\/em>\u00a0(1943), which uses dime-store magnifying lenses to examine the naked bodies of the director Willard Maas, his assistant Marie Mencken and George Barker, who supplied and read a surreal poem in a newsreel tone.<\/p>\n

By the 1950s the film-poem was beginning to be recognized as a form and at a symposium in 1953 Dylan Thomas remarked: \u2018As in a poem one image breeds another, I think, in a film, it\u2019s really the visual image that breeds another\u2014breeds and breathes it\u2019 (Amos Vogel ed., \u2018Poetry and the Film: a symposium\u2019 in\u00a0Film Culture<\/em>37 summer 1965). Since the explosion of experimental work in the 1960s various writers and artists have pushed the medium to prominence. Text-sound-image has attracted a body of critical work and radical aspiration is reinforced by Orson Welles\u2019s much-quoted remark:\u00a0\u2018[a] film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet\u2019 (\u2018Ribbon of Dreams\u2019 in\u00a0International Film Annual<\/em>\u00a02 [1958]).\u00a0A sign of broad interest in the relationship between poetry and film is the inclusion of many of the works listed above in the two DVD sets\u00a0Avant-garde: Experimental Cinema\u00a0<\/em>(\u20181920s and 30s\u2019 and \u20181928-1954\u2019) from Kino International.<\/p>\n

Hans Richter has called all experimental films \u2018film poetry\u2019, that is in the sense of exploring a mood or lyrical sensation, as opposed to narrative or factual commentary. Citing his own\u00a0Vormittagsspuk [Ghosts Before Breakfast]<\/em>\u00a0(1928), he says:<\/p>\n

With this lyrical form goes a greater freedom in the use of the raw material, as there is not necessarily a story to tell. It establishes some happenings which are related to each other but do not have to follow the same psychological or dramatic order as the novel or the film drama. One could go one step further: the film lyric\u2014or film poetry\u2014has followed definite lines which coincide with the aesthetic problems and the movements of the past 40 years in modern art, poetry, and music. You find films which parallel and even fulfill these movements: Cubism, Dadaism, Expressionism, Futurism and especially Surrealism. . . . There is a kind of script, there is a general direction, there is an aim, a meaning, a mood in the process of production. But all that grows is not foreseen. It is the result of the creative process itself. It is not so much planning as it is feeling along the path which the theme takes. In other words, the material you accumulate during the shooting is more or less raw material; though it has been planned to contribute to a specific scene, plan or, aim, it might, in the end assume a different meaning altogether. This I would call \u2018sensitive improvisation\u2019. This listening to oneself as well as to the material which you accumulate, is essential to a film poem. (\u2018From Interviews [1957-58] with Hans Richter\u2019,\u00a0Film Culture<\/em>\u00a031 Winter 1963-64)<\/p>\n

Richter\u2019s\u00a0Rhythmus 21<\/em>\u00a0(1921) and\u00a0Ghosts Before Breakfast<\/em>\u00a0are on the first of the Kino Experimental Cinema sets. Although these films don\u2019t embrace poetry as such, they are in some ways more poetic than, say, D.W. Griffiths\u2019s cinematic treatment of Kingsley and Tennyson poems in\u00a0The Unchanging Sea<\/em>\u00a0(1910) and\u00a0Enoch Arden<\/em>(1911), which nevertheless are distinctive for crosscutting, ellipsis and juxtaposition.<\/p>\n

The poetry-film or film-poem is a hybrid that can create effects and meaning beyond those in either form as a separate entity. Such a verbo-visual mesh will range from close kinship to distant relation, with the most interesting results likely to stem from resistance to imitation or direct commentary. British artist Alastair Cook has written: \u2018for the filming of poetry to succeed, surely it cannot merely be a juxtaposing of the two but an organized symbiosis\u2019 (http:\/\/filmpoem.com\/about\/). I would suggest that organization can, paradoxically, embrace chance and modes of disalignment. Rather than \u2018the filming of poetry\u2019 a truer objective would be the interplay of the two forces, with neither being subject or controller of the other. This is the case with the various collaborations between poet David Annwn and filmmaker Howard Munson.<\/p>\n

As is evident both from his poetry and criticism, David Annwn has had a deep involvement with cinema over the years. Horror and Dada-surrealist film have been particular points of focus. As Annwn observes in\u00a0Re-Envisaging the First Age of Cinematic Horror<\/em>:<\/p>\n

[T]echniques such as non-linear progression, filmic collages, and long tracking shots with minimal forward action . . . are intrinsic to the variegated and complex development of horror films. (p. 113)<\/p>\n

