I was putting together some of my National Poetry Month material for Beatrice.com when I came across this short animated film for Beth Ann Fennelly‘s reading of extracts from “The Kudzu Chronicles,” a poem cycle from her most recent collection, Unmentionables, which appears to have come about through her fellowship with United States Artists. In any event, this is a beautiful example of how book trailers can work—all the more so because it isn’t explicitly “promotional,” but a creative work of art unto itself.
It reminds me of a conversation I had over lunch yesterday with Adam Chromy of Artists and Artisans and his author, David Dickerson, as they were awaiting the results of the auction for House of Cards, Dickerson’s memoir of an evangelical Christian upbringing, a stint as a card writer for Hallmark, and other sordid adventures. We’d gotten onto the subject of book trailers, and Chromy commented that he advises his clients not to adapt scenes from their book for their videos, because it might futz up the adaptation rights somewhere down the line. Obviously, for poets like Fennelly, this isn’t really a pressing issue. But what about fiction and nonfiction writers: What do you think about that?