Andrea Rexilius from joshuamarie on Vimeo.
For the past couple of years, Chicago resident and Seattle native Joshua Marie Wilkinson has been shooting video of poets reading at various locales across the country. He shares these videos online via Rabbit Light Movies.
“I wanted to start a new journal to contribute to the world of small magazines and journals–but didn’t want to just do another print or online one–with some catchy new name,” says Wilkinson, “Since I have a minor background in film, I thought it would be easy to start a dvd journal featuring 3-6 short videos of poets reading from their own work.”
At first, Wilkinson only burned these videos onto DVDs to send out to friends and “subscribers,” but that got too costly and cumbersome, so he began putting the videos online free for everyone.
Wilkinson shoots the poets reading, sometimes during public performance, other times at home, and still others in spots picked out for their resonances with the work.
Christian Hawkey from joshuamarie on Vimeo.
“Often times, I’ll invite somebody over to my house, meet them in a city, capture stuff when I’m on road trips or reading trips, or ask the poets where they’d like to be filmed,” says Josh, “Sometimes I have only recordings of the poets’ voices; in those cases I go and shoot stuff around cities and try to assemble a little montage of footage–footage I am careful to try not to illustrate their poems with. I think of it as a backdrop to the voice–something that neither distracts nor describes their words.”
Rabbit Light Movies is roughly bi-annual, with new editions appearing every six months. Anyone interested in further video/poetry sites should check out the Continental Review, or just search “Poetry” on YouTube and laugh until you cry (or vice versa).






Thanks for this, Travis. I have gotten one of Joshua’s rabbitlight DVDs before and really loved it (and the idea). Your post reminded me of a reading I happened on a couple nights ago on youtube when I googled C.S. Giscomble to see when his new book is coming out (which I can’t wait to get my hands on.) There was actually a really lovely reading on youtube of one of my favorite poems of his, “Far,” which appears in his chapbook “Inland” and in the new book Prairie Style (forthcoming Sep 2008.) I thought it was a surprising choice of poem to randomly find read on youtube, and all the more enjoyable for that!
it can be viewed by typing c.s.giscombe into youtube or clicking here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp1XcigJIjY
cheers
Thanks, Ashley. C.S. Giscombe is a great find on youtube, or anywhere else.
Thanks for this post, Travis, and, yes, Ashley, I love Giscombe’s work too.
Prairie Style is a wonderful book; I can’t wait for its official release.
Future RLM episodes will include Eleni Sikelianos, Ed Roberson,
Ben & Sandra Doller, Susan Scarlata, Dan Beachy-Quick,
Abraham Smith, Philip Jenks, Lily Brown, John Keene, and a number
of others.
cheers,
jmw