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Parallel Octave will hold an open session on the poems of the remarkable Charlotte Mew, as well as the poems of Byron, Poe, Gertrude Stein, Vicente Huidobro, John Clare, Dickinson and Tennyson, this Saturday, July 7th at 4:30 PM. Location: Mattin Center room 105, JHU campus (directions at end of post).

Poems may include the following:
John Clare‘s “I Am“;
Emily Dickinson‘s “I’m Nobody! Who are you?“;
Edgar Allan Poe‘s “A Dream Within A Dream“;
Tennyson‘s “The Deserted House“;
Byron‘s “So We’ll Go No More A-Roving“;
Vicente Huidrobro‘s “Canción Nueva“;
Gertrude Stein‘s “Stanzas in Meditation“;

…and these Charlotte Mew poems:
“Rooms” (eat your heart out, C.P. Cavafy!)
“Not For That City”
“From A Window”
and the awesome, frightening “The Farmer’s Bride,” very RFrostesque:

When us was wed she turned afraid
Of love and me and all things human…

We’re going to have a bunch of very cool summer JHU students with us who are taking the ParOct “Auteur 101” class @ JHU (check out their course blog here!) and making more short films for ANTHOLOGY II. They need new sound files; we will record them. These sound files will, in all likelihood, make their way into ANTH II. Come and meet these awesome students. They hail from Vienna, Connecticut, Saudi Arabia, Memphis, Towson, Colombia and Maryland, and we are delighted to have them making films for the screening!

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In last year’s ANTH I, Adam interpreted Hart Crane’s poem “My Grandmother’s Love Letters” through the use of archival footage. This year, for ANTHOLOGY II, he’s taking on the enigmatic challenge of Emily Dickinson’s “My life closed twice before its close…” We interrupted Adam’s editing to ask him a few questions. Scroll down to see his Crane piece and to read his interview–and join us at 8 PM at the Creative Alliance on Thursday, August 2nd (free admission!).

Adam’s film from last year, “The Space Between Her Eyes and Mine”:

||8: Who are you?

AG: Adam Gray is the name they gave to this baby person who saw things float through his eyes and found out that these sensations could be communicated through the medium of moving images.

||8: Where are you from originally (where were you born) and where do you live now?

AG: : I was born in the suburbs of D.C. and grew up in Mt. Airy, a small town with a lot of trees and big yards. I live in Baltimore now.

||8: How did you get started making films? What was your first piece?

AG: One of the first things I remember making was this video of a fly who was on its last legs on our kitchen windowsill. I just turned on the camera because I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t save it and I didn’t want to kill it, and I was curious how long it could go on. It feels really sadistic now. I don’t think I got any joy from watching its pain, but I was interested in documenting the narrative of its struggle. And the video is ridiculous because the fly is so small, it’s just a little speck on this screen of white paint and a dark window.

Of course, I don’t really remember what it looks like because it was about fifteen years ago and I don’t have a camera that plays those kinds of tapes anymore. It was a HI-8, sort of like a mini-VHS. I also made some videos with friends at that time, absurd surrealist action-comedies that, luckily, also survive only in a such an archaic medium that no reasonable person could ever see them.

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Friends, Romans, poets: we are pleased to announce that ANTHOLOGY II, the second annual Parallel Octave short film compilation, will screen on Thursday, August 2nd at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore. Free admission! Drinks at 7:30 PM, screening at 8:00 PM. And look! There’s a trailer!

FREE Film Screening: Parallel Octave presents ANTHOLOGY II, A Collaborative Short Film
It’s a music video! It’s a Greek chorus! It’s ANTHOLOGY II. For the second year running, the Baltimore-based chorus Parallel Octave has invited filmmakers to create short films based on recordings of poems. This year’s <strong>ANTHOLOGY II will feature animation, stop-motion and live action, both student and professional filmmakers from Los Angeles, Maryland, Minnesota, Utah, and Wisconsin, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Yehuda Ha-Levi, T.S. Eliot, and many more.

