This poem is linked to dVerse Poets Pub and the Poetics prompt on Nightmare Verse where Stu McPherson challenges us to dig deep into the dreamworld and reveal our hidden fears, psychological traumas, unkenned phenomena, and other fascinating aspects of our nightmares. Please join us http://dversepoets.com/2012/03/31/poetics-nightmare-verse/
Transcript from the video (please play as it is intended to be heard and viewed, thank you)
Ice Floe
Silk enrobed traces
of your artistry
float by, a music
ever passing
as your gentle voice
is lost to the wind
Adrift in this
spirit boat on Arctic seas
language unravels
drifting through niveous skies
gifts strewn
along an abandoned path
I am the vessel
travelling in the land
of midnight sun
searching for hearth fires
Ever on the wing
scrying a refuge
in an ice tomb
of necrotic hallucinations
Within this land of the dead
narwhal trill our song
Circumpolar animals
thousand mile migrations
echolocation revealing naught
Colored lights whisper
profound hypothermic declarations
Chromapoetica 
very beautiful Anna
strongly evocative.
i feel i am with you
in this vast emptiness
of uncertain futures
Thank you kindly. It means a lot to me that you engage my work in all its permutations and that we can take these artistic journeys together :).
Wow! So beautiful. That piano is mesmerizing.
Thank you Stephen, I composed it today and find I can say things in music I cannot fathom with language. Music speaks to my emotional core in a completely unique way (I’m sure many people feel this way).
Absolutely thrilling.
“mesmerizing” is indeed the word for your piano composition. You are a multi-talented person and I am quite overawed by the various aspects of your blog.
Now that you have inspired me to turn my PC sound on, and get some head-phones, I shall have to learn to play the piano 🙂
Oh, I love inspiring people to engage in being creative, thank you :)!
I love how the notes of the piano go with the words. Drifting, echoes, trills, footsteps, melting ice, the hurrying flight of those birds — awesome. I do think that just the sound of the piano and the words would have an incredible effect, enough to project the imagery even if there are no pictures.
That’s wonderful you drew the correlations. I wrote the music first and then got too emotional to write anything other than blather. I took a deep breath and let the music guide me to saying something translatable :). How exciting to know that I succeeding in tying the two together. Always love your visits; I see things in a new light afterwards.
very cool anna…def love the blend of your artistic talents in this…was just listening yesterday to a group of performance poets that were blending music and verse…so cool you freestyled this as well and just let the words come….well done…
Yes, I think this is a more successful blending than the first music/poetry/image piece Interhemispheric Synaptic Transmissions (there’s certainly less experimental science driving this one – ha!). I think the process of writing for this piece will help with NaPoWriMo, maybe a warm up. Thank you greatly for your encouragement, I always value it.
Anna- this was hauntingly beautiful. Loved reading the words along with the music – I kind of drifted away to the arctic landscape- it was definately dreamlike- nightmarish in a different way- cold, mysterious, unknown- just hinted of exploring a place of uncertainty. I will play this again without a doubt. Anna- YOU are very talented indeed. So creative…love this
Thank you Stu! I worked on it yesterday and today and thought how will I wait until Tuesday to share it at dVerse :)? After reading many of the poems for the prompt I thought it fit well. So glad you responded to it, I try to present new formats, subjects, ways of seeing, forms, and styles to keep my poetic endeavors interesting, both to myself and readers (I hope).
What a creative presentation, Anna! I especially like the beginning of your poem and I love the final image!
Yes, the final image struck me deeply, it’s actually a deceptive image, beautiful and pernicious, as it’s an ozone hole. Thank you very much Laurie!
Very impressive.
Sadly I can only partake of the visual, as I dodn’t have speakers et up on this PC.
I shall have to find some as your piano sounds enticing
I’m so sorry about the typoes. I really try 😦
Thanks for trying to listen to the piano composition, it’s the heart of the piece.
Anna, the pictures and the music and the words all work together very effectively to highlight your talents. The music almost makes me float away…..beautiful.
Thank you Mary, I often find myself floating away when I compose music :).
It felt as if I were listening to a piece written and performed by J S Bach. What lovely music. It really ‘flowed’ with the Ice Floe so well that it seems as if it were written just for it, which is, exactly as it was. The poetry and the music are both stunning. Had to feel a bit sad for the wolf. I doubt he ever made it back to a safe shore.
Lovely post Anna.
Wow, I love Bach, I guess it shows :). This is a treasured comment, thank you!
I’m so bold as to go one better, complimentwise:
Having listened to St Matthew’s passion all afternoon, which I love, I have to say that your style is even more to my taste: it has the extra quality of wit and tingle. I am so impressed. Where can I listen to other things you have composed?
Wow, I’m speechless, thank you. My blog showcasing my compositions is http://chromasymphonic.com – unfortunately they are played by a computer program but one day I hope to pay musicians to play them :).
Another — another very different — 3-D triptych of media as facets of one song. Maybe it takes three sets of overlapping lenses like this to see beyond the bloody horns of nightmare down to the narwhals under its surface, swimming in the immense blue freedom of arctic seas. The chromatic piano riffs piled notes on a glittery trellis of ice, the images lingered glacially and the poem was like dubbing, translating dream into words. Impressive work, though it worked for me as music than poem. – Brendan
The fascinating thing about narwhal is that their name means ‘corpse whale’ as they often float for minutes upside down as if rehearsing death. Thank you for the feedback it’s always helpful and I enjoy the mythic knowledge you bring to the table.
