Poetry

Lacey Meek


Video only:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt5ez04kVaU
Presentation: 

 

















Artist Statement

Writing this poem has been a very strong learning process for me, partially because of the background knowledge we were taught and partially because before this project I’d had very little exposure to poetry. Throughout the school year, we have studied violence, peace and the truth of war. These projects not only informed us students about the facts and events surrounding world wars one and two and about Gandhi’s mission, but also built a strong base of knowledge to help us with our poetry. We were supposed to write poetry inspired by any of the subjects we had studied this year, and the subject that I chose to work with was the concept of no man’s land.  No man’s land intrigued me, because it’s the space of land where anything can happen in war.  At first, I was planning on writing a poem from both sides of that invisible line. However, I found myself feeling that even with all of the studying that we’ve done on the subject of war, there’s no real way you can understand war unless you’ve actually experienced it. This meant that I had nothing to write about on my subject so I just toyed around with lines, creating a very stereotypical poem about how bad war was and whatnot. That’s when I stumbled on the idea that I could actually use the concept of not understanding war in my poem. I took my weakness and actually turned it into the strongest part of my first draft and all subsequent drafts.

I knew from the beginning that if I wanted to be satisfied with my poem, it couldn’t rhyme. Since about first grade I’ve been through a painful series of trial-and-error processes that all involved rhyming poetry, and to be brutally honest, I believe that if I put my first grade work up against my seventh grade work, people would barely be able to tell the difference. In the end I decided to write a free verse poem, which isn’t as restrictive for me as a rhyme scheme is. My resolve was only strengthened when we watched “There’s a War Going on for Your Mind.” I really enjoyed the short and snappy sentences, and how it flowed. In this poem, they used a mixture of poetic devices like alliteration with: “Media mavens mount surgical strikes…” and then later changed the pattern of their poem with enjambment: “We are the insurgents.” Like them, I didn’t follow any specific pattern in my poem, because I liked the freedom. I did want my work to be easy for me to read out loud though so when I broke my poem into stanzas, I made each line short like in “There’s a War Going on For Your Mind.” I would be able to keep my place more easily and give a certain pace to readers of my poem.

Finally, I wanted to convey my poem in a way that emphasized the point I was trying to make. Then we watched Bryan Bauer’s poem and the kinetic text felt really powerful to me. He was able to speak the words to a quick and easy beat, and the way that that he lined up his text really added to the message, helping me understand the full meaning of his words as I read along. This is what I wanted for my own poem. At first I decided to simply make a kinetic text in Adobe After Effects, which would be both a learning experience for me and help me to communicate the poem. This didn’t feel like quite enough though, and involved unnecessary stress. After a couple of days I came up with a new plan, one that involved stop motion and allowed the audience to actually see the process of the words being written which would help build a more personal feel, and would allow for more illustrations, adding to the strength of the poem and serving as an explanation to confusing parts. The idea helped me be able to convey one of my own poems with power, which was exactly what I’d aimed for.

_________________________________________________________________________________

   This project was one of the most physically and emotionally challenging projects I've ever completed.  It was also one of the most rewarding.  Some of the challenges I faced included (but weren't limited to): an inability to translate the audio of my video to MP4 format; an inability to get my dad's computer to read new recordings once I realized the old ones weren't working; a project that took longer than the time we were allotted; and at the very end, the accidental deletion of all prior drafts and poetry from my USB when I had no back up.  However, I've never been prouder of my lack of procrastination, I'm pleased with the resulting video, I'm pleased with how the presentation overall went, and how comfortable I was up on the stage after our practices.  I would go as far as stating this is one of if not the best project I've completed at Animas.  First, we wrote poetry, and after multiple drafts, this was my end result: Words


   Then, we began our projects.  I decided quickly on what I wanted to create: a stop-motion kinetic text.  This meant that I'd need to start quickly though, so I dove into my project even in the first weekend, completing the first two or so stanzas of the kinetic text.  Every time I drew a letter, or part of a letter, I took another picture.  This process took over 1,300 photos.  It was tiring, and at one point involved a lot of caffeine, but finally I had all of the pictures taken.  Once I had those, I set them to Windows Live Movie Maker and added audio with about one slide shown every tenth of a second.  At the exhibition itself, I spoke along with the video.