The Moving Image: Poetry and Film

Art, wrote filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky, is a means of assimilating the world, an instrument for knowing it in the course of one’s journey toward “absolute truth.” This workshop uses film to inspire and generate poems, seeking what some filmmakers call the “authentic,” bearing in mind that, as Tarkovsky said, “the indisputably functional role of art lies in the idea of knowing, where the effect is expressed as shock, as catharsis.” Using films by recent and contemporary auteurs, exercises using imagery, ideas, emotions, and other elements from the films, and selected readings, the poet will tap into his or her infinite capacity for “knowing,” and view the world through its lens.