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Manhatta (1921)
6.6/10on IMDb
Released
One of the earliest poetry films, and still one of the purest. The painter Charles Sheeler and the photographer Paul Strand shot New York's harbour, bridges and towers, then threaded lines from Walt Whitman through the film as intertitles, so the city and the verse answer each other shot by shot.
It is silent and roughly ten minutes long, which makes it an easy first watch, and free copies sit in the Internet Archive. Read Whitman's Manhattan poems straight afterwards and the skyline stays with you.
More about Manhatta2
Night Mail (1938)
6.8/10on IMDb
Released
The 1936 GPO Film Unit documentary about the overnight postal train from London to Scotland, and the most famous meeting of poem and picture in British film. W. H. Auden wrote the closing verse commentary and went through draft after draft with Harry Watt to match the rhythm of the moving train, while Benjamin Britten's score keeps time beneath it.
Most of the film is a plain portrait of the train and its sorting carriages; the payoff is the closing stretch, when Auden's lines start to rattle along with the wheels. A free copy sits in the Internet Archive, and it is the best case for poetry as something you hear in motion.
More about Night Mail3
The Man with the Beautiful Eyes (1999)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Jonathan Hodgson and the illustrator Jonny Hannah turned a Charles Bukowski poem into six minutes of paint, ink and collage, built frame by frame. A gang of children hang around the overgrown yard of a house their parents warn them off, and the drinking man who lives there, wholly careless of the rules they are being raised on, fascinates them.
The rough, handwritten look suits Bukowski far better than a polished cartoon would, and the film won the BAFTA for short animation in 2000. Psyche presents it online, and it works as a gateway for anyone who assumes Bukowski is all bar-room swagger: this is the tender, unsettling side of him.
More about The Man with the Beautiful Eyes4
Forgetfulness by Billy Collins, animated by Julian Grey
Billy Collins reads his poem about memory slipping away, from the name of the author to the capital of Paraguay, and Julian Grey of Headgear animates each lost thing as it drifts off. The joke and the sadness arrive together, which is exactly how the poem works on the page.
It belongs to a series of animated Collins poems that the agency JWT made for the Sundance Channel, and the copy online is the producers' own upload. Light, quick and funny, it is the ideal film to show someone who thinks poetry is not for them.
More about Forgetfulness by Billy Collins, animated by Julian Grey5
The Dead by Billy Collins, animated by Juan Delcan
A companion to Forgetfulness from the same series of animated Billy Collins poems, and a quieter one. Collins imagines the dead watching over the living, and the animation comes from Juan Delcan's studio, Spontaneous.
Watch the two Collins films together to see how different animators can pull a single poet in different directions: one plays up the wit, the other the tenderness underneath it. The copy online is the producers' own upload.
More about The Dead by Billy Collins, animated by Juan Delcan6
Lightenings viii by Seamus Heaney, animated by Eoghan Kidney
Heaney's poem retells an entry from the old Irish annals: monks at prayer at Clonmacnoise see a ship appear in the air above them, its anchor caught on their altar rails. Eoghan Kidney made this short animation for an RTÉ programme celebrating Heaney in 2009, and it treats the miracle as matter-of-factly as the poem does.
At about two minutes it is one of the shortest films here, and one of the best introductions to Heaney's later, airier poems from Seeing Things. The upload is the animator's own.
More about Lightenings viii by Seamus Heaney, animated by Eoghan Kidney7
Streamschool (2011)
5.3/10on IMDb
Released
A Hungarian poem by Zsolt Miklya becomes a stop-motion journey: a little girl follows a brook all the way to the sea, and growing up happens along the way. Péter Vácz made it as his graduation film at MOME in Budapest, using textured cut-outs, cloth and plastic that you almost want to touch.
It is the gentlest film on the list and the one to share with children as well as adults. Vácz has posted it on his own Vimeo page, and a French-language version exists too, which shows how well the images carry the poem across languages.
More about Streamschool8
To This Day (2013)
Released
Shane Koyczan's poem about the lifelong damage of bullying, animated by more than eighty volunteer artists who each took a short segment, brought together by the Vancouver studio Giant Ant. The style keeps changing, yet the voice holds it together, and the patchwork becomes part of the meaning: many hands, one story.
It passed five million views in its first week in 2013. It is direct and emotional rather than subtle, so it suits newcomers and classrooms best. The project's own Vimeo account hosts the full film.
More about To This Day9
Ugly by Warsan Shire, directed by Anna Ginsburg
Warsan Shire's own reading of her poem, taken from the audiobook of Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, set to animation that Anna Ginsburg built from the paintings of the London artist Melissa Kitty Jarram. Each shot began as an original Jarram painting recreated digitally, so the film moves like a gallery coming to life.
It was released for World Refugee Day 2019 and runs under two minutes, short enough to watch twice in a row, which it rewards. Ginsburg posted it on her own Vimeo page. Afterwards, the collection it comes from is the obvious next read.
More about Ugly by Warsan Shire, directed by Anna Ginsburg10
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, a film by Charlotte Ager and Katy Wang
Wendell Berry reads his much-loved poem about going out among wild things when despair for the world grows, and the illustrator Charlotte Ager and the animator Katy Wang give it imagery that stays out of the way of his voice.
It comes from the On Being Project's series of poetry films and lasts about a minute, which makes it the best quick remedy on this list for a bad news day. The On Being Project hosts it on its own channel, together with its Rilke film.
More about The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, a film by Charlotte Ager and Katy Wang11
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower by Rainer Maria Rilke, a film by Matt Huynh and Mila Nery
A poem from Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, in the English version by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows, made into a poetry film by Matt Huynh and Mila Nery for the On Being Project. The poem asks the reader to let hardship ring out like a bell rather than be crushed by it.
It is the right choice for anyone who has only met Rilke as a quotation on a greetings card: it gives a whole sonnet room to breathe and sends you straight to the rest of the sequence. The On Being Project hosts it on its own channel.
More about Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower by Rainer Maria Rilke, a film by Matt Huynh and Mila Nery12
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, animated by Alvaro Lamarche-Toloza
Shelley's sonnet about a shattered statue in the desert, written in 1817, given a striking modern treatment: Alvaro Lamarche-Toloza applied Estelle Chauvard's wash paintings to 3D scenes built in the Unreal Engine, so the ruins look painted by hand yet move like a camera through real space. The voice is Bryan Cranston's reading from a Breaking Bad trailer, which lends the sonnet an extra edge of menace.
It runs about a minute and a half and makes a good pairing with Manhatta: a century apart, both put the newest image-making tools of their day to work on a poem about monuments. The upload is the filmmaker's own.
More about Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, animated by Alvaro Lamarche-Toloza
