Cadence Video Poetry Fest Inspires Interdependence with Blended Media

Still from people mountain people sea

Courtesy of Cadence Video Poetry Festival

On Sunday, April 19, the lobby of Northwest Film Forum filled up with laughter and chatter close to 4 p.m. as people filtered in. It was a warm and springlike day in Capitol Hill, but not even the good weather could deter the creative community from showing up for the Cadence Video Poetry Festival, which has been running yearly in Seattle during National Poetry Month since 2018. This was day three of in-person screenings, and the event, titled proof that we were here, was about to begin.

What is video poetry, you might be wondering? When I asked the festival’s co-directors, Rana San and Chelsea Werner-Jatzke, how they would define this relatively niche artistic medium, they said that Cadence “approaches video poetry as a literary genre presented as visual media, rather than a film genre featuring poetry.” The video component can be anything from animation to experimental documentary to screendance, and poetry doesn’t technically have to be present in the final product. “We seek work that was inspired or touched by language at some point in its process of creation,” the directors explained. “Whether microshort or feature film, whether spoken, sung, subtitled, or text on screen, we maintain an inclusive view of video poetry that celebrates any creative use and/or representation of language paired with images.”

proof that we were here contained 11 video poems, and their places of origin reflect both the international scope and hyper-local focus of the festival. There were works from Brazil, Ukraine, Croatia, France, China, and Canada. There were also several works from local Seattle creatives, two of which—Remembering Tornado Season and Dreaming Ecosystems—were created during generative workshops hosted by the festival. 

The title of this collection of video poems comes from the first film in the program, Late on the Planet, and I felt it really spoke to the themes I noticed across the pieces. There was a distinct reverence for the natural word which came up over and over, a sense of honoring what we have with the awareness that it might not be here much longer. In one, a woman stands on a beach and asks in semaphore for the waves to wash over her. In another, worry beads made of ice gradually melt, accompanied by words on remembering and grounding ourselves. In the final poem, the artist’s 103-year old grandmother reflects on what she learned in her life, while Super 8 footage of plants and insects in a garden transition at a framerate equivalent to a hummingbird’s wing beat. 

Still from Late on the Planet

Courtesy of Cadence Video Poetry Festival

When the final poem finished and the lights came back on, I looked around and saw plenty of wet cheeks and people wiping their eyes. My own eyes were running, too. These poems had felt like hand-stitched offerings of illusory fragments, sounds with personal meaning, and layered visuals. And yet even with how personal they felt, they contained universally relevant themes. Ecosystems were at the heart of this program. I was left thinking about the importance of recognizing that my actions affect my communities, and my communities are far broader than just human. Werner-Jatzke spoke to this as well: 

“The overarching theme that emerges from this year’s festival is interdependence. As society becomes increasingly polarized and systems are reinforced to separate people by ideology, borders, class, race, and gender, these video poems demonstrate the unavoidable mutual reliance of existence across species and time.”

Cadence was seeded while San and Werner-Jetzke, former Frye Art Museum coworkers, were on a road trip together. San had recently become Artistic Director at NWFF, and Werner-Jetzke had made her first video poem in 2016 amid beginning to explore the small but tight-knit video poetry community. Since 2024, the festival has been fiscally sponsored by NWFF. In addition, Cadence pays all of its participating artists. 

The 2026 festival ran from April 17-19 in person, and is currently rentable online through April 30. This year’s programming also includes multiple satellite events, including an April 14 screening at the Boathouse Microcinema in Portland, and an upcoming screening at the Frye Art Museum. This year, the directors invited the UW Bothell Creative Writing & Poetics MFA program, as well as past workshop participants, onto the selection committee. The committee then narrowed it down to these 50+ works, a quarter of them made by PNW artists. This year was also only the second time that Cadence had screened a feature-length video poem, Belgium’s The Unforgettables (Les Inoubliables). 

If you’re still hoping to catch some Cadence events, there are three to include on your radar. On April 29 on Zoom, you can join Haiku You, an online generative poetry workshop facilitated by Echo Park Film Center Collective. On April 30 will be the satellite screening at the Frye entitled ceaseless, of the earth, which will feature six video poems and a discussion with participating artists afterwards. And finally, on July 2, the Seattle Art Museum will host a free satellite screening entitled imagine a mountain running.