He notes the way\u00a0Haxan\/Witchcraft through the Ages<\/em>\u00a0(1922) rings changes on the old lantern-lecture format, creating ambiguities and contradictions of perspective, and makes use of puppet animation alongside engravings and more naturalistic footage. The witch context, with inventive shifts of language, features in the title sequence of Annwn\u2019s\u00a0Bela Fawr\u2019s Cabaret<\/em>\u00a0(2008), where theosophical magic mingles with shamanic voices:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Come Bl\u00e1-vat-sky<\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s ski, let\u2019s ski away<\/em><\/p>\n

cuckoocall . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

pint Magic?<\/em><\/p>\n

One spell and well that one . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

Yr. scat of ciphers & cinquefoil<\/p>\n

Those old witches\/See them\/Hop<\/p>\n

Marie Laveau<\/p>\n

Obeah, Xango<\/p>\n

Balu Asong Gau<\/p>\n

I am the chief source of all that rises<\/em><\/p>\n

Now I am the tiger, who can stop the wind<\/em>\u00a0(p.30)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Haxan<\/em>\u00a0is specifically evoked in the poem \u2018Haxan Dance\u2019, which I shall discuss later.<\/p>\n

Dada influences a great deal of the\u00a0sound poetry in\u00a0Bela Fawr\u2019s Cabaret<\/em>, and Annwn has long been preoccupied with raw sound, sonics and sense. \u2018That Nature is Bela Fawr\u2019s Cabaret\u2019 (pp. 120-21) deals with\u00a0Kurt Schwitters\u2019s\u00a0Merzbarn<\/em>\u00a0and Dada\u2019s use of unconscious slips in language.\u00a0The collaborative book\u00a0Dadadollz<\/em>(2011), with Christine Kennedy, celebrates women Dada artists of the Cabaret Voltaire at a crucial period for radical art during the First World War. Emmy Hennings, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Hannah Hoch made and exhibited dolls for plays, revue catalogues, posters and photographs. Negotiating this legacy, Annwn and Kennedy explore different ways of seeing, partly in a performative context. The poem \u2018RunDadanella\u2019 in\u00a0Disco Occident<\/em>\u00a0(2013), with insistent repetition of\u2014and variation on\u2014the phrase \u2018she came down\u2019, focuses on Taeuber-Arp\u2019s\u00a0whirling verve and her challenges to perceived gender-imposed limits. This freedom and bravery is contrasted with the stance of Rudolf Laban and Mary Wigman, whose pioneering dance practice was tainted by their complicity with the Third Reich. Annwn\u2019s play on Dada\/the Dardanelles straits\/elle (= she\/L) stems from one of Carl Orff\u2019s pieces for children, \u2018Rundadinella\u2019 in\u00a0Musica Poetica<\/em>. Appropriately, this is a round, indicative of the poet\u2019s looping and layering structures.<\/p>\n

Annwn\u2019s straighter poetic output also has links with cinema and film poems.\u00a0Red Bank<\/em>\u00a0(2018)\u00a0alludes to the Beatles\u2019 Penny Lane video, in which the group, wearing red hunting jackets, ride horses down Angel Lane and through an arch on a country estate. This is juxtaposed with Charles I\u2019s masques, propping up an autocratic state but also precursory of a modern sexual and transgender revolution. Again, the Beatles\u2019 Savile Row rooftop concert in 1969, a sort of finale, is crosscut with Charles on the scaffold and the crowd laying wreaths for him.\u00a0The band, with the possible exception of Harrison, had a fondness for extravagant display (witness their attachment to Victoriana) and this is placed in relation to the seventeenth century drama, with extravagance crushed for a dream of greater social equality. Within these instances of play and strife, with attendant power contradictions, the poet implants a \u2018rehearsal\u2019, interrogating the function of a juvenile detention facility in Merseyside where his father taught and which housed the notorious Mary Bell.<\/p>\n

This then is the hinterland to Annwn\u2019s collaboration with the American filmmaker.<\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

Howard Munson is a San Francisco book artist, impro activist, puppeteer, maker of maquettes and masks, fan of Butoh dance, film-maker, designer and avant-garde collaborator. Munson\u2019s films are thoroughly steeped in Dada, Bauhaus, Surrealist, Constructivist, Futurist, versions of Cabaret and other experimentation in film, theatrical presentation, illustration and the use of puppetry. The poetry-film experiments and animation at Cinema 16, Maya Deren\u2019s work, Kenneth Anger\u2019s films,\u00a0\u00a0Lawrence Ferlinghetti\u2019s \u2018Assassination Raga\u2019 and performist poet Hedwig Gorski\u2019s work on the Eyestruck series are also germane. Munson\u2019s work is witty and playful, while dealing profoundly with core social and aesthetic issues. As his website suggests, this material \u2018exudes a sense of peace\u2019, albeit tempered by \u2018a sense of struggle\u2019 (http:\/\/www.vampandtramp.com\/finepress\/m\/howard-munson.html<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Amongst his techniques are the use of stringed maquettes, hand puppets of various kinds, mirrors and kaleidoscopes, collages and montages, scrolling visual cylinders, dis-framing (demolishing and moving through frames), historic newsreel footage overlaid in different ways with photography, after-images, book illustrations, paintings and appearances of live actors and dancers. Munson is also interested in foregrounding drapery, decor and various veiling techniques (most often in seen his Butoh films).\u00a0\u00a0Sometimes the effects sought are of a hand-made, jagged, miniature theatrical production and at others, the impact gained is high tech, full of floating montages, IT screen effects, dislocating vistas and rippling dissolves and fades.<\/p>\n

