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Art is empowering. Rhythm of the Heart was aimed at helping some young
people who don’t normally feel empowered in any areas of their
lives. Creative youth who had experienced struggles had an opportunity
to learn skills that would help them expand their poetic and literary
art.
In the end, the project involved 18 young people and produced 9 video
poems. It involved a series of ongoing workshops throughout the spring
and summer, and two separate intensive workshops through Inner City
High School and the ihuman Youth Society.
Participants practiced different ways to expand their concept of their
own poetry and learned video filming skills.
Because of the age and vulnerability of some of the participants, we
are not including many of their videos in this anthology. But poet-mentor
Catherine Owen’s speech at the evening when the videos were screened
gives you a sense of the experience.
Rhythm of the Heart Video Poetry Project:
Who I met and where they took me
By Catherine Owen
The one who came up with the name: Rhythm of the Heart, scrawled it
on a bit of lined paper and popped it into the suggestion box I had
made, a shoebox pasted with stanzas from well-known female poets. That
was at the first of two introductory workshops in May and June, sessions
which a range of 14-19 years olds attended. By the end of the eight
weeks of writing nights, a radio interview, video shoots and multimedia
events, by August, we were left with two, hunched over the Macs, cutting
and reshaping their visionary video poems, while a third, though she
was unable to attend the last few evenings, also completed a triumphant
creation.
Those who signed up for The Rhythm of the Heart video poetry workshops
tried their utmost to fulfill the demands and experience the pleasures
of this important program, but for many of them, what we often think
of as the simple desire to create was not quite so straighforward. All
the youth in the ongoing program, as well as the several day intensives
initiated by Michelle, Devona and I at Boyle Street Inner High and iHuman,
have endured the rigors of the street and/or the care system.
So it is miraculous then that, despite all these immense challenges,
poems have been written, videos shot and bonds established. Both miraculous
and the result of a substantial amount of dedicated work, by the organizers
and facilitators of the project and by the young poets themselves.
From Boyle Street, it was Chloe*, who first imagined herself as a blind
piano player and then found a way to flesh out this conception, urging
the janitor to unlock the crawl space under the stage and provide her
with access to this dusty instrument. It was Kayla*, whose seeming shyness
didn't stop her from writing a strong poem about loss and then directing
a shoot in the community gardens where mohawked Robbie*, clad in a black
trenchcoat, carefully assembled footage of sunflowers. From iHuman,
it was Karen* whose fierce politics shone as she repeatedly shot an
empty glass being puffed off a table in the wind, questioning how her
thirst for life would be filled, brand-new dreadlocks swinging.
And from the ongoing workshops, held in the cosy, ghosted rooms and
courtyard at FAVA, it was River* with her poem personalizing the Holocaust,
the heart she sketched in chalk on the pavement; it was Rose singing
country like a sassy angel, Rose who raves about Giant Tiger, weeps
for starving Sudanese. Finally, it was Ana* (“one N, yo!”),
whose video poem when it was finished on August 29th, made me cry with
its thirty intense seconds of pain and pugnacious, gutsy, lovely survival.
They have all affected me, altering, in various tangible and still
incomprehensible ways, my own relation to art and the universe. Apart
from learning that—boy, can I consume a lot of pizza!
And that trying to blow an infintisimal feather down the street in
the quest for a poignant scene can actually be injurious to one's brain
cells, I have had multiple lessons in patience, flexibility, working
as a team with the inexhaustible Michelle and the invincible Devona,
and serving as an engaged witness to the beautiful endurance required
to make poems, shoot and, particularly, edit videos.
I also relearned a tougher lesson: art is no saviour. It won't prevent
anyone, on its own, from taking drugs, running away, going crazy. But
it IS a companion, sometimes a guide. Art does provide a channel, validation
and catharsis for a turbulent existence. It can hint at the hope of
a more fully alive mode of being. Time and again when I asked these
young women what they wanted their art to effect in the world, they
said: “To wake people up. To help them see. Hear. And act to change
things.”
They have not lost faith in the power of art to alter actions, not
just through its message but through its unique form, images and rhythm.
The darkness they've seen doesn't have to crush and defeat; art, and
may these video poems only be a beginning, is one way to be unafraid,
one way to negotiate, criticize and even celebrate this life on earth.
Catherine Owen
August 30th 2007
Edmonton, AB
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the
participants
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