This article begins with an overview of the relationship of poetry and independent film. It proceeds to focus on three independent films that use the cinematic apparatus as a means of publishing poetry. Waterworx, a film by Canadian Rick Hancox, recycles Wallace Stevens's “A Clear Day and No Memories” in a manner that confirms the accomplishment of the original poem while embedding it, subtly as well as evocatively, within the filmmaker's personal context. nebel (mist), by German filmmaker Matthias Müller, re-presents a cycle of poems by Ernst Jandl, Gedichte an die kindheit (Poems to Childhood). Müller's film carefully weaves a recitation of the Jandl poems together with a variety of “found” visual images, including shots from The Wizard of Oz and home movies made during the 1960s by the filmmaker's father, in a manner that provides evocative confirmations and counterpoints to Jandl's text. Canadian Clive Holden's Trains of Winnipeg republishes a set of the filmmaker's own poems from a book by the same name; it is the first feature film I am aware of that is entirely devoted to the presentation of poetic texts.