Annwn and Munson decided early on that no one form should dominate these films and that music should sometimes\u00a0be most audible, screen animation of different kinds should rise to the foreground, poetry could vary from loud lucidity to softness and indecipherable sound should emerge at times. The collective experience of viewing and hearing the film as performance is stressed. Annwn\u2019s use of repetition and parallelism in some poems anticipate these effects. The poems other than \u2018Dada Traum\u2019 were written for cinematic drama performance in the films that ensued.<\/p>\n

This collaborative process started with an impromptu reading in 2016 by Jack Hirschman and Annwn at Caf\u00e9 Trieste, San Francisco, a favourite haunt of the Beats, in 2016. Annwn read a sound poem \u2019Dada Traum\u2019 influenced by the famous photographs of Hugo Biallowons dancing in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner\u2019s studio in 1915. He is shown dancing in the nude and posed in his soldier\u2019s uniform and these images prompted Annwn to consider Dada artists\u2019 war and pre-war experiences. A forest supervisor and regular model for the Expressionist painter, Biallowons was killed at Verdun in 1916. Not long afterwards Kirchner himself, beset by the \u2018bloody carnival\u2019 in which \u2018everything [was] topsy-turvy\u2019, suffered a nervous breakdown. I shall return to discuss Annwn\u2019s poem in the context of the relevant film. Meanwhile, it should be registered that Munson filmed the 2016 performance, which has considerable verve. The spontaneous nature of the event is reinforced by the tinkling cocktail piano in the background, a sort of lounge atmosphere gone wild but part of the caf\u00e9\u2019s normal business. See:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=o6iJDn-s808<\/a><\/p>\n

Subsequently, Munson sent Annwn a film:\u00a0\u2018Filippo Marinetti Reads Zang Tumb Tumb, Partial Reading 1914\u2019, which he dedicated to him:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h6TsdHKi2P4&t=20s<\/a><\/p>\n

This features Marinetti\u2019s reading together with arresting use of hand-held puppets, revolving mirrors and day-glo colours, all in a setting that is like a miniature theatre teeming with conflicting presences.<\/p>\n

Next Annwn wrote the poem \u2018Jeu de Marseilles\u2019, dedicated to Munson. The context for this is Marseilles in 1941 when\u00a0surrealist artists, including Max Ernst, Andr\u00e9 Masson and Jacqueline Lamba, known by the Nazis as \u2018undesirables\u2019, were trapped in that city, waiting for a chance to leave for the U.S. as the Nazis drew nearer. Out of fear and expressive need, they created a new pack of cards, the celebrated Jeu de Marseilles. Aware that Marseilles had been one of the sources of the original Tarot, the artists reworked its structure, replacing the royal-courtly hierarchy with figures from their own pantheon of art, the occult and philosophy\/psychology. King, Queen and Jack became Genius, Siren and Magus, assigned to such heroes as Baudelaire, Lewis Carroll\u2019s Alice and Paracelsus. Instead of swords, cups, coins and batons, the suits became flames (red) for desire, locks (black) for knowledge, wheels (red) for revolution, and stars (black) for dreams. Annwn\u2019s poem celebrates this transformation. Textured to embody its subversive possibility, the lines have force and resonance:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

automatic scribble tint of mind\u2019s sepals<\/p>\n

cascading out . . .<\/p>\n

face-scapes flicker rage to change<\/p>\n

night\u2019s anchored submarine furniture<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

escaping dangerous to usa<\/p>\n

words migrate, warp and mutate:<\/p>\n

\u2018tarot\u2019 \u2018torat\u2019 \u2018ratot\u2019 \u2018rotate\u2019<\/p>\n

shuffle livid . . .<\/p>\n

The ending evokes Dorothea Tanning\u2019s painting\u00a0Ernst in a Blue Boat<\/em>\u00a0(1947), in which her suntanned husband floats across what may be the Arizona desert, with his bird alter-ego emerging from a sail and alchemical fire issuing from his hand. Threatening forces lurk behind but Annwn treats the image as an emblem of escape:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

into this spread you\u2019re headed out,<\/p>\n

hand taking flame<\/p>\n

in a blue boat<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ernst and Tanning did of course evade the Fascist menace, meeting after they\u2019d arrived in America. Earlier in the text, the evocation of Victor Brauner\u2019s design for the psychic H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Smith is particularly vivid: \u2018her leopard flaming hair\/combusting across your fingers\u2019. Such wording is both exact as a descriptive record and ripe for visual re-translation.<\/p>\n

