HomeJane Steuerwald film/video artist
Doggerel 
2007 

"Doggerel" is a tongue-in-cheek celebration of dogs, featuring Josephine, the filmmaker's boxer. The filmmaker imagines herself as a dog and conjures up images of the many dogs she has loved and lived with. The narrator waxes poetic about the first dog on earth, as Josephine performs for the camera cavorting through the woods and reveling in her freedom.

The word doggerel comes from the root word "dog," and is applied to "bad poetry perhaps with a suggestion of puppyish clumsiness, or being only fit for dogs." Having lived with dogs her whole life, the filmmaker constructs a humorous meditation based on the word and integrates family film footage of her beloved pets.