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Welcome to Rail Switch

poetry videos / poetry films / spoken word

Now we take our second step out into the snow. A little ground can be seen behind us now. A line can be drawn between the points where our feet meet the ground. With another step, we will be able to see where we have been and no longer are. It would be difficult to say what differentiates this issue from the last one, so wide ranging already was the first. Our exploration in video poetry has continued, and we could not be more excited to share what we have lately found. The featured animation is “Have you seen this Movie”, based on a poem by Allen Ginsberg, courtesy of the Allen Ginsberg Foundation. We also thank Wesleyan University Press and the poet Joshua Gottlieb-Miller for the chance to produce a video based on his poem “Fantasy Images”. Enjoy, turn every stone!

Issue 2

Fantasy Images
02:34
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller

Fantasy Images

“I did—I did tell you— when they were all sleeping in this one apartment. That everything became a bed. The floor was—” (No—) “a bed. The ironing board was a bed. The chair was a bed because it was so many kids in this very small apartment. And— my father always told the story of when he was sleeping with brothers— his brother Jack on the floor, and there was another— man there. So Frank thought it was Jack’s friend and Jack thought it was Frank’s friend, and in the morning they said, ‘Why did you invite another one?’ Because we didn’t know who then— they still didn’t know who this was— like—” (Oh my goodness.) “But you know—” (In their home?) “In their home, yeah. You know they would bring home friends to— a boarder would come in, you know— to pay them a dollar to sleep on the floor. And— I— I don’t think that children today or people recognize the— the greatness— of immigrant society. “They were very brave, very brave, very brave, very gallant. …“You know don’t forget they all spoke Yiddish, so there was already commonality, and you know if you speak Yiddish you’re part of the tribe, so— this is how they— you know—" Two Jews, three opinions The outsider within One relative, when I told him who I was: “I think you’re full of shit” Bio: Joshua is a writer and educator living and working in Houston, Texas. He has published poetry, essays, scholarship, hybrid, and multimedia writing, and has two books of poetry available, including his new book Dybbuk Americana, available at Wesleyan University Press.
The Waves and Wings Series
11:14
Entry From the List Called ‘Things I Cannot Believe I Once Had’
01:44
Penelope Ioannou

Entry From the List Called ‘Things I Cannot Believe I Once Had’

It was dry and opulent in our bikinis on the speedboat as we drove towards a little restaurant in the cave of the night and it wasn’t so much that it was dry outside but that between us— as we sat on our damp towels hugging kind of manically because the boat was fast and the air whipped warmth into ice like little tempests stationed at every meter— there was a dryness, a good one, like it was easy to live on this speedboat and relish the handsome Greek guy ploughing the boat through the fat night and think about how good it feels to be a girl and be billowing and have dads that are proud of us and a boat that can sear this water. I felt a kind of pain, then. The island behind them was like a cinder and as if drawing from the same capillary we were suddenly terrified of the water that was like a reflection of black jelly, of the stranger flogging this vessel in this open water, of the fragility in the understanding that there was friendship here. Also of the engine but also of this joy searing between us like an affliction, waterless and billowing and ginormous and panic spread like panic and everything came down: the cave of dryness, the comfort of our dads, the planktons coming with us to the shore. Bad bitches! Small and charred we disembarked and I was convinced we were microscopic and dying. Bio: Penelope Ioannou is a poet and writer and recently Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Review of Books. She just finished her master’s from Oxford University in and is (obsessively) wondering what comes next. She presented her first visual project called Translation Swims Like Algae In A Winter Pool (2023) at the Comparative Literature and Critical Translation discussion panel at Oxford University, a short film which focused on the visual games and peculiarities of following the translation of a single poem.

In lieu of a comment section we have discussion questions: 

  1. Which two poetry videos strike you as the most different? Why?

  2. ​Which poetry video would you like to live in for a day? A month? A year? 

  3. ​Pick a favorite line from one of the videos. What do you picture in your head? What do you see on screen? What connections do you see between the three images?

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