In the film (link below)<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=I1Oj565sBH4&t=11s<\/a><\/p>\n

Annwn reads his text quietly, placing the visceral sounds precisely, as the visual images and music turn. Only at one point is there literal accompaniment, behind the word \u2018explodes\u2019 (line 4). Munson presents occult emblems and relevant shapes, bright as stained glass. Their thin surfaces, sometimes stencilled, are a little reminiscent of Dom Sylvester Hou\u00e9dard\u2019s translucent plastic sheets, although in this case without text. Coils, wheel-flowers, triangles, dotted cards and lattices revolve\u2014merry-go-round-like\u2014over newsreel images of combat, stark silhouettes in the background. These give way at the end to realistic footage of a ship rising and dipping in a turbulent sea. Munson\u2019s visual pattern perfectly complements the gamesome mystery and menace of Annwn\u2019s poem.<\/p>\n

Munson\u2019s selection and use of music is a key component\u00a0here: the credits list \u2018Light Years Away\u2019, \u2018Galactic Damages\u2019 and \u2018Etherial Choir Ascends\u2019.\u00a0The composers appear to be Doug Maxwell (1 and 3) and Jingle Punks (2).\u00a0A choir provides spatial calm and a hint of calm migration for the last sequence. By contrast, the opening music, stentorian in tone, evokes the Nazi martial threat. If there is no aural cognate for the Surrealists\u2019 card-play, the music does catch the intense and increasing desperation of the artists involved.<\/p>\n

As a third part to this collaboration, Thomas Ingmire created a one-of-a-kind book which celebrates both the poem and the video interpretation:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.thomasingmire.com\/blog\/jeu-de-marseilles-game-of-marseilles?view=full<\/a><\/p>\n

As Ingmire explains,<\/p>\n

The poem and paintings are created on a translucent Mylar. The show-thru of images and writing is an attempt to capture the movement, over-lapping, and layering created by Munson in his video.<\/p>\n

Annwn has discussed the work at some length in \u2018Solid Light: Ways Through Transparent Books\u2019 (Junction Box<\/em>13, [2020]). He notes the way in which images from Munson\u2019s film\u2014curlicue, flowerhead, shard, spiral, lattice and domino-like dot\u2014are texturally adapted, in a play of depths and surfaces. At times the viewer\u2019s gaze is drawn into a vortex or labyrinth, which creates a \u2018toppling vertigo\u2019 effect.<\/p>\n

After the exercise in war and surrealism, Munson turned to Annwn\u2019s poem \u2018Haxan Dance\u2019, which has a different feel. As the title implies, this text references Benjamin Christensen\u2019s\u00a0H\u00e4xan<\/em>\u00a0(1922), a filmic hybrid of documentary and evocation of Medieval demonology and witchcraft. Annwn draws on key images, reinscribing the tableaux, naturalistic action scenes and intertitles as a voice-track. He references strange animal-headed monsters, little creatures summoned or consumed for potent effect, Apelone\u2019s ascent to a dream castle (where wishes are fulfilled then removed) and figures dancing in a ring. Christensen\u2019s structural virtuosity in the treatment of physical surface and spirit is well caught in the lines: \u2018we keep on passing door through door\/ tripping through shutters\u2019. Indeed, scenes constantly open into others, often literally by an aperture, and reality is fluid. Shapes appear in \u2018a swaying trance: reelers back-to-back in tall hats,\/ peacocks in a stuck banquet\/ of flesh and flagons\u2019.\u00a0The scientific and psychologically analytic elements of\u00a0H\u00e4xan<\/em>\u00a0are here only by implication\u2014except perhaps in the phrase \u2018burgeoning projection\u2019\u2014but that is enough to suggest roots of fantasy and superstition. Annwn\u2019s closing lines, \u2018beating the bounds\/and bounding the beat\u2019, encapsulate the contradictions involved in making and assessing devilry. Again, \u2018we must come back dancing\/ to dream\u2019 may relate both to the beckoning of diabolical forces and to their cinematic or poetic realization. This miniature take is a both a tribute to a complex masterpiece and, as a sound unit, a powerful self-sufficient text.<\/p>\n

