Pacific Cinémathèque and curator Heather Haley are seeking videopoem submissions from around the world for the annual Visible Verse screening and performance poetry celebration. SEE THE VOICE: Visible Verse is North America’s sustaining venue for the presentation of new and artistically significant poetry video and film.

Official guidelines:

* Visible Verse seeks videopoems, with a 15 minutes maximum duration.
* Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or-subtitled version is required for consideration. Videos may originate in any part of the world, however.
* Works will be judged on true literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
* Please, do not send documentaries, as they are outside the featured genre.
* Videopoem producers should provide a brief bio, full name, and contact information in a cover letter. There is no official application form nor entry fee.

Send, at your own risk, videopoems and poetry films/preview copies (which cannot be returned) in DVD NTSC format to: VISIBLE VERSE c/o Pacific Cinémathèque, 200–1131 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2L7, Canada. Selected artists will be notified and receive a screening fee.
DEADLINE: Sept. 1, 2009

For more information contact Heather Haley at: hshaley@emspace.com

Heather Haley is a well-established presenter of poetry video in Vancouver. An instigator of poetry video production and appreciation in Canada, Haley and the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre convened the original Vancouver Videopoem Festival in 1999. That festival became critically regarded owing to the its progressive regard for spoken word in cinema. The 2000 festival, for example, presented many poets both in performance and on the big screen. The audience could see for themselves the merits and distinctions of poetry rendered in time in these two forms, stage versus screen. The festival then built upon that critical base, with widened explorations into poetry cinema across national frontiers. They presented significant new works from Europe and the Americas, and continued to offer Canadian audiences a remarkably broad selection of new videopoems from their own country. And owing to Vancouver’s strength in the film and television production industries, Haley has been able to cultivate critical interest between filmmakers and poets, with positive consequences for both.²-Kurt Heintz, Director, e-poets