The ANTHOLOGY II film will premiere on Thursday, August 2nd at 8 PM (snacks and drinks commence at 7:30) at the <a href="http://www.creativealliance.org“>Creative Alliance. The screening will be accompanied by a live performance and recording session with Parallel Octave, in which the audience will be cordially invited to make some noise and record a poem with us. Everyone who attends will receive a kazoo, a noisemaker, a free copy of the poems and the film soundtrack–and, of course, free admission! All ages, including children, welcome. http://www.paralleloctave.com; www.creativealliance.org.

This year’s event made possible due to the generous sponsorship of the following Johns Hopkins departments and offices: Film and Media Studies, Summer Programs at JHU, Writing Seminars, and the JHU Libraries.

Photos of the intrepid Greater Warsaw Women’s Chorus, in rehearsal with Oedipus, Medea, and the Leader of the Women’s Chorus, for the first time. All pictures by Aneta Lukas, taken at her Bemowo apartment, on Saturday, June 2nd–the day before the reading

More pictures follow:
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Now expanding our Greek choral frontiers beyond Baltimore to Warsaw, zapraszamy (we invite you) to a reading of an adaptation from Greek drama, on Sunday, June 3rd at 4 pm, at Komuna//Warszawa. Details below.

If you can get yourself to Warsaw, Parallel Octavians, we’ll rehearse from 11 till 3, take a dinner break, then perform at 4. The chorus is, as always, open to all.

Zapraszamy / we invite you
na czytanie / to a reading
spektaklu / of a play
po polsku, angielsku, i niemiecku / in Polish, English, and German
będącego adaptacją starogreckich komedii i dramatów / adapted from the ancient Greek dramas and comedies
Ajschylosa, Sofoklesa, Eurypidesa, i Arystofanesa / of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes
Projekt Chóru Parallel Octave / a project of the Parallel Octave Chorus

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that the screening of our next collaborative film, ANTHOLOGY II, will be held on the evening of Thursday, August 2nd at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore. Details are as they say, forthcoming.

Please join us this Sunday for a grouping of poems not in the first person. After this session, Parallel Octave will be on hiatus until July, when we will again hold open sessions and the screening of the second collaborative film, ANTHOLOGY II.

Poems Not In The First Person
Amiri Baraka, “A Poem For Speculative Hipsters”
Stephen Dunn, “In Love, His Grammar Grew”
Rita Dove, “Hades’ Pitch”
Georgia Douglas Johnson, “Foredoom”
H.D., “Helen”

See you at D. Schwartz’s house (email paralleloctaveATgmail if this is your first session and you need the address) on Sunday 4/29, 1-2:30 PM.

This very special extended session will feature only (mostly) acoustic instruments. Cause these poets are old. One is Shelley, and the other is medieval. Also, the recordings from this session are definitely going into the film. Please come, eat the free pizza, make fun of Shelley’s middle name (Bysshe?? Really?) and help us make this awesome.

Date: Sunday, April 1
Time: Starting at 1 pm as usual, but going until we have really good recordings of both poems.
Location: Danny Schwartz’s house in Charles Village (email paralleloctaveATgmail if this is your first session)

Poems (pasted below):
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”
Opening verses from Yehuda Ha-Levi’s “Ayin Nedivah”

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Ladies and gentlemen, start your cameras! Our filmmakers are: Jake Appet & Tamar Nachmany (co-directing), Anamika Bandopadhyay, Alice Venessa Bever, Ellen Freytag, Adam Gray, Marie Ilene, Rachel Jendrzejewski & Theo Goodell (co-directing), Joseph Martin, Danny Schwartz, Valerie Smith, and Sandylee Triolo.

The screening of this filmic extravaganza will take place on Thursday, August 2nd.

We need to record some new sound for several of these people, so we’re going to have a very very special extended almost-all-acoustic perfectionist open session on April 1st for this purpose. (No joke! This is happening.)  Highly delicious food will be provided: free pizza. Details forthcoming in the very next post.