E-Poetry
The Assignment: Use screen recording software to perform and capture two e-poems. You will create two videos, which can be different versions of the same poem or two different poems. As you work on these poems, think about ways that you might be able to connect them with our gallery of emotions. In particular, consider ways the poems might relate to or express: anger, fear, disgust, contempt, joy, sadness, or surprise.
Version one, a screen performance: By practicing composing with the elements of your screen, you can quickly create multimodal e-poems. You will use the screen as a canvas to create a multimedia performance. For the assignment itself, you can translate a poem to the screen or compose your own screen-based poem. You can use any materials available on your screen.
I have had experience with Camtasia previously, 2 years ago to be exact. I was rusty with the technical aspect of the software however and the class was assigned a practice improv proem to simply get the hang of working with the technology. I decided to play around with the opacity of both my freeform poem—written on a Google Doc—as well as the opacity of my chosen video clip. I decided to write a poem from the perspective of a drum kit. This was inspired by the film Whiplash (a phenomenal film that everyone must view) and I used the jazz song “Caravan” in the background. It was fairly simply and it served as an introduction to the software, but as with everything in this class it made me think outside of the box, something I tend not to do.
Then I used Lorna Dee Cervantes' "A Chicano Poem" for my screen performance e-poem. I had read this poem in English 345 as part of a series of Latino/a experiences in the United States. This piece always touch me, as I felt the emotional power of her words, the examples of oppression (from the native americans to the latinos here today). The poem also used words alluding to the Declaration of Independence, a powerful statement by Cervantes—using the words of Independence to show how minorities have been oppressed in American history. I will save my reflection for lower down the page, but overall I was fairly pleased with the way this creation ended up.
Maya Angelou's beautiful "Still I Rise" was the inspiration for the e-poem I pieced together on Camtasia. I was contemplating fine-tuning the Chicano Poem project but I just could not find the correct inspiration for something of that nature and I racked my brain for something to spark my creativity. I ran into this poem by chance. I was re-watching Barack Obama's 2008 inauguration (I like to revisit powerful moments in history on youtube), and linked on the sidebar was this video of Maya Angelou delivering "Still I Rise." Angelou's rendition of this poem was beautiful, you can hear the pain and passion in her voice. Her words reminded me of the powerful pieces of African American cinema that have been showered with critical acclaim the past couple of years. 12 Years a Slave and Selma allowed me to use this poem as a roadmap of overcoming obstacles and roadblocks. From slavery, to voting rights, to ascension to the presidency, this e-poem was my chance to creatively display the black community's power of perseverance in the face of the worst injustices.
I was fairly pleased with my work but I knew I had to do some fine-tuning, I think it would be safe to say that Dan agreed. His comment is below:
Most of my revisions were taken from Dan's comments. I changed the way the opening scenes interact with one another. I felt it would be stronger if both were able to be seen on their own rather than overlapping. I also went away from a quadrant format. Some scenes still were set up in that way but it wasn't the template like in the draft. I introduced Angelou's reading of the poem earlier because it did take way too long to introduce her in the initial draft. I like to think that succinct work is almost always better so it was important to introduce her earlier in the piece. I also cut out the typing up of the poem on the Google Doc completely. I felt as if it was redundant and that I should emphasize on annotating powerful lines instead. I think that resulted in a better looking landscape. I reduced the time of the work by 45 seconds, cutting unnecessary footage, overlapping some scenes, and introducing Obama's inauguration earlier. I felt that the story was told in 3 parts: slavery, civil rights movement, and Obama's inauguration. By bringing them closer together I think I was able to improve on the flow. Overall I recognize this isn't perfect, but that is always a moving target. I am very pleased with the revisions and the tinkering and I feel as if the e-poem serves as a nice complement to the emotive performance from Angelou.
This was my favorite of the projects (the Still I Rise Epoem)—aside from piecing the whole portfolio together. I felt as if I was able to do an amazing work some justice by adding my own interpretation of an audio-visual story to complement it. The revision process was interesting and the feedback from Dan helped me hone in on what I was truly trying to "get at." Just like a essay that can cut the majority of the adverbs out, this piece needed to be chopped up in order to focus on brevity.
I was able to weave in two of my favorite films, one of my favorite poems, and my favorite politician into a work I can be proud to show the world.
Regarding the live e-poem, that was a pain. I did not realize just how hard that would be. It took countless hours of planning each video, separating each tab, and bring able to type fast enough while simultaneously bringing up the correct video in order to tell the story. I loved the poem and her delivery and I think the news clips of the Librotraficante movement were powerful but that was almost impossible to do everything perfectly. It made me appreciate how much of a canvas the computer screen could be. It made me reframe the "logic" of a computer as a medium for art. I was pleased with the result, but the degree of difficulty was tremendous. The common thread between the two works is empathy for the oppressed and the power of perseverance.
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