Poetry

Award Announcement for Vancouver City Poems Contest 2023: Poetry Videos

Fiona Tinwei Lam

Here are the winners of the Vancouver Poet Laureate’s City Poems Contest 2023 that were announced and screened at a ceremony this afternoon at the Museum of Vancouver on Sunday, June 11th, 2023.  

The two-stage contest commenced in January 2022 with a poetry contest. The second stage of the contest in 2023 involved student teams from three local public post-secondary institutions making short poetry videos based on poems shortlisted from the previous year’s contest, along with a few additional site-based poems.  More details about the background of the contest can be found here.  All the poetry videos can still be viewed on the VPL’s YouTube Playlist for the Contest.

(A selection of these and some of the other poetry videos submitted to the contest were screened on September 16, 2023 at the Word Vancouver Festival at UBC Robson Square.)

Finalists and Audience Choice Winners, with instructors (far left) and Judge Heather Haley (far right) at Museum of Vancouver

FIRST PLACE:

“Contrasts”  (Entry #1010) Based on a poem by Donna Seto about gentrification in Chinatown.

Student Team: Brian Baldueza, Nanop Yansomboon, and Wilson Pham (SFU IAT 344 Term 2)

SECOND PLACE (TIE):

 “What do I remember of the evacuation”  (Entry # 1025) Based on a poem by Joy Kogawa about the forced evictions and internment of Japanese Canadians in 1942.

Student Team: Kris Reyes, Poppy Suro, Hoang Son Vu, and Sodam Hong (ECUAD Foundation 160 Core Media Studies)

SECOND PLACE (TIE):

“An Existence That We Can Call Home” (Entry #1036) Based on a poem by James Kim about the displacement of First Nations and racialized communities in what is now known as Stanley Park.

Student Team: Xinran Han, Delai Gao, Minyang Zhang (SFU IAT 344 Term 1)

THIRD PLACE:

“This Was Meant to be for Nora”  (Entry #1014) Based on a poem by Junie Desil about Hogan’s Alley, the site of a historic Black community in Vancouver.

Student Team: Yenan Huang, Dongmei Han, Hanako Oba and Joanne Kim (SFU IAT 344 Term 2)

BEST DOCUMENTARY STYLE POETRY VIDEO

“Welcome” (Entry # 1011) Based on a poem by Sadhu Binning about the infamous Komagata Maru incident in 1914.

Student Team: Kais Neffati, Bhalinder Oberoi, Ishmael Togi and Minh Truong (SFU IAT 344 Term Two)

BEST ANIMATION

“This Was Meant to be for Nora”  (Entry #1030) Based on a poem by Junie Desil about Hogan’s Alley, the site of a historic Black community in Vancouver.

Student Team:  Emilio Terrazas Rocha, Deanne Angelina Emery, Carola Campa Garcia, Rachel Christina Kearney, Luna Davies, Lingjun Mi, and Mingyang Pan (ECUAD 2DN 211 Animation)

BEST VISUAL STORYTELLING

“Know Who You Are and Know Where You Come From” (Entry #1033) Based on writing by Debra Sparrow about her grandfather taking her family to visit historic Musqueam village sites.

Student Team: Robert Burns, Delanie Austin, Bea Lehmann, and Rachel Williams (UBC FNIS 454)

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

“The Stone Artist” (Entry #1006) Based on a poem by Theresa Rogers about a stone artist in English Bay.

Student Team:  Grace Yang, Jalene Pang, Brandyn Chew and Erin Yeonjae Choi  (SFU IAT 344 Term One)

“Entertainment” (Entry # 1016) Based on a poem by Jeremy Chu about the former Marco Polo nightclub in Chinatown.

Student Team:  Christy Fang, Vito Fan, Cici Tan, and Calvin Lin  (SFU IAT 344 Term Two)

“Know Who You Are and Know Where You Come From (Entry #1024) Based on writing by Debra Sparrow about her grandfather taking her family to visit historic Musqueam village sites.

Student Team: Madelyne Nowell, Kira Doxtator, Claire Everson, and Eva Moulton (UBC FNIS 454)

AUDIENCE CHOICE PRIZES (one per university)

“Diaspora” (Entry #1005) Based on a poem by Jeremy Chu about the former Marco Polo nightclub in Chinatown.

Student Team:  Kayla Canama, Tingting Liu, Andrea Huang, and Eleonora Shive  (SFU IAT 344 Term 2)

“This was meant to be for Nora” (Entry #1030) Based on a poem by Junie Desil about Hogan’s Alley, the site of a historic Black community in Vancouver.