Very creative, must have taken quite the time putting the slide show alone together let alone layering the text to the appropriate sight. Great job on all accounts. Very cool. Thanks
Thanks Fred, it was a bit time consuming though I thoroughly enjoyed the composing, photo selection, writing, and movie making. It was the trouble uploading to YouTube and then the difficulty embedding in WP that were time consuming and little fun :).
niveous skies… many beautiful and emotive visual phrases in this… I’d love to hear it spoken over the music.
Thank you, Luke, I thought about reading it as I’ve done with many poems but for whatever reason didn’t :).
Anna, I am so impressed with this presentation of your talents. Your music was very emotional, I have never met you but I could close my eyes and picture you playing this. The words you chose were the perfect compliment to the music. I have missed your home of art.
Thank you, I love your visits to my ‘home of art’ (love that phrase by the way), glad to have you back at the pub.
I’m always amazed at the talent that some people show in wielding multimedia – words, music, images – how they are able to weave all these into a coherent whole. So this was beautiful, seeing it all come together like this, in an arctic dream of ice floes, vast landscapes, and fantastical creatures.
I wrote the music first, a new experience for me. This is my second attempt at multimedia, thank you for the feedback!
This is lovely–I like the music especially, but I think (for the future) you might also print out the poem separately. It is lovely to read and hear them together but also nice to be able to look over a poem on the page, I think, so that one can go back and forth more easily between the lines. (Just a thought.)
It has a lovely mood and all works well together. I agree with Luke re niveous skies. K.
Thanks K, that’s very kind of you to say. The only reason I didn’t post the text was fear that some would skip the video all together. Now that many people linking at dVerse have seen it I’ll put the text below. I appreciate your feedback and helpful suggestion :)!
You are right that some people would skip it. I thought of that too. It’s a hard choice to make. But, in the end, it’s nice to have the poem available. Also, because as lovely as the music and images are–and I especially like the music–I think the poem does stand on its own. K
Well, I was going to quote my favorite lines, beginning with the first two. But really, every word is just fantastic. Your writing is gorgeous.
Well Shawna, now I’m speechless, thank you!
This would be my kind of dream. Not that I’ve ever had one like it, but I wish I had! Your poem is the next best thing, I guess. Beautiful, haunting images. Thanks.
Thank you David, I suppose in every pain there is a reflection of the joy that once accompanied it, hence the beauty.
The music worked well with the video and even though I am in the main an opponent of spoken verse , this is one which would have been enhanced by oration. I think video poetry will be the poetry of the future.
Thank you Cressida, I have often recorded my readings. I’ll have to eventually do that here.
Words and music here are powerfully complementary, each the perfect foil for the other. Moving compostion and evocative combination of forms. Altogether, a very impressive creation.
As I joked with Brian my first multimedia mix was a bit too cerebral, I’m happy to know this piece worked better as a whole. Thank you!
I love the images of the video, and your words, so dream like and uplifting, complements very well ~
Thanks for sharing your talents ~
The Arctic landscape has a unique beauty, thank you for taking the time to respond to my work.
that expression
I am a vessel… was superb
it says a lot
n the music u have synchronized with your lines was fab
all in all
loved it
Yes, it can send the mind on many journeys. Thank you Jyoti that means a lot to me :).
The music was wonderfully done, just uplifts your words that much more. Can be haunting the artic too and the not knowing, as it drift apart, wonderfully done.
That they entwined to form a cohesive whole is good to know. Yes, that uncertainty is the nightmare aspect. Thank you very much for the compliment.
It is amazing how dreams build so much community, even the dreams that terrorize us. Somehow, sharing tales of danger and survival strengthens us as a community. Your poem is entrancing in its narrative of journeys to other lands. These dreams are the most powerful, since they take us out of the here and now and suggest other places, other realms. These too are needed for community, as we build the bonds of trust that strengthen our ability to care for each other and share this awareness across temporal as well as spatial boundaries.
This is a beautiful statement. I feel fortunate to be a part of the dVerse community for this reason, thank you.
Beautiful music to your words…I enjoyed very much. It evoked the sense of ‘dreaming’ in me, that sense of otherworldly otherness …very evocative and haunting.
Thank you, that’s wonderful to hear it evoked an ‘otherworldly otherness’ (you must be a poet :))!
very nice…together with the piano it is mesmerizing anna..
Thanks Claudia, so nice to know you’re home safe!
What beautiful use of language!
Thank you Madeleine!
Such exquisite beauty almost snow blinds me to the nightmare underneath where a warming threatens life and creatures who are one with cold, ice, water and summers of midnight suns. The music and words gloved together to create a perfect union. Always magic at your place!
Yes, so many meanings beneath the surface, treacherously thin ice. I’m delighted you find magic here! Thank you for taking the time to visit.
Anna.. wonderful combinations. I felt sucked into the density of the ice even while floating on the fearful song of narwhal..rehearsing demise. It’s stunning. What creativity and talent you are able to bring… so enjoyed this. Hugely stimulating.
This is music to my ears Becky! Though hopefully you realize this will only encourage me to make more multimedia pieces.
That’s the general idea, Anna.. pleeease.. 🙂
Haha, yes! My pleasure :),
your ending is sooooooo cold!!!
semantic feeling
Yes, no mild but profound hypothermia.