While many pop songwriters vanish into obscurity or graduate to judging TV karaoke shows, few go on to spend ten years in a Zen Buddhist Centre. This was the path, however, chosen by New Zealand writer, poet and film maker Richard Von Sturmer. Now, after a 17-year hiatus, he returns to film making with Tanka Films, an exhibition of tanka poetry and film making at the Film Archive. A highlight of the exhibition is a live performance on Friday 25 May. While many pop songwriters vanish into obscurity or graduate to judging TV karaoke shows, few go on to spend ten years in a Zen Buddhist Centre. This was the path, however, chosen by New Zealand writer, poet and film maker Richard Von Sturmer. Now, after a 17-year hiatus, he returns to film making with Tanka Films, an exhibition of tanka poetry and film making at the Film Archive. A highlight of the exhibition is a live performance on Friday 25 May.Credited with writing the lyrics for Blam Blam Blam's "There is No Depression in New Zealand", Von Sturmer was also half of the 1980s punk/performance duo Humanimals, and made several experimental short films.

In 1993, he opted for a change of pace and moved to the Rochester Zen Centre, a Buddhist community in upstate New York.

During his time at Rochester, Von Sturmer's work appeared regularly in literary journals and anthologies, and he edited the international publication Zen Bow. While defining and concentrating on poetry form he continued his love and contemplation of tanka poetry.

Tanka Films includes 26 'films', short visual and text interpretations of tanka - the Japanese verse form of five lines.

"Most tanka contain two poetic images. The first is taken from nature; the second, which may proceed, follow, or be woven into the first, is a kind of meditative complement to the nature image. The tanka poet may be likened to a person holding two mirrors in his hand, one reflecting a scene from nature, the other reflecting himself as he holds the first mirror. The tanka thus provides a look at nature, but it regards the observer of nature as well."

Von Sturmer's use of digital technology to make Tanka Films was a slow process but the benefits of the medium eventually won him over: "I was suspicious of digital technology for quite a while - I like projected light. (But) the technology has much improved."

Over the two years of filming, a natural thematic development occurred.

"I started with everyday images from my home and neighbourhood, and then extended the terrain to include a wide range of subject matter. Ecological concerns began to appear, and the cycle ends with a global perspective in the final tanka film."

Von Sturmer has published three books: We Xerox Your Zebras (Modern House, 1988), A Network of Dissolving Threads (Auckland University Press, 1991), and Suchness: Zen Poetry and Prose (HeadworX, 2005).

His partner and collaborator Amala Wrightson is a well-recognised Buddhist leader and teacher in New Zealand. She is the Buddhist representative at an upcoming Interfaith Conference in Waitangi on May 28. During a visit to the United States in the summer of 2004, she was given formal permission to teach by Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede.

What: Tanka Films
When: Thursday 17 May - Saturday 2 June 2007
Where: New Zealand Film Archive mediagallery, cnr Taranaki and Ghuznee Streets, Wellington.

What: Dreaming with Words and Images - an evening of performance, poetry and film by the artist and Humanimals
When: Friday 25 May, 6pm (70 minutes duration)
Entry by koha.