Student Team:  Emilio Terrazas Rocha, Deanne Angelina Emery, Carola Campa Garcia, Rachel Christina Kearney, Luna Davies, Lingjun Mi, Mingyang Pan (ECUAD 2DN 211 Animation)

 “Know Who You Are and Know Where You Come From” (Entry #1028) Based on writing by Debra Sparrow about her grandfather taking her family to visit about historic Musqueam village sites.

Student Team: Madison Harvey, Cass Minkus, Olivia Carriere McKenna, and Sofia Bergman (UBC FNIS 454)

Prizes:

First Prize $1000,  Second Prize $500,  Third Prize $300

The top three prizes and the Vancouver Poet Laureate’s Legacy program are funded by a generous endowment by Dr. Yosef Wosk to the Vancouver Foundation, overseen by the City of Vancouver (Cultural Services), Vancouver Writers’ Festival and the Vancouver Public Library.

Donations and funding for prizes for Best Documentary-Style Poetry Video,  Best Animation, Best Visual Story-Telling, Honourable Mentions, and the three Audience Choice Prizes were from the Museum of Vancouver (museum passes), TransLink (cash prizes), the Vancouver International Film Festival (vouchers to attend films at VIFF), and Vancouver’s Poet Laureate.



Photographs taken by Jay Tseng

Two High School Poetry Videos about Vancouver Sites

Fiona Tinwei Lam

The shortlisted Youth Finalists for last year’s City Poems Contest were given the opportunity to participate in a workshop to turn their place-based poems into poetry videos this year. The workshop was led by mim collective, a multi-disciplinary artist collective comprised of members Daniela Rodriguez Chevalier, Michelle Martin and Dora Prieto. The Collective met with students virtually and also at a live, hands-on workshop at Moberly Fieldhouse (behind Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre) in South Vancouver, where EPFC North (Echo Park Film Centre Collective) is currently doing an artist residency, promoting creative and collaborative activities related to eco-friendly film, plant-based art and animation.

EPFC North generously provided the space, cameras and other equipment for the youth workshop, while Daniela, Michelle and Dora from mim collective provided guidance and personalized online resources to assist the students in developing their own creations.

Here are two of the terrific poetry videos that were produced. “Revival” by grade 12 student Katie Evans at Point Grey Secondary is based on her poem that was inspired by Pacific Spirit Park. The poem is read very expressively, backed by a natural soundscape of footsteps and rain and images from nature. I really liked her use of the lettered tiles at the opening and closing. An evocative poetry video!

Patricia Chen, a grade twelve student at Windemere Secondary, paired up with classmate Bianca Pham to do a visual interpretation of Chen’s poem, “Lost in Chinatown.” There are references to the cinematic experience and process at the start, then the video moves into an exploration of Vancouver’s Chinatown. The students integrated text throughout, including hand-written excerpts of Patricia’s poem. Local musician, Qiu Xia He of Silk Road Music, generously permitted the students to integrate one of their songs, “Ha Ya Xi Shui” (寒鸦戏水) as a soundtrack.

I was very impressed by the students’ vision, talent and creativity! Thank you to the shortlisted youth poets who participated in the workshop, as well as Dora, Michelle and Daniela of mim collective, and Lisa Marr of EPFC North for giving the students access to the space and equipment.

Heading into Poetry Video Season!

Fiona Tinwei Lam

It was exciting to see the poetry videos produced by students enrolled in SFU Surrey’s IAT 344 Moving Images course this term! Several student teams made poetry videos based on a selection of shortlisted adult poems from stage one of the City Poems Contest held earlier this year. (This term served as a trial run before the upcoming launch of the contest’s second stage, which focuses on poetry videos produced by pre-selected public post-secondary classes.)

Most teams worked on the shortlisted site-based poems through the fall, while others worked on different projects. I visited the class early in the term to introduce poetry videos. A few weeks later, guest curator and noted video poet Tom Konyves gave students a tour of his exhibit, Poets with a Video Camera: Videopoetry 1980-2020 at the Surrey Art Gallery.

Tom was also one of the two judges awarding prizes to the student teams at a reception and screening held at the end of term. Given the course requirements, the student teams doing poetry videos (which had to be under 5 minutes in length) also had to film short documentaries where they interviewed the poets. These interviews with the poets often provided fascinating insights into the history and significance of the sites on which the poems were based.

I want to applaud the hardworking student teams and Jay Tseng, the sessional instructor who filled in at the last minute for Kate Hennessy. Kate had originally been set to do the trial run this term, but was pulled away to cover another instructor for a different course, although she’ll be back next term. I was heartened that both Kate and Jay were so open to making poetry videos an optional class assignment. I’m also very grateful to the poets chosen this term who made time to collaborate with their student teams.

