Today is the day that my poetry film ‘Un/dressing Poems’ is released into the wild! The poems were originally published in the magazine Copper Nickel out of University of Colorado, Denver, and I am really grateful to the editor Wayne Miller. They also appear in my new collection Hand & Skull, where they work to interrupt with commentary about dress, spectacle, sexuality, and the gaze.
When I was developing the concept for the film, I wondered how I could avoid the male gaze. Many of the poems are about intimate moments of putting on or taking off clothes, but I didn’t want it to be exploitative. In fact, in one section, I wanted to turn the camera back onto the male gaze: the eye that looks and consumes. I also turned the focus to the clothes, and distracted with the strangeness of the millipede that echoes the magical comb that becomes a centipede in the poem.
It’s my first time doing this, so it’s a simple concept, but I am very grateful to everyone in the Ohio State University College of Arts and Science Technology Services, including Scott Sprague, Paul Kotheimer, and Doug Dangler! Also thanks are due to the OSU Insectary where we filmed the millipede (yes those are my hands in that shot!!) and to Gayle Strege and Marlese Schoeny at the OSU Costumes and Textiles Collection where we filmed the clothes. Thank you everyone!
And here it is!
Zoë Brigley 