New exhibit showcases 'video poems' — tiny films that invite more people into poetry

Paola Capó-García began her term as San Diego's third poet laureate in early 2025. Now, she's sharing a major project she's worked on with San Diego and Tijuana poets: "Apertura," an exhibition of video poetry.

"It is an opening. It's an invitation to people to experience poetry in a different way, and to open themselves up more to the possibilities of poetry," Capó-García said.

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A "video poem" is sort of like an artsy, mini documentary with narrated text.  

One piece featured in the exhibit is Sarita Tánori's "Bakersfield & Heaven."

The video layers mesmerizing, looping images of crops, small plastic toy cows and old photos over a poem.

During intensive workshops this past summer, Capó-García and artist Victor De La Fuente helped poets bring their work to the screen, often adding new layers of meaning.

Sarita Tánori

The featured artists and poets are DG Cunanan, Zeinabu irene Davis and Marc Arthur Chery, Cassandra Dhillon, Elyse Farwell, Marinthia Gutiérrez Velazco, Susan Hill, Lev Kalman, Dharma-Julia Leon Valdez, Jason Magabo Perez, Savannah Meraz, Alison O’Daniel, Teem Osborn, Sarita Tánori and Michael Trigilio.

Six of the artists were invited to interpret published poems through video. Lev Kalman, for example, created a video based on an excerpt from William Carlos Williams' 1923 book-length work, "Spring and All."

Kalman's interpretation features a robotic vacuum cleaner dancing across the screen.

The idea of bringing video poetics into her laureateship was first inspired by classroom projects during her years teaching at High Tech High, based on the moving portraits of photographer Robert Wilson.

Capó-García also drew inspiration from an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in her native Puerto Rico, particularly a site-specific video poetry work called "Por el Viento y La Corriente // Becoming Wind and Current" by La Vaughn Belle.

"She centers herself, her body, in floating water in an area called Loíza in Puerto Rico. And she's talking about migration, and she's also talking about the legacy of slavery in the Caribbean and sort of migrating bodies from one area to another, and the ways in which enslaved people would escape captivity through that by using water and the currents to get to different islands," Capó-García said. "I was so moved by that piece, the way she used her body, her voiceover with the poem, which is so gorgeous … and I said 'Oh, that's what we're gonna do.'"

Mike Damron, Michael Spaulding

Capó-García is passionate about convincing poetry skeptics to give it another chance.

"And it's not to say that I have the answer for everyone loving poetry, but that I genuinely trust in poetry's ability to bring in any human being. Right? That there is a poem out there for anyone. There is a word or a phrase that can hook anyone out there," she said. "And that might come from maybe being taught poetry in a particular way when they were younger, in a way that didn't connect with them, maybe only having read poets who they cannot connect with, they can't relate to."

Dharma-Julia Leon Valdez

It's what she hopes this exhibition achieves with its collection of tiny films.

"Because this is a way to also get people interested in poetry who maybe normally wouldn't be interested in poetry — through the visuals, through that storytelling — and bringing something on the page to life that way," Capó-García said.