Next term should be great too with a new set of SFU IAT 344 students (taught by Kate Hennessy), plus participating classes in animation (Martin Rose) and film studies (Christine Stewart) at Emily Carr University, as well as digital storytelling with UBC’s First Nations & Indigenous Studies (David Gaertner).

Meanwhile, youth finalists from stage one of the City Poems Contest are being offered the opportunity to participate in a free poetry video workshop in the new year to make their own poetry videos/films, facilitated by a local film collective based at the Moberly Arts Centre.

I’m very much looking forward to visiting all the classes and the youth workshops in the new year! There was some very promising work this term, and there’s bound to be more to come. Heather Haley will be judging the contest in the spring. There’ll be an award ceremony and public screening of the winning poetry videos at the Museum of Vancouver on June 11th!

Why Poetry Videos?

Fiona Tinwei Lam

Why poetry videos? They expand the reach of poetry by making it accessible to people across borders and backgrounds. There are many folks who are intimidated or confused by poetry. Maybe they had a bad experience in school with analyzing and dissecting a poem to death. They might not “get” a poem and turn away, thinking it’s too difficult or esoteric. They might not know where to find a good poem among the shelves of poetry available.

One issue is that many poems are meant to be read aloud. Poetry videos can allow a poem to be heard of course, but most importantly experienced through visual imagery, colour, pattern, sound effects, music, narration and more. Filmmakers might be inspired by a poem’s metaphors and distilled, compressed language, which might serve as a spine or screenplay for a sequenced collage of visuals and sound.

What’s very cool about poetry videos is that they can extend and deepen the meaning of the poem itself because of how the images, music, sound effects work in synergy with the spoken or written word. The visual images and sound design can tap into the unconscious, the unspoken, and universal, drawing upon the white space of the poem on the page. As many poetry video commentators have noted, the best poetry videos do much more than illustrate the poem: they create something new that can transcend the words. Some poetry videos actually might not even need any words at all–the images and sound effects themselves create a kind of “poem”–hence the term “videopoem.” Not all poetry videos are videopoems, and not all videopoems involve actual written or spoken poetry.

For those of you who are curious about poetry videos (or videopoems)–what they are, how to make them, what they look like–I’ve put together a list of resources that includes examples, websites and essays about them here. The page includes a link to an excellent essay by Moving Poem’s Dave Bonta, “Videopoetry: What is it, Who Makes it and Why?” 

Most importantly, don’t miss an amazing retrospective of 40 years of videopoetry curated by Tom Konyves, author of the highly influential Videopoetry Manifesto. The free exhibition is entitled Poets with a Video Camera at the Surrey Art Gallery, opening on September 17th and on view until December 11.

There will also be a free symposium entitled “Two or Three Things One Should Know about Videopoetry” on Saturday, November 5, from 12-6 pm at the gallery, featuring various speakers on the topic of video poetry, several from outside of Canada. (A free tour of this exhibit and another exhibit at the Surrey Art Gallery will also be offered by curator Jordan Strom on Saturday, November 26, 2-3:30 pm.) Come check out the diverse videos/films and the stimulating discussion!

If you’d like to hear a live reading of poems by several of the poetry-filmmakers attending the Symposium, please consider attending the reading on Sunday, November 6th at 7 pm at People’s Co-op Bookstore in Vancouver! Come hear poets from far afield, including Adeena Karasick, Valerie Leblanc, Daniel Dugas, Kurt Heintz, Matt Mullins and Sarah Tremlett, as well as locals Heather Haley, me and curator Tom Konyves.

How I got involved with poetry videos

It all began in 2009. While sitting in the playground watching our kids run around, I asked a former high school classmate who was teaching documentary film to collaborate with me on making a poetry video to promote my new poetry collection. He agreed! With a miniscule budget, we worked on Chrysanthemum which was selected for screening at Vancouver’s poetry video festival, Visible Verse, curated and organized for years by local poet and performer, Heather Haley.

I never looked back! I learned a lot after that first poetry video. I’ve been extremely fortunate that my friend, Martin Rose, an animation instructor at Emily Carr University, recommended talented animation students from his classes for several other poetry videos: Omelet with Toni Zhang; Aquarium with Chelsea Ker; Drunken Laundry Day: A Poem by Henry Doyle with H. Kristen Campbell, Sitji Chou and Carolina Gonzales; Plasticnic with Tish deb Pillai. Sound designer Tinjun Niu recommended Art Institute grad, Nhat Truong to animate two of my plastic pollution-themed concrete/visual poems in Plasticpoems.

