Video Poems

It's been a long time since I posted. I appreciate you all for hanging around. Check out my work from spring quarter last year - I made three poetry videos - one in collaboration with another student. It was an exciting time. I know some of you have seen these already, but I wanted to make sure I posted news of them here.

First up - "Come the Apocalypse" I wrote this poem about a high school friend who committed suicide when we were about 39 or 40. I didn't know this friend that well in high school and never saw him again after graduation. High school was a hard time that I know many of us thought we would not survive. Having survived, it was easy to think it would all get easier, but not for Rod.

I made another poetry video that I never found a title for. I should have just named it for its first line, but I thought it was too long. It's a true story from when I was 20 years old and lived in Seattle. "I Think I Met The Green River Killer" I have to thank Morgan Pappas for starring in my video. She was great.

The last poetry video, or cinépoem, as we actually called them, is titled "Here." This was an inspiring project where my collaborator and I made a list of words and shot some random video clips, and then put the two together. We aren't trying to tell a story, but rather allow the viewer to do the meaning making. Our projects all needed to fall under the themes of social justice and sustainability, so that and length were the only constraints we brought to this piece.

I'm working on more video poems. You can see them here when I do. Let me know what you think! Leave a comment here or on Vimeo. I would love to hear from you.

Lucky Me!

Lucky me! 

Billy bought me a new camera for my birthday and I have been having lots of fun with it. I love nothing more than just taking pictures of the birds and the bees and the butterflies.

Here's a shot of a honey bee in the Olympia veggie garden. We planted a long row of sunflowers. Just the other day Jackson realized we had robber bees trying to steal honey from the hive! Bill and I went over, and sure enough, you could see these ruthless bees from out of the garden trying to drag the guard the bees away from the door. Bill opened the hive and there is no sign they have made their way in to the gold yet. We're doing everything we can to save our bees.

On a hike up to Upper Lena Lake, Bill and I heard little bird sounds and stopped to watch these little babies just learning to fly! What a sweet moment to just get to watch them struggle to land and balance. This one posed for me quite a long time while I practiced with the new camera.

Thank you Billy!

The Light Between Things

I am finishing up my Spring quarter class at Evergreen State College. The class is called: Radical Amazement–Interrogating the Everyday through Poetry and Video Essay. Our midterm was a collaborative video essay, and our final was a solo video essay. For both, it was preferred we use still photographs only, so I did. If your want to see them, they are posted here:  https://vimeo.com/42939757
Let me know what you think.

Here is my artist statement:

The Light Between Things

Our every day, as well as the everydayness of our experience, is under the influence of our perceptions and judgments of what reality is. As a young child I believed that waking reality was not real at all, but a dream to awaken from. This was a belief I could not easily shake as I grew older. The beliefs we cling to, effect the way we see the world, and distortions viewed from one person’s perspective are reality to another. Insomnia, dreaming, and the beliefs in-between them – are explored in this lyrical, meditative essay.

I took many photographs at night to practice with a new camera, and to my surprise these became the images I wanted for the video. I discovered that images shot with varying high resolutions could express the way realness is sometimes not very crisp, but rather dreamy. Sounds of nature are heard in the background, both grounding and meditative, they serve as representatives of portals to other ways of experiencing.

While writing the text, I had ideas about what ambient noise and images I wanted for the video, but they didn’t make meaning for me until I trusted my instinct and just starting weaving them together. As in a dream, I felt carried on a tide of nonsensical choices and happenings. The trust in my creative instinct was the greatest reward in the making of The Light Between Things.

La Push Poem

I remember nothing before this. I arrived here on some current I could not control. I tumbled and bounced. My roughness was smoothed away on the long journey till I no longer cared what I looked like.

I had begun to accept the drowning heavy weight that held me in blackness. And then, under a dark moon I was left here, drying to a dull gray.

I have begun to call her Mother, the one who pulls me in and washes me and then leaves me here again and goes away. (I have seen the mother seals do this with their pups on the far rocks.)

There is such a clamor with many of us rolling in and out of our Mother, though usually I am left alone when she is gone.

I have begun to call him Father who comes around with a slow warmth sometimes and sometimes a bright heat so I cannot look him in the eye. He does not come when the stars are near. I know these are other fathers travelling home, just as mine is.

There is talk from the legged ones that this one or that one is beautiful. They do not know I can hear them. Mother says I am part of a beautiful pattern that is spun out on the sand each time she goes away.

This beauty, she says, cannot be seen from where I am, but that Father and all the fathers can see it. Even the Mother Seals can see it, and any who fly or wander by. She says that Beauty is in what we are together and not in who we are alone.

photos and poem by Catherine Alice Michaelis