Howard\u2019s film, viewable here,<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IwrF5O73sU0<\/a><\/p>\n

retains and reconfigures the emphases of the poem, adding one of Christensen\u2019s core motifs, the bonfire blaze. Various scenes feed into the mix but the old wise woman Apelone\u2019s drunken dream of the fantasy castle comes to bear most insistently. Howard uses a variety of Bosch-esque pictures and bleached-out, over-exposed films of widdershins dancers to start his responses. Some of the striking detail in Bosch\u2019s pictures is summoned in close-up and the overall melting and separation of images is reminiscent of the gelatine filters used by Germaine Dulac or Mark Boyle\u2019s and Joan Hills\u2019s liquid light shows in the 1960s. Throughout, red and orange flames flicker, laid against the silhouettes of what seem to be cloaked and hooded figures engaged in a rite, and often with a third lamina, the painted scenes of devilry and indulgence already mentioned. Evoking what Annwn terms a \u2018circulating rite\u2019 the forms float and press, wafting like sheets or smoke and then assuming more recognizably human shape. The film is thus both abstract and pictorial. Its soundtrack, a \u2018pagan medieval music mix\u2019 featuring Trobar de Morte, reinforces a dominant mood of mystery and danger. Annwn\u2019s text, as treated by Munson, conveys the essence of Christensen\u2019s dual perspective in\u00a0Haxan<\/em>: historical witchcraft and modern superstitions and neurosis.<\/p>\n

The next collaboration involved Annwn\u2019s poem \u2018Microcosmos Stir\u2019. The context here is\u00a0Constructivist Ballet<\/em>\u00a0by Naum Gabo. While living as a refugee in war-time Cornwall, with no toys and games available for children, the sculptor created a \u2018ballet\u2019 to amuse his daughter. He used simple materials that were available in his studio. As the Tate St Ives site explains:<\/p>\n

A plastic semi-spherical dome with some tiny off-cuts of coloured plastic underneath was transformed into [a] miniature theatre stage with ballet-dancers as soon as Gabo rubbed its surface with woollen cloth. The energy of static electricity would make the \u2018dancers\u2019, named after chess pieces, jump and move in circles as by magic. (https:\/\/www.tate.org.uk\/art\/artists\/naum-gabo-1137\/naum-gabos-constructivist-ballet<\/a>)<\/p>\n

When polished, this small dome generated static electricity so that small fragments floated under its surface. These apparently random \u2018fragments\u2019 were, in fact, smaller versions of his sculptures and were given names for this aerial ballet.<\/p>\n

Howard\u2019s film, available here,<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OFldqZjyPew<\/a><\/p>\n

uses small, suspended cut outs of objects in similar material to evoke child-like visions. These coloured geometric pieces bob and waggle, floating in air, superimposed on black skeleton-like forms in the background. The former shapes move in a playful mode, drifting apart then coming back to join each other. A soft bagpipe-like accompaniment provides further atmosphere. The film reflects the constructivist ethos while not being in any way slavish. Annwn\u2019s poem is both descriptive and interpretive, noting the physical detail (\u2018Minnows, slivers\/disjecta from the studio floor\u2019, \u2018zinc erratics\u2019 and \u2018burnished glass\u2019) and its effect within local and broader cultural contexts. This is a good example of Annwn\u2019s almost objectivist hold on objects, and also of his rich sound patterns: see for instance the assonance-alliterative texture of \u2018shimmy the king in red\/and blue, the reclining silver\/ Queen, the figments shiver\u2019.<\/p>\n

Munson went on to make a film in response to Annwn\u2019s poem \u2018The Bridge\u2019, which deals with the interaction between Edgard Var\u00e8se, Charlie Mingus and other musicians in Greenwich House, New York in 1957. Varese led a series of improvisation sessions. As Brigid Cohen notes, the surviving recordings<\/p>\n

open novel perspectives on a liminal encounter between downtown concert vanguardists and jazz experimenters, testifying to a long and largely unspoken history of mutual fascination, crossed signals, and complicated negotiations of authority. (\u2018Enigmas of the Third Space: Mingus and Var\u00e8se at Greenwich House, 1957\u2019 in\u00a0Journal of the American Musicological Society<\/em>\u00a071: 1 [2018])<\/p>\n

Drawing, rather speculatively, on Homi Bhabha\u2019s term, Cohen says:<\/p>\n

Third-space encounters play out within an uneven field of power, dramatizing and potentially destabilizing those imbalances. Third-space exceeds the mastery of its participants: in the transitional flux of translation, actors become caught in ambivalence and uncertainty, their intentions internally divided and disjunct from their contingent aftereffects. (ibid)<\/p>\n

A note on one of the tape boxes, probably in Var\u00e8se\u2019s hand, suggests that some of the jazz recordings may have been seen as sources for electronic composition. Clearly, Mingus was serious about the potential for discovery, and Cohen\u2019s perception that there was a power imbalance here is surely unfair to the jazz musicians\u2019 experience and readiness for experiment. However haltingly, the foundations of a bridge between musics and cultures\u00a0were laid.<\/p>\n

Cohen quotes Benjamin Steege on Var\u00e8se\u2019s compositional practice, which depended on a discipline of \u2018attentive listening\u2019 that sought to \u2018coax novelty from the banal, insignificant, and arcane\u2019 in \u2018the very monotony of sustaining, repeating, restriking and replaying\u2019. Most of the jazz musicans had been involved in the Jazz Composers workshop, founded by Mingus and\u00a0Teo Macero\u00a0in late 1953 with the object of fostering exchanges between concert avant-gardes and post-bop jazz. Hence they were familiar with a larger ensemble context and\u00a0had considerable\u00a0experience of free and atonal improvisation. If the\u00a0Var\u00e8se sessions were more open, this was still a recognizable zone.<\/p>\n