Aquarium
Omelet
Plasticpoems
Drunken Laundry Day: A poem by Henry Doyle

At the REELpoetry festival in Houston in 2019, I met Mary Macdonald who had made some beautiful poetry videos with Ontario poet, Penn Kemp. Mary and I ended up making Utility Pole together. I also met experienced US filmmakers Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochrane at REELpoetry. They consulted me in producing and directing two poetry videos based on my poems (Legacy and Neighbourhood) at their own expense. I was also commissioned to write a poem for Erin Trudell, a Montreal choreographer who had done a video of her movement/dance piece, Of the Sea.

This summer has been a busy one collaborating on two climate crisis-related poetry videos–the aforementioned live action one, Neighbourhood with Pam and Jack, and an animated one, Merry with Lara Renaud and Quinn Kelly, two keen young animators studying in Portland. It’s incredible how many hours let alone days (or weeks or months…) goes into making a minute or two of animation.

Each poetry video has intentionally had a different approach, look and style. I usually start the process with a good audio-recording. Then I will type up a chart with my vision of what words and phrases should go with what images and sound effects. I might also do a sketch or two to illustrate my ideas to communicate the overall concept. A UBC screenplay course taught by Peggy Thompson that I took while doing my MFA has helped me understand the interplay of words and visuals, as has my work with an illustrator on the children’s book, The Rainbow Rocket, as well as viewing poetry videos at festivals and online through Moving Poems.

I’ll watch the early versions several dozens of times over (if not more), replaying sections repeatedly, in order to give detailed input on pacing, flow, colour, sound effects and more. I also often source images (or take photographs myself) that I want incorporated into the body of the video or in the credits. There are usually a number of revisions and fine edits before the final version is ready to submit to festivals through FilmFreeway.

The best part of the process is the to and fro. Sometimes my initial ideas don’t work. Sometimes the co-directors’, animator’s or sound designer’s suggestions are much better. Other times, their ideas don’t fit my vision. Many times our discussions will inspire me to think of alternative approaches to address a problem. It’s a journey of discovery, and it’s exciting to see the end result come together.

Because I feel so very honoured, privileged and most of all lucky to have worked with such creative and talented people, I want to encourage other poets and filmmakers to make poetry videos too. Poetry film and poetry videos have long represented a legitimate form of cultural expression in Germany (the first. largest and longest running poetry film festival, the Zebra Poetry Film Festival began in 2002), as well as in France, England and the US. Canadian poets and poetry deserve the same support and coverage.

Grade 7 Class Writes Moving Poems about Hogan’s Alley

Fiona Tinwei Lam

I visited teacher Tilia Prior’s terrific and talented grade seven class today at Tecumseh Elementary School to thank them for submitting poems about Hogan’s Alley to the City Poems Contest!

The entire class of 25 students learned about this historic and significant Black community in Strathcona that was gutted in the late 1960s by the municipal government’s freeway plan to modernize transportation routes. Strong community resistance prevented the plan from being fully implemented, but the Georgia Viaduct was still built, razing Black homes and businesses.

Tilia Prior was inspired by acclaimed local writer and instructor, Wayde Compton, who was doing daily tweets with facts about Hogan’s Alley during Black History Month this past February. She showed the class poetry videos and short documentaries about the area too, and encouraged every student to write and submit a poem for the contest. She taught them about various poetic techniques such as repetition and alliteration.

As a result, the poems were moving, thoughtful, and written with care. Vivid images rose from the pages. It is incredible how poetry works like a magic spell to bridge time and place: here were students born long after the demise of Hogan’s Alley, who were not Black, who may never have even visited that part of town, learning about and empathizing with Black residents of the era. In fact, student Sharon Pan’s poem about Vie’s chicken House won third place in the youth category!

An interesting fact to note about Tecumseh Elementary School is that Vancouver School Board’s first Asian Canadian teacher, Vivian Jung, was hired by the school in the 1940s. Over half a century of racial segregation had prevented Asian Canadians, Blacks, and other visible minorities from various professions. But the activism of Jung and her classmates led to a breakthrough in 1945.

She taught at Tecumseh as a beloved teacher for 35 years. A lane is named after her in Vancouver’s West End, near the former “public” Crystal Pool (long gone) at Sunset Beach where she was famously barred from entry.

(Some Canadians might not be aware that segregation wasn’t just a US phenomenon. Racial segregation was actively practiced in Vancouver, in BC, and elsewhere in Canada at that time—in “public” pools, movie theatres, restaurants, hospitals, housing, civic employment, and more.)

It was cool to see this kind of interracial solidarity being forged in the present about the injustice faced by the community of Hogan’s Alley in the past, paralleling the interracial solidarity that Vivian Jung and her classmates marshalled back in 1945. Kudos to Tilia Prior and her amazing grade seven class!