Poet: Kallie Falandays

One Dream Opening Into Many by Kallie Falandays

18 March, 2016 by Dave Bonta - 2 Comments - Posted in Videopoems
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American poet Kallie Falandays’ text is superimposed onto mirrored images in a new videopoem by Australian artist Marie Craven. The soundtrack is by SK123. This approach to video imagery is one that Craven has used before, in her videos Transmission and Double Life, but One Dream Opening Into Many is in my view even more effective in its sleight-of-hand gestures toward the text:

[…] This bird,
which is also not a bird, is still dying

but at times, when my mother hobbles
past the window to get water,
the sunlight clouds it like tiny people

made of light stepping over the ocean
and it is set free.

Perhaps it’s an inversion of our usual way of thinking about poetry to have the text-on-screen in this videopoem seem more stable, less evanescent than the folding and unfolding elements of the world to which it alludes.

Sometimes the Water by Kallie Falandays

8 May, 2015 by Dave Bonta - Leave a comment - Posted in Videopoems
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Marie Craven remixed some surreal footage by Simone Mogliè and Fernanda Veron, music by Adrian Carter, and Nic S.‘s reading of a poem by Kallie Falandays at the Poetry Storehouse. (Nic has also made her own video for the poem.) I’m especially impressed by the bold choice of music. It shocked me at first, but I eventually came to feel that it provides just the right contrast for the dream-like imagery, throwing it and the voiceover into high relief. I can’t tell you how many videos I’ve chosen not to share here just because the music struck me as too stale or predictable.

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Tiny Openings Everywhere by Kallie Falandays

12 December, 2014 by Dave Bonta - Leave a comment - Posted in Videopoems
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The poet and reader here, Kallie Falandays, runs Tell Tell Poetry, a site dedicated to “making poetry fun again,” and true to form, this is a fun piece — and a bit of a departure for Swoon (Marc Neys), both in the high-energy style of the reading and the way it’s incorporated into the film. As he says in a recent blog post,

I found the poem at The Poetry Storehouse, but it was Kallie Falandays’ jagged reading that made me pick this up.

I first created a soundtrack where her reading could be the spiky centerpiece. [Listen on SoundCloud.]

The visuals for this one came fairly easy. A string of footage (found and filmed) was edited close to the rhythm and pace of the soundscape. I wanted everyday objects (almost still life) juxtaposed with images of the everyday rat race. For some reason that works well and results in an overall strange atmosphere.

I was prompted to post a second Swoon videopoem this week by the realization that I have missed quite a few good ones this year. I think that’s excusable, though, given that he’s released 70 poetry films in 2014 (so far), collaborating with poets both famous and obscure from all over the world. Considering how many of his films have appeared in festivals and exhibitions, not to mention on this and other websites, it’s fair to say that Neys is doing more to bring poetry to the screen than any filmmaker alive — all on a shoestring budget.