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).