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Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.
‎
Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
‎
In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.
‎
The consul banged the table and said:
‎'If you've got no passport, you're officially dead';
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
‎
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?
‎
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
‎'If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread';
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.
‎
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: 'They must die';
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.
‎
Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.
‎
Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
‎
Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.
‎
Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.
‎
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.‎

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22 November, 2019 by Dave Bonta - 2 Comments - Posted in Videopoems

This 2016 film co-directed by Stephan Bookas and Tristan Dawes moved me to tears. That's how effective, and affecting, I found this juxtaposition of W. H. Auden's poem ( text here) about Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany-read by a man identified only as Noah, a refugee and former child soldier from Uganda-with excellent documentary footage of contemporary refugees. Here's the official synopsis from Bookas' website:

Set to the verses of W.H. Auden's 1939 poem, the multi-award winning "Refugee Blues" charts a day in 'the jungle', the refugee camp outside Calais. More intimate and unlike much of what has been seen in the mass media, this documentary poem counterpoints the camp's harsh reality of frequent clashes with the French riot police with its inhabitants' longing for a better future.

On Vimeo, Bookas includes a mini essay about the making of the film, which I found illuminating in its suggestion of how documentary poetry can differ from journalism. This was something I'd been thinking about because I recently attended a reading and slideshow from another documentary poetry project, which was a collaboration between a poet and a photojournalist: Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Steven Rubin's Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields. Technically, Auden's poem by itself would not be considered an example of documentary poetry, but as a filmpoem Refugee Blues certainly would qualify, in my opinion. Anyway, I hope Mr. Bookas won't mind my quoting a sizable chunk of his post:

We didn't set out to make a film at first - that idea came later - we just packed a car full of blankets, clothes, food and other items and went, not fully knowing what to expect. But of course, being filmmakers, we also brought along our cameras - to see if we might have the opportunity to document, to capture, to find the human story in all the chaos that was so ubiquitous in the media at the time.

Soon after our arrival, we found the people living at the refugee camp to be very warm and welcoming, as long as we assured them we weren't news-gathering journalists.

We didn't film anything to begin with and just walked around, introduced ourselves as documentary filmmakers and listened to people and their stories. Every single one of them was unique and heartbreaking.

Following these discussions, we asked if it would be alright to take out our cameras and start filming. For the most part the answer was a resounding yes.

We spent the following days exploring the camp and talking to people, discussing the situation and the political climate and spending time with them, being invited for coffee and food and allowed to film elements of their daily lives. This turned out to be the calm before the storm, as things culminated in a clash between the camp's inhabitants and the French riot police on the road leading to the ferry terminal, symbolic for the plight of the refugees and their struggle against institutional powers they are unable to defend themselves against. [...]

Of course, our film can't possibly even begin to try and unravel all the lives and personal fates entangled within this crisis. But in some small way, and for us especially, it has given this tragedy a face that's less abstract, more relatable, more human.

Read the full post (including complete credits).

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22 November, 2019 by Dave Bonta - 2 Comments - Posted in Videopoems This 2016 film co-directed by Stephan Bookas and Tristan Dawes moved me to tears. That's how effective, and affecting, I found this juxtaposition of W. H.

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WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN AND THE 'COMMITTED WRITERS'

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WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN AND THE 'COMMITTED WRITERS'