Annwn investigates the crossover, making links with related jazz, visual art and poetic elements: Gertrude Stein\u2019s vocables, Gertrude Abercrombie\u2019s friendship and creative interaction with Parker and Gillespie, Dylan Thomas \u2018rolling into town\/ no prisoners taken\u2019, and Duchamp\u2019s circuits. These are set alongside Mingus\u2019s \u2018deep verberations\/ all over 1957, the live coming alive of\/ multiverses\u2019. Next, in a single line of resonant names, Annwn lists members of the Jazz Composers\u2019 Workshop who, besides the present interaction, worked at various times with Mingus:\u00a0Teo Macero, Don Butterfield, Eddie Bert and Teddy Charles. These come across as \u2018soundverses\u2019, reflecting the poet\u2019s excitement in the collaborative project. This is further displayed in the patterning of \u2018MingussssVar\u00e8sesss\u2019, just before the poem\u2019s close. I almost hear Dylan Thomas voicing this from that distant period.<\/p>\n

Munson\u2019s film, viewable here,<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AjEvxvVfbsM<\/a><\/p>\n

creates a visual parallel, embracing literal elements and taking the verbal texture to another level. Semi-abstract colour images of bridge girders and New York skyscrapers morph into black and white footage of jazz performance. Various combinations of personnel are superimposed or intercut, with an overall sense of freedom and energy. Dizzie Gillespie, who was not involved in the Greenwich House sessions but played occasionally with Mingus, for instance at the Massey Hall and Carnegie Hall concerts of 1953 and 1973, has quite a presence. There is no need for the players to be matched literally to the soundtrack, which is taken from the mps files posted on the web as \u2018Edgar Varese and the Jazzmen\u2019, and indeed no visual record survives. The mood conjured can suffice.<\/p>\n

Next Howard did a creative take on Annwn\u2019s \u2018Dada Traum\u2019 (see the start of section 4 above for remarks on this poem and one recorded performance). The film (link below)<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2Hl9oi8Ovhc<\/a><\/p>\n

is suitably inventive, using constructivist and Dada images that retreat and advance, revolve sideways, flip over and again or float in space. Such movement reflects the poet\u2019s shifts of enunciation, words and emblems passing before us like energy units. Particularly effective is a middle section where images flash explosively in accord with the phrases that emerge after the word \u2018violence\u2019:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Violence in in-v-l-lable-lable<\/p>\n

Ur-most<\/p>\n

Ra-carra-raca Carra-racca<\/p>\n

Watch your brawl display<\/p>\n

Labelle or label<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Munson ends the film abruptly with an \u2018Exit\u2019 image, faithful to the Dada spirit and the finality of the text (\u2018AUS of Annwn\u2019). The soundtrack is from Antheil\u2019s score for the Dadaist film\u00a0Ballet M\u00e9canique<\/em>, which has suitably staccato rhythms and a driving momentum.<\/p>\n

Munson then turned his attention to Annwn\u2019s poem \u2018The Uncontainable Cockettes!\u2019, producing this film:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BGd-G90E1Ks<\/a><\/p>\n

The collaborative process started with Howard, who had witnessed a show by the Cockettes and was still excited by their achievement. In turn Annwn discovered that many of the artists he loved had been influenced by this San Francisco group of activists, actors, players, singers and trans-gender pioneers of the 1960s. Founded in 1969, the Cockettes staged anarchic musical productions, involving elaborate glittery costume, that parodied their source material and conveyed a sense of free expression. Influenced by surrealism and cubism, they crossed boundaries of identity, sexual, social and aesthetic. Annwn\u2019s poem sweeps back from glam-heroes and heroines to this earlier stage of excess, mentioning on the way how Breton\u2019s anti-Gayness was \u2018filibustered, busted in communal roar\u2019 by the activities of a freak theatrical troupe. Socio-psychological commentary (\u2018fantasies quarantined\/ by normalcy\u2019s consciousness\u2019) is channelled by wordplay and other sound effects, so that the history described is embodied in the language chosen: exuberant and teasing.<\/p>\n

Appropriately promiscuous, Munson\u2019s film mixes footage of the Cockettes taken from the Weber-Weissman documentary (2010) with semi-abstract floating and whirling shapes. Again I am reminded of 1960s light shows as figures and forms dissolve into others. Bubbles or little balls are prominent, suggestive of glitter and also of planetary motion. Kaleidoscopic flower patterns lead into blossom-blobs, starbursts and shooting firework splinters, while \u2018the State\u2019s kill-machine\u2019 materializes briefly in what may be Vietnam War footage\u2014a juxtaposition of freedom and repression evoked near the end of the poem. The hedonistic gestural pulse of the troupe\u2014dressed mainly in diaphanous, loose-flowing costumes\u2014is absorbed within this imagery, whose lavish colour magic recalls some of Kenneth Anger\u2019s work. Here brass showband music provides a backdrop to a powerful display of \u2018the uncontainable\u2019.<\/p>\n

