So pleased to announce that my video poem, Caterpillar Suit, was selected for Poetic Phonotheque’s 2023 Nature & Culture – International Poetry Film Festival in Denmark.
https://poeticphonotheque.com/events/kbhpoetryfilmfest/
About the video poem
“Caterpillar Suit” was inspired by the sculpture artist, Walter Oltmann. His sculpture is featured in the video alongside public-domain stills created by Latvian artist, Elina Krima.
This was my first video poem of 2020, and, in relation to the 2023 Phonotheque Poetry Film theme of Structures & Organisms, it explores what it means to shed a natural suit, as a caterpillar sheds itself to become larvae then butterfly.
It relates to how we, as humans, are part of broader, natural ecosystem, all wearing the suits of natural instinct, moving through separations—especially in light of the global plight of children being cruelly separated from parents across international borders.
The poem also perhaps visually expresses the fear that we collectively gathered and recycled from history—a new-old fear for a new decade. It was also created just prior the pandemic, so it was an eerie foreboding of what was to come.
It was a finalist for the 9th International Video Poetry Festival (Athens, Greece, 2021); the International Migration & Environmental Film Festival (Canada, 2021); and Serbest International Film Festival (Moldova, 2022).
———————
What are caterpillars,
separating how we survive
how we preset nesting messes
how we identify as illustrated in our figure forms
how we play the record backwards
what are caterpillars
but the ancient Braille of family blackmail
tenaciously seeking
retreat to prehistoric, bombastic plains
rewritten codes of my faces
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