Visual Poems

This meditative video poem is dedicated to all of you. With thanks... Poetic of Light- from 'White Fire,' a meditation on soul mates Direct Link to Poetic of Light/ Poétique de la lumière   White Fire, a meditative prosepoem on soul mates, may be read at this website, where there is also a recording from a radio show I read it on in 2000.

Poetic of Light- from 'White Fire,' a meditation on soul mates Poetic of Light/ Poétique de la lumière

Venus Enroute              Direct link to Venus Enroute "Venus Enroute," a poem in The Botticelli Suite of Venus Poems, may be read at this website.

Venus Enroute The poetry is an excerpt from my "Botticelli Suite of Venus Poems": She stopped to rest. Momentarily, in the field of pure possibility, her position unfixed, indeterminate. Without hovering, or insecurity. It was an image of being in the vast field of life. Without knowing. In a position of unknowing, positionless, I suppose. Existing without location or momentum. Vibrating with possibility. It wasn't exciting or fearful, just what is. Nothing is fixed or certain, though there are always solutions to problems. Then she continued on. She didn't doubt her certainties.  The music clip is from Lena Selyanina's 'Sarah's Dance,' from her album, "Piano Poetry," which carries a Creative Commons license. The chair sequence and the poem added to it had no original connection. I cut the clip from two hours of footage as perhaps 'workable.' Then I searched for a poem. It's amazing how the poem 'fits' the movement, huh? Creatively perhaps we are a gesture, a gesture where here poetry and dance are an aligned fusion. Albeit, the resulting video is a bit comic. The tag on the back of my dress? As soon as I saw the footage I grabbed the dress and cut it off. The other camera? Ahh, I'm still just learning how to make videos and don't have a clone plugin to remove these elements. Enjoy the humor! (Or perhaps, in context of the poem, since Venus has swung her scallop shell around to enter the world of experience, we could say the tag on her dress reads: 'If this Vintage Venus is found wandering, send her back to "Mount Olympus"!)

White, a Butoh-inspired dance A poetry in motion. I played with negatives. It reminds me of ice and snow, of liberation from constraint. Of imaging between being and non-being. Of the mother. Of the sorrow of the mother earth. Of disappearing into and emerging from. Of the continuous cacophony of the dance of life. Of the disjointed, an awkward grace. The film loses some of its quality in the uploaded video: the semi-opague layers appear more like faded images than the transparencies they are. Yet you let go of the white leaf and let it float out to the sea. The flowers are from photographs I took last year of mandalas of fresh flowers in the street outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival. The increasing presence of the flowers behind the screen of the dance is a reminder of what is ever-present, 'profundita natura,' the profundity of nature at its most beautiful, fragile, transitory, in the flower. I leave you with a screen of flowers, like a prayer. A film clip from late Summer 2008, edited 2009, ...layering... images, sounds, yet not wanting to disturb the vulnerability, perhaps strangeness, of this 'silent film'... Butoh can express the painful and beautiful paradoxes of life in an intimacy that is almost unbearable to watch, I don't know if this film has that, but it's in the intent. If 'White' opens something out in you, even in resistance, or in a sense of discomfort, then that is the Butoh influence, and then I'll know your reaction is like mine. For I don't know who that woman is, something else takes hold, another energy flows through.

White, a Butoh-inspired dance by Brenda Clews Direct link to White, a Butoh-inspired dance Why do we write?  I write out of excess. I write because I’m too full. Over-ripe. Spilling out. The corset of silence too tight. I write because I’m pregnant and have to give birth. It’s the extravagance of living. The fertility of words. Because I carry around a wild dictionary in my head. Because of the aesthetics of expression, how satisfying it is to compose, to share. A thought, a heart motion, a poem, a gift. From me, but to you. Why do you write? - Brenda Clews

Butoh-based Dance - A Saturday morning amble... by Brenda Clews YouTube: Brenda Clews on Butoh-based Dance- A Saturday morning amble Butoh, strange and surreal as it is, is about intimacy. Discussing Butoh-based dance having just completed a 4 day workshop with Denise Fujiwara in Toronto, Canada. My first video, using the in-built webcam on an iMac with iMovie, on Butoh-based dance with a poem in my white flannel nightgown this morning. Even before coffee. I leave as is. Though I did add the poem later this evening and you might have to increase the volume since, though I re-recorded a number of times much closer to the computer's built-in microphone than the original clip, I wasn't able to arrive at the same volume levels. In the emptiness of the dancer everything comes to be. I hope I imparted this in my little experimental video. Sharing a recent experience which I am in the process of understanding. Strange and surreal as it appears, the intensity of the dancers, intimacy, exposure, vulnerability are the core of Butoh. September 20, 2008 (I disabled embedding option at YouTube for this video, click on the link to go directly to YouTube.) Why Do We Create? Direct link to Why Do We Create?

Magnolia Stellata, from the Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems by Brenda Clews Direct link to Magnolia Stellata.

Magnolia Stellata, from the Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems From my Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems, 'Magnolia Stellata' is the first poem. I am learning how to make videopoems and while this is a complete version of the poem there is a talk to accompany it that I haven't yet recorded but I share anyhow. I taped this on Solstice 2008. Hope you enjoy this rendition. It was videotaped with an iMac 10.5.5 webcam and edited in Final Cut Express 4.0.1.