Tom Konyves

Tom Konyves (born July 13, 1947) is a Canadian poet, video producer, educator and a pioneer in the field of videopoetry. He teaches creative visual writing at the University of the Fraser Valley.

Biography Born Könyves Tamás in Budapest, Hungary, he emigrated to Canada following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He lived in Montreal from 1957 to 1983, when he moved to Vancouver, where he resides with his wife, Marlene, sons Alexander, Gabriel and daughter, Hannah. He graduated from Concordia University in 1969, worked as a teacher, editor and journalist until 1977, when he became a poet-member of Vehicule Art Gallery, Montreal's first artist-run non-profit centre. As a poet at Vehicule Art, he collaborated with Endre Farkas, Ken Norris, Artie Gold, Stephen Morrissey, Claudia Lapp and John McAuley to form a group of 7 who became known as The Vehicule Poets. Their exploits were documented in the 1993 book, Vehicule Days: An Unorthodox History of Montréal's Vehicule Poets, edited by Ken Norris.

The Vehicule Years

Between 1977 and 1983, Konyves produced his first videopoems – Sympathies of War, Mummypoem, Yellow Light Blues, No Parking, And Once They Have Tasted Freedom, Not Before Nor After (with Linda Lee Tracy), Quebecause and Thus Spoke Tzarathustra.

In 1978, Véhicule Press published No Parking, his first book of poetry.

To promote the poetry reading series he was organizing at Vehicule Art, he approached the daily newspaper, The Montreal Star; subsequently, he was hired to write a monthly column, Poetry Corner, which he wrote until the demise of The Star, 13 months later.

He published 2 issues of a poetry magazine, Hh (invented acronym for the word "hobbyhorse", considered the dictionary definition of Dada), that included some visual poems and text collages.

In 1979, with a grant from the Montreal Arts Council, he produced the controversial public poetry project, Poetry On The Buses, Poésie en Mouvement; fifty copies of 20 poems, 10 by Anglophone Quebec poets, 10 by Francophone Quebec poets, on 11 “x 28” styrene panels, were to be posted on 1000 buses. At first, the MUCTC (Montreal Urban Community Transport Commission) agreed only to post the French poems. Following a protest by the poets, led by Louis Dudek, the commission relented and agreed to post 30% of the English poems, reflecting the Anglo population of Montreal. The project, the first of its kind in Canada, was launched on Thursday, December 13, 1979, with all major media present in a bus provided by the MUCTC in front of the old bus terminal on St. Antoine St. The consultant for the English poems was Louis Dudek; the consultant for the French poems was Claude Beausoleil.

Influenced by performance art, Konyves performed Ezra Pound's poem, In A Station Of The Metro at the Berri Metro Station, bowing with the last word, bough; other performances included Motions and Marie The Poem, performed with black electric tape on a white wall, accompanied by a recording of the day's radio programming, edited by manually changing stations.

He initiated collaborative performances, first with Ken Norris on the video See/Saw based on To Dawn, a poem written by Tom Konyves, performed by Konyves, Ken Norris, Endre Farkas, Stephen Morrissey, John McAuley and Opal L. Nations, accompanied by Robert Van Wyck on flute, Tom Ezzy on bongo drum, and 16-year-old dancer, Vivian Katz.

In 1979, he produced Art Montreal, a series of 26 half-hour TV programs for Channel 9, Cable TV. The following year, assisted by a grant from The Canada Council, he produced 6 one-hour documentary programs, Performance Art in Quebec.

Having moved from 61 to 307 St. Catherine Street, Vehicule Art presented its first Exhibition of Concrete Poetry, curated by Tom Konyves in June, 1980.

With CBC journalist Jacques Marchand, Konyves co-hosted a series of 11 French-language programs, Les Poètes Quebecois de la Langue Anglaise, broadcast on CBC once a week through November and December 1982.

On April 8, 2004, 25 years after the Maker Press publication of the anthology The Vehicule Poets, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal sponsored Cabaret Vehicule, an evening celebrating the 7 Montreal poets at Place des Arts. The theatre group Step dans Fuego performed poems by the poets, which was followed by videopoems by Tom Konyves and readings by the poets. Artie Gold, one of the original group, was too ill to attend; his poems were read by Ruth Taylor. Within 2 years, Ruth died, followed a year later, on Valentine's Day, by Artie Gold himself.

Videopoetry

In 1982, Tom Konyves coined the term 'videopoetry' in "The Insecurity of Art", In the manifesto, he claimed it was necessitated by "the underlying dichotomy (that) opposes videopoetry – I envision the measured integration of narrative, non-narrative and anti-narrative juxtapositions of text, image and sound as resulting in a poetic experience – to works which publish poems (voiced or displayed on-screen) in video format." (p. 3)

The manifesto addresses 3 aspects of videopoetry: its definition, its constraints and its categories. Videopoetry is defined as "a genre of poetry displayed on a screen, distinguished by its time-based, poetic juxtaposition of images with text and sound. In the measured blending of these three elements, it produces in the viewer the realization of a poetic experience." (p. 4)

Of its constraints, Konyves writes, "Text, displayed on-screen or voiced, is an essential element of the videopoem. A work which does not contain visible or audible text could be described as poetic, as an art film or video art, but not as a videopoem. Imagery in a videopoem – including on-screen text – does not illustrate the voiced text." (p. 4)

Based on a work's use of text, he describes 5 categories of videopoetry: Kinetic Text, Visual Text, Sound Text, Performance and Cin(e)poetry. (p. 6)

In addition, Konyves distinguishes between the various uses of text in a videopoem. "Text is typically written for the videopoem, not for print; in some cases it is found – in books or on signs – and repurposed for the videopoem. Used in a videopoem, a previously composed/published poem represents only one element of the resulting poem, the text element. The “poetry” in videopoetry is the result of the judicious juxtaposition of text with image and sound." (p.8)

A M Productions Arriving in Vancouver in 1983, Tom Konyves established A M Productions, a video production facility. From 1983 to 2003, the company produced numerous educational, industrial, corporate and music videos, including To Return: The John Walkus Story, the award-winning documentary on belonging, acceptance and loss of culture. This powerful one-hour documentary witnesses and celebrates young Kwakwaka'wakw artist John Walkus Green's journey home to the village he was forcefully adopted out of as a child. This story is also an investigation into the BC Provincial Government's Adoption policies which had tragic consequences for the children it was meant to protect. The film received a humanitarian award from the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco. Stephen Hume of the Vancouver Sun described the film as “one of the most disturbing, illuminating and deeply troubling documentaries I’ve seen in years.” In 2003, a fire destroyed the AM space and production ceased. To date, the company continues to distribute the hundreds of videos in its catalogue of educational videos in the fields of mining, remote sensing, GIS, as well as the performance art videos produced under the title of Art Montreal.