Wednesday, March 11, 2009

poetry animations channel on youtube

The 'poetry animations' site on YouTube has been growing rapidly, and now numbers 285 videos. The man behind the channel, Jim Clark, writes on the site: "Thankyou for visiting this channel dedicated to Virtual Animated movies of great poets reincarnated through the wonders of computer animation reading their best loved poems and presented in the style of old scratchy movies.I hope some of you may share my enjoyment in viewing these, if so please remember to take a few moments and leave me your kind feedback and rating."

The effects are variable, and facial distortions inevitable as the animations attempts to match movement to words; eg the virtual Dylan Thomas tends to look distractingly rubbery-faced. In many cases the poems are, for obvious reasons, not read by the poets themselves.
Four sample videos: W B Yeats "virtually" reads To Ireland in The Coming Times, Dylan Thomas reads Do Not Go Gentle in That Good Night, Emily Dickinson reads My life closed twice before its close, and T S Eliot reads The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Maybe the current blocking of "premium" UK music videos on YouTube due to the dispute over fees will encourage UK users to explore other types of YouTube videos, including poetry.







1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi just let you know poetryanimations was deleted last week by the youtube Nazis but I am back as poetryreincarnations at youtube lonh may she sail.

http://www.youtube.com/user/poetryreincarnations?feature=mhum

Kind Regards

Jim Clark