Ron Mann

Poetry in Motion

Duration: 90 minutes



Ron Mann's groundbreaking 1982 documentary feature, Poetry In Motion, remains a treasure-trove of performance and poetry, and poetry-in-performance, and features a stellar group of (mostly North American) poets (twenty-five from a group of sixty-five originally filmed), among them, Allen, Anne Waldman, John Giorno, William Burroughs, Amiri Baraka, Ed Sanders, Robert Creeley, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, John Cage, and Jim Carroll. Introduced and punctuated by the acerbic thoughts of Charles Bukowski, the film also affords us rare glimpses of such legendary figures as Ted Berrigan and Helen Adam and - it was partially Canadian-financed - Christopher Dewdney (reading a, perhaps, Christopher Smart-influenced piece), and "The Four Horsemen" (Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, Steve McCaffery, and bpNichol). It was re-released in 1994 in an innovative format on CD-R0m (the CD-Rom remains available), and, in 2002, as a DVD. A second DVD, Poetry in Motion 25, was also made available ("a one-hour television special featuring out-takes from Poetry In Motion", with many of the artists featured in the original film, (different poems, different settings), plus a bunch of new faces (Peter Orlovsky, Alice Notley, Eileen Myles, Spalding Gray, Tom Clark, Jerome Rothenberg, Joel Oppenheimer, and Philip Whalen, amongst others).



1. Opening Sequence & Titles [6:23]

2. Amiri Baraka [4:36]

3. Anne Waldman [2:57]

4. Ted Berrigan [2:20]

5. Kenward Elmslie [3:15]

6. Ed Sanders [6:55]

7. Helen Adam [3:36]

8. Tom Waits [1:40]

9. Charles Bukowski [:48]

10. William S. Burroughs [3:40]

11. Christopher Dewdney [4:44]

12. Michael McClure [3:12]

13. Ted Milton [1:01]

14. Robert Creeley [2:25]

15. John Cage [3:20]

16. Four Horsemen [2:41]

17. Michael Ondaatje & Bukowski [2:37]

18. Jayne Cortez [4:17]

19. Diane DiPrima & Bukowski [2:44]

20. John Giorno [7:10]

21. Ntozake Shange [2:46]

22. Gary Snyder & Bukowski [2:24]

23. Allen Ginsberg [6:59]

24. Jim Carroll & Bukowski [4:35]

25. Miguel Algarin [2:44]

