Poetry and Film: Meeting the New Poetry Professor

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, we have a new poetry professor on campus. His name is Nick Twemlow. The English Department decided that he should have a reading and this happened a couple of weeks ago. The cool thing about Nick is that he will not only teach poetry, but he will also teach some film classes because he has an MFA in both poetry and film.

His presentation was a combo of both poetry and film. We began with watching a short film he made with found footage. For many in the audience, I think this concept of found footage was new. For me, I had already had some experience with these sorts of videos from an event in NYC and also, the NYC Term Cinema Professor, Alan, had used a found footage short film in his film festival one year. It was a neat film, focusing on karate and a church healing craze (when people call spirits to them and they faint, have seizures, etc). Much of the found footage came from the Prelinger Archives, a site I am very familiar with through my NYC experience.

Then Nick moved into the poetry section of his presentation. He read five poems, some from his book Palm Trees, others from his new book he is putting together, and then some he had recently written. Nick was a great speaker and read his poems with just the right pace and tone.

Finally, we got to see one final short film of Nick's. This one was very different than the found footage film at the beginning. Trapper was actually a film Nick produced, working with two friends of his. The film is copyrighted 2011 and focuses on three characters and a trap. I won't give away the ending, but it was an eerie film. Nick explained that everything was filmed in the Iowa City area and to this day, the film still sort of freaks him out. Because Nick produced the film, we got a different view of making films, which I liked because I often don't hear about the ups and downs of producing a film.

I was so glad the English Department put on this reading/viewing. Nick looks to be a great addition to the faculty and I look forward to seeing what else he creates during his time at Coe.