A New YouTube Series Reveals Poetry's Marvels

John Green, the author of The Fault in Our Stars, and poet Paige Lewis have teamed up to make a new Youtube series called Ours Poetica which invites guests to read and discuss their favorite poem on camera. The project is sponsored in part by the Poetry Foundation and, according to Steve Johnson of Chicago Tribune "the essence of the series is in the videos. They are beautifully constructed little moments that give you a flash of the reader and why the work is important to that reader." Picking up from there: 

Green, for instance, says that reading the poem “Poetry” in high school — in that very same Norton Anthology he brought before the camera — was deeply influential. “There’s a line in it about 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them,’ and for me that’s what fiction writing is,” he says.

But then the focus shifts wholly to the poem. You see the book, the hands, the work on its page inside the book. Some nifty post-shooting magic blanks out all but one phrase at a time, and as it is read, the poem reveals itself, gaining momentum like a ball rolling downhill.

And then the hands close the book.

“We want to emphasize the text,” Green says. “We want to make the videos as kind of as clean and beautiful as possible and, and just have it be the voice and the text.”

From a poet’s perspective, this presentation is significant, Lewis says. “I think that a lot of the YouTube poetry videos online right now focus more on the reader themselves and their performance of the poem. And I know that poets spend a lot of time deciding how their poem will appear on the page — like a stanzas arrangement or the end of the line or the use of white space. All of that is very intentional.

“The viewer can follow along really closely and also experience that text placement as the poet originally intended.”

Learn more at Chicago Tribune.