• ADAPTATION/EKPHRASIS AWARD: HUGE choice (Director: Oleksandra Krasavtseva, Poet: Joseph Brodsky, Germany, 2021, 3 min, in English & Russian, with English subtitles)
• COLLABORATION AWARD: Lightwaves Soundwaves (Director/Poet: Dwayne Jahn, Germany, 2021, 3 min, in English, with hardcoded English text)
• FEMALE-IDENTIFYING ARTIST AWARD: Barbed Song (Director/Poet: Abril Iberico, Peru, 2021, 5 min, in English & Spanish, with English subtitles)
• NORTHWEST ARTIST AWARD: life is a gift (Directors: gloria joy kazuko muhammad & mu knowles, Poet: mu knowles, US, 3 min, in English, with English subtitles)
• POETRY BY VIDEO ARTISTS AWARD: Stabat Mater (Director/Poet: Marina Sagona, US, 2021, 5 min, in Italian, with hardcoded English text)
• VIDEO BY POETS AWARD: Gold Token (Director/Poet: Ewurakua Dawson-Amoah, US, 7 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)
• WILD CARD AWARD: blue jay (Director/Poet: Anthony Matos, US, 2022, 12 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)

• Adaptation/Ekphrasis: Videos created to bring new meaning and dimension to pre-existing poetry. Any poems used for this purpose must be in the public domain or else used with written consent of the author.
• Collaboration: Video poems created in collaboration between a video artist and writer.
• Female-Identifying Artist Award: Work created by artists identifying as female.
• Northwest Artist Award: Work created by artists living and working in the Pacific Northwest.
• Poetry by Video Artists: Video artists using text visually or through audio intrinsic to the poetic meaning.
• Video by Poets: Poets creating video from, or as, their writing.
• Wild Card: Video work that’s poetically informed or poetry that’s visually informed that doesn’t neatly fit into one of the other categories.

Barbed Song receives the FEMALE-IDENTIFYING ARTIST AWARD
(Director/Poet: Abril Iberico, Peru, 2021, 5 min, in English & Spanish, with English subtitles)
Plays in When I’m not asking for permission showcase

The crescendoing use of repetition was particularly striking, but the pacing of the film overall held suspense and evoked emotion. There were many really wonderful films but “Barbed Song caught me and held on,” to quote a member of our Programs Team. What a delight!

blue jay receives the WILD CARD AWARD
(Director/Poet: Anthony Matos, US, 2022, 12 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)
Plays in It is strange and kinda symbolic showcase

In the last five years, we haven’t seen a work submitted to Cadence that built a visual narrative from a poem in such an intricate and unexpected way. Three characters living in silence slowly draw towards one another as the protagonist’s journal entries break through the felt isolation. The poetry floats above the story, unwittingly relatable, bringing meaning and change to the lives that take shape under the voiceover of this haunting and hopeful video poem.

Gold Token receives the VIDEO BY POETS AWARD
(Director/Poet: Ewurakua Dawson-Amoah, US, 7 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)
Plays in What is hidden needs to be seen

Gold Token investigates ancestry and resistance and survival with repeated verbal and choreographic and musical phrases, echoing the gorgeous visual motif of pearls and lips. Grounded in the body, this work explores the paraspaces, oscillating between horror and beauty, revealing layer after layer: words, movement, melody, cinematography and architecture weave together to become something else altogether, more than the sum of its parts. Archival footage brilliantly cut in with Dawson-Amoah’s dreamlike sequences echo the small ways memory finds us every day. Transcendent.

Honorable Mentions:

BINDI (Director/Poet: Mayuri Bhandari, US, 2021, 5 min, in English, with English subtitles)
Plays in What is hidden needs to be seen

our glorious bodies (Director/Poet: Frankie McGee, Canada, 2021, 8 min, in English, with English closed captions)
Plays in When I’m not asking for permission showcase

HUGE choice receives the ADAPTATION/EKPHRASIS AWARD
(Director: Oleksandra Krasavtseva, Poet: Joseph Brodsky, Germany, 2021, 3 min, in English & Russian, with English subtitles)
Plays in It is strange and kinda symbolic showcase

This incredible animation brings Brodsky’s poem alive through exploring intimate domestic interior made even more poignant by the historic period in which we’re living through pandemic.

Honorable Mentions:

america (i wanted to…) (Director/Poet: Matt Mullins, US, 2022, 6 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)
Plays in When I’m not asking for permission showcase

Letters to Lost Loved Ones (Director: Jose Luis Benavides, US, 2022, 18 min, in English, with English closed captions)
Plays in When I’m not asking for permission showcase

life is a gift receives the NORTHWEST ARTIST AWARD
(Directors: gloria joy kazuko muhammad & mu knowles, Poet: mu knowles, US, 3 min, in English, with English subtitles)
Plays in When I’m not asking for permission showcase

This piece is itself a witnessing and a gift—candid, intimate, complex. The writing, the camera work, the audio mix, the nuanced editing, and the performance—both spoken and on-camera—are all strong and all thoughtfully working in harmony. I especially appreciated how the restrained use of structural manipulation—focus-pulls, jump-cuts, reversed footage—lent a subtle tension and deliberateness to the deceptively simple and familiar-feeling visual track, underscoring the complexity of the subject-matter. This lyric essay speaks directly to constraint and the inherent peril of being Black, and in the very same moment—moment by moment—it exudes joy.

Honorable Mention:

Three Part Meditation (Director/Poet: Jocelyn R.C., US, 2022, 3 min, in English, with English subtitles)
Plays in When I’m not asking for permission showcase

Lightwaves Soundwaves receives the COLLABORATION AWARD
(Director/Poet: Dwayne Jahn, Germany, 2021, 3 min, in English, with hardcoded English text)
Plays in As the wind is breathing showcase

There is more going on in this film than it presents at first viewing. “Transcending cause and effect”. The words distract like a disillusionment to the painting: words in the foreground, painting in the background and sometimes the other way around. The sonic ripples harmonizing with the hypnotic ripples faintly overlaying the loud colors collaborating with the words; close ups of what could be influenced or had reminded me of a visit with Kandinsky. The psychedelic future is in this film, pushing sensorial limits, a cinematic synesthesia with its purpose seemingly not to eliminate the sense of senses but combine them into a dreamlike harmony.

Honorable Mention:

Frozen Cry (Llanto Congelado) (Director: Charles Olsen, Poet: Lilián Pallares, Spain, 2022, 5 min, in Spanish, with English subtitles)
Plays in What is hidden needs to be seen

Stabat Mater receives the POETRY BY VIDEO ARTISTS AWARD
(Director/Poet: Marina Sagona, US, 2021, 5 min, in Italian, with hardcoded English text)
Plays in When I’m not asking for permission showcase

Stabat Mater is a deeply simple and moving poem-film that stares right into the profound loss brought on by a refracted, reframed and repeated self-gaze. 15 times, the camera retreats—instead of moving toward, significantly—from a captured private moment of intimacy and desire into the world outside of the painting, which is one of gaze, questioning, judgment, reckoning.

Honorable Mention

HairBrush (Director/Poet: Kate Sweeney, United Kingdom, 2021, 2 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)
Plays in It is strange and kinda symbolic showcase