Dada in Motion<\/em>, available here<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_98plR6EON8<\/a><\/p>\n

is Munson\u2019s take on \u2018Dada now\u2019 answering \u2018Dada then\u2019. It starts with readings by Schwitters, Hausmann and Picabia and an explosion of complex, overlapping images: blue roses, clocks and eyes. These float and turn, conveying a sense of unstable existence with potential for liberation from habit and obedience. A cartoon element is combined with forms from classical art and anatomy. Then, about halfway through, Annwn begins reading \u2018Dada Traum\u2019, the text delivered with echoey sound; his words and phrases seem to revolve like the elements of the visual collage, though the linear progress of the poem is sustained. Film frames or stills now jostle with comic strip material and the occasional spiral design, suggestive of a labyrinth. The soundtrack, composed by the filmmaker, is a mix of ambient effects, with strongly insistent pinging and tinkling piano notes over synthesized organ eddies. The Satie reference point seems apt. Munson\u2019s tribute to Dadaism seems to sum up many of the features present in his extended collaboration with Annwn, and indeed the performance of \u2018Dada Traum\u2019 is a repeat-with-variation\u2014of sound and visual image.<\/p>\n

The last film poem collaboration was\u00a0Mavo Dada<\/em>. This explores Tomoyoshi Murayama\u2019s reconstruction plans for Tokyo, devastated by the 1923 earthquake. These included models with found objects, an anarchic attempt to reflect the entirety of life in art. Some were displayed in a travelling exhibition, along with signboards on buildings.\u00a0\u00a0As a reporter noted, this was intended \u2018to relieve the damaged spirit of the city through art,\u2019 but there was also a fascination with ruin, challenging received ideas about form and materials. Murayama was the leader and codifier of the Mavo movement (conceived to be the Japanese form of Dada) after his time making contacts in the west. There he saw expressionist and constructivist stage designs and witnessed performances by dancers Mary Wigman and Niddy Impekoven, known for an intuitive, emotional response to music.<\/p>\n

Annwn\u2019s poem begins with a juxtaposition of \u2018Niddy Impekoven\u2019 and \u2018Tomoyoshi Murayama\u2019 with the connecting phrase \u2018something stirred\u2019. We then get a run of abstract nouns and personal names, along with more concrete language. Sound effects resonate in a text that might otherwise be explicatory or just an enthusiasm: \u2018dancing over the graves of\/ slaves to the latest\/ intellect fashion\u2019. The patterning of the long or open \u2018a\u2019 vowel along with a short \u2018i\u2019 is reminiscent of devices common in Welsh poetry, hardly surprising given Annwn\u2019s heritage. As with some of the other collaborative work, gender fluidity forms part of a larger artistic schema, a shifting theatrical cityscape:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

in women\u2019s high heels<\/p>\n

naked from waist<\/p>\n

gender offensive<\/p>\n

out-Duchamping\u00a0Rrose Selavy<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

whirling<\/p>\n

living sculpture<\/p>\n

and moving mannikins<\/p>\n

with black-dyed cheeks<\/p>\n

turned and twisting up-ended<\/p>\n

in Japan\u2019s flickering 1920s<\/p>\n

A construct of \u2018oil cans, spinning wheel, logs\u2019, fashioned to make a kind of music, leads into \u2018graphics unleashed\u2019\u2014the \u2018firecracker cacophony\u2019 of a\u00a0Mavo<\/em>\u00a0magazine cover.<\/p>\n

Munson\u2019s film (link below)<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OcDGM381NUI<\/a><\/p>\n

has Art Deco style titling and dance-scenes superimposed with street views. Isadora Duncan and other dancers stand in for Niddy Impekoven, (film of the latter being rare). There are also images of Butoh dancer Imre Thomann, naked and painted white (Howard has a strong sense of links between Mavo and Butoh). The connexion here between East and West is not fanciful, if we remember Tristan Tzara\u2019s description of Dada as a \u2018return to a religion of quasi-Buddhistic indifference\u2019 (Lecture on Dada<\/em>, 1922), although it could be argued that the proximity of the Western artists to mass slaughter led to a greater feeling\u00a0of angst, desperation and linguistic dissolution. Munson\u00a0uses different dances to loop the action together, at one point using building block shapes to suggest the Mavo artists working on building templates to replace those structures lost in the earthquake. He also uses a trapeze artist to suggest the use of upper zones of space in Mavo exhibitions.<\/p>\n

