Items12The creator’s order
  1. 1Manhatta (1921)Manhatta (1921) 6.6/10 on IMDbReleased 1 Jan 1921One 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…0
  2. 2Night Mail (1938)Night Mail (1938) 6.8/10 on IMDbReleased 13 May 1938The 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,…0
  3. 3The Man with the Beautiful Eyes (1999)The Man with the Beautiful Eyes (1999) 7.2/10 on IMDbReleased 1 Jan 1999Jonathan 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…0
  4. 4Forgetfulness by Billy Collins, animated by Julian GreyForgetfulness by Billy Collins, animated by Julian GreyVimeoBilly 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…0
  5. 5The Dead by Billy Collins, animated by Juan DelcanThe Dead by Billy Collins, animated by Juan DelcanYouTubeA 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…0
  6. 6Lightenings viii by Seamus Heaney, animated by Eoghan KidneyLightenings viii by Seamus Heaney, animated by Eoghan KidneyVimeoHeaney'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…0
  7. 7Streamschool (2011)Streamschool (2011) 5.3/10 on IMDbReleased 11 Oct 2011A 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…0
  8. 8To This Day (2013)To This Day (2013)Released 19 Feb 2013Shane 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:…0
  9. 9Ugly by Warsan Shire, directed by Anna GinsburgUgly by Warsan Shire, directed by Anna GinsburgVimeoWarsan 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…0
  10. 10The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, a film by Charlotte Ager and Katy WangThe Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, a film by Charlotte Ager and Katy WangYouTubeWendell 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…0