ARTIST STATEMENT: Cindy Hunter Morgan and I co-founded the Michigan State University Filmetry Festival, a collaborative event partnering filmmakers with poets to develop and celebrate new cinepoems. For the inaugural event, I chose this piece of Cindy’s to adapt. I was drawn to the longing and melancholy in the narrator and the cinematic potential of seeing one’s long-dead grandmother “in the amber square of an un-shuttered window.” I’m interested in the unique qualities of cinema that can combine with poetry to synthesize something new. Cosmic Memory 1 is a meditation on loss and the unexpected ways that memories bridge time and space.
BIO: Cindy Hunter Morgan is the author of a full-length poetry collection and two chapbooks. Harborless (Wayne State University Press) is a 2018 Michigan Notable Book and the winner of the 2017 Moveen Prize in Poetry. It was recently selected as the next title for “One Book, One Community” for Marquette County and Northern Michigan University. She writes regularly for Murder Ballad Monday, a blog devoted to the exploration of the murder ballad tradition in folk and popular music. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Journal of American Poetry, Tin House Online, Salamander, and West Branch. Website: cindyhuntermorgan.com
BIO: Peter Johnston is a filmmaker and the Digital Media/Film Production Manager in the Film Studies Program at Michigan State University. His recent short documentary What Happens To A Dream Deferred screened across the US and internationally, and won the “Advocacy in Latino Film” award at the 2018 Tulipanes Latino Art & Film Festival. His newest short documentary Walking For Ded was selected for screening in the 2019 Cinetopia Detroit Voices competition.