The film has a flickering nature, appropriate since this is a key-word in Annwn\u2019s text, already quoted. The found film footage and stills move, for the most part, around and over the kind of typography and linear design that Mavo borrowed from the European avant-garde. At one point colour abstracts sweep in and dominate but otherwise the main texture is black and white, flowing in a way that seems both seamless and attentive to its separate contexts. One could see this as an artistic equivalent of molecular junction and dispersal, and also as a filmic equivalent of linguistic ambiguity. The festishistic treatment of the body is true to the spirit of Mavo. Annwn\u2019s reading of the text is particularly animated, coming to a climax with the insistent beat of a Japanese Taiko drum, as titles revolve across a background of silhouetted figures and crowded shapes. These percussion-driven images of dancers are prolonged after the poem ends, providing a sort of echo closure.<\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

The Munson-Annwn filmpoems are, I think, unique, resulting from shared enthusiasms with due anticipation and response. The verbal is gauged so as to lend itself to pictorial transformation, and the visual is attentive to the nuances of language, drawing out possibilities. Literal contexts are sustained, while conjunctions, assimilations and inflections operate. Text which already has a tactile quality in its layout on the page develops a further material status in filmic expression. Visual collage, likewise, gathers a further dynamic from its engagement with verbal fabric. Although at various points one or other of the media may seem to dominate, there is no overall rivalry between forms. Rather, this tension allows a process of exchange that retains both integrity of purpose and fluidity of direction. As indicated, this is neither translation nor transposition but a dual occupation of space. When Annwn\u2019s poems migrate to video, whose visual shapes and colours prompt other relations, their new figuration can reveal the unexpected, though Munson\u2019s treatment ensures that this is always relevant.<\/p>\n

With mixed media there is a danger that the essence of one art form can be diluted or drowned by another. Here, however, both writer and filmmaker have a working alchemical method, something akin to Eug\u00e8ne Jolas\u2019s \u2018paramyth\u2019, where synthesis of genres or sources brings a mantic illumination. With insight into each other\u2019s practice and long experience of collage, both men contribute features that achieve a fluidity of consciousness. There is elegance in the work, for instance in\u00a0Mavo Dada<\/em>, along with rougher shifts of tone, such as in\u00a0The Bridge<\/em>. I am struck by the variety of approach, but also by the consistency of realized vision. Robert Musil claimed that film language can bridge disparate planes of existence, placing the spectator in an \u2018other condition\u2019 beyond the limits of ordinary experience (\u2018Towards a New Aesthetic\u2019). Although this was said in the context of silent film\u00a0(more singly disposed as a medium),\u00a0the point about transporting the viewer to another state could be applied to the present collaborative project, with impressions taken out of their typical frame of reference or specificity.<\/p>\n

It is rare for contemporary British poetry to be treated on an equal footing with American cultural discourse, not from xenophobia but rather from dominant media control and relative attention space. Thus, David Annwn\u2019s interaction with the Californian artist represents a significant balancing of priorities. This may be due to the open-mindedness of each artist, but also to their common inheritance of a European (in the sense of Continental) avant-garde and a perception of links with other cultures, such as the Japanese Mavo movement. That international reach is part of a mosaic in which distinctions that conventionally underscore forms are discarded, as the geometricality of language gets further visual shape. Short though they are, these cine-poems suggest a pattern of the continuous word; they are also, in a way, exercises in trans-sense, as the language already multi-layered goes through visual-musical shifts. The work is an inspired example of\u00a0poiesis<\/em>, that is, \u2018active making\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gavin Selerie<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gavin Selerie was\u00a0born in London, where he still lives.\u00a0Books include\u00a0Azimuth<\/em>\u00a0(1984),\u00a0Roxy<\/em>\u00a0(1996),\u00a0Le Fanu\u2019s Ghost<\/em>\u00a0(2006)\u00a0and\u00a0Hariot Double<\/em>\u00a0(2016)\u2014all long sequences with linked units.\u00a0Music\u2019s Duel: New and Selected Poems 1972-2008<\/em>\u00a0was published in 2009 and\u00a0Collected Sonnets<\/em>\u00a0in 2019 (both from Shearsman).\u00a0These texts often have a concrete aspect, as discussed in the essay \u2018Ekphrasis and Beyond: Visual Art in Poetry\u2019 (Junction Box<\/em>\u00a02).Selerie is known particularly for poems about landscape and romantic love, utilizing traditional and experimental form. He is currently at work on a pandemic sequence. A book length interview,\u00a0Into the Labyrinth<\/em>, is available online (Argotist Ebooks).\u00a0Selerie\u2019s memoir of the London poetry scene 1970-1989 appeared in\u00a0Clasp<\/em>, ed. Robert Hampson & Ken Edwards (2016). A long essay on the interaction of art forms, \u2018Jumping the Limits\u2019 was published in\u00a0Junction Box<\/em>\u00a011.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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