kate greenstreet
kate at kickingwind dot com
about
some poems online
scheduled readings

case sensitive
available at your local bookseller
and online at Ahsahta Press,
SPD, & amazon.com

first-book & other interviews: here

blogs:

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mappemunde
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million poems
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minor american
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morescotch
mr. tong bliss' journal
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my maserati
narcissusworks
the neglectorino project
never mind the beasts
nice guy syndrome
nikuko
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nomadics
notes from a fellow traveler
nothing to say and saying it
now then
odalisqued
open reader
overlap
paul hoover's blog
the pangrammaticon
pantaloons: tykes on poetry
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philly sound
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poetaensanfrancisco
poetry hut
poesy galore
poets' corner
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postmodern collage poetry
pseudopodium
pshares blog
pudgy pigeon enterprises
pugnacious pinoy
qbdp: the mailartworks
radish king
reader of depressing books
red slowly
reli[e]able signs
riverfall
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rocket kids
rue hazard
said like reeds or things
saintelizabethstreet
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say something wonderful
secret mint
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shikow
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so and so series
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stamped & metered flying fish
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steve's house of love
the steinach operation
swoonrocket
texfiles in bahrain
they shoot poets don't they?
third factory/notes/lipstick of noise
this is all your fault
this morning in poetry
tom raworth's notes
transsubmutation
twenty thousand thousand
ululations
understory
union square poetry series
the unquiet grave
venepoetics
virgin formica
voices in utter dark
voix off
the well-nourished moon
we've been talked down
whimsy speaks
whirligig
wild horses of fire
wood s lot
the word cage
the world a letter
yes, starlings! yes!
you are here
ysleta poeta
zach barocas
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journals/small press/reviews:

1913
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bookforum
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carve
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poetry 365
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rain taxi
realpoetik
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rhubarb is susan
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sleepingfish
sona books
spell
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audio/radio/video:

AudibleWord.Org
Factory School audio archives  
Kelly Writers House webcasts
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LINEbreak
miPOradio
my vocabulary  
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PENNsound
UbuWeb

30 NOV 06

from Louise Nevelson by Arnold B. Glimcher:

Once her friend and patron Howard Lipman showed her an early American rocking chair that he had just acquired. He asked Nevelson's opinion of the chair. "I couldn't care less about the chair," she said, "but look at its shadow."

28 NOV 06

A few paragraphs from Louise Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews 1923-1997:

How are you going to turn this around and make the stone say what you want when it is there to say "no" to everything. It forbids you. You want a hole, it refuses to make a hole. You want it smooth, it breaks under the hammer. It is the stone that is aggressive. It is a constant source of refusal. You have to win the shape...

Gaston Bachelard would explain this by saying that the thing that had to be said was so difficult and so painful that you have to hack it out of yourself and so you hack it out of the material, a very, very hard material.

I read Bachelard when I was over seventy-five. If I had read Bachelard before, I would have been a different person, I would not have been divided inside since I would have taken the materials, with their different characters, and I would have been more friendly towards them. In the past, every time somebody asked me about materials, I used to answer, "What interests me is what I want to say and I will battle with any material to express accurately what I want to say." But the medium is always a matter of makeshift solutions. That is, you try everything, you use every material around, and usually they repulse you. Finally, you get one that will work for you. And it is usually the softer ones--lead, plaster, malleable things. That is to say that you start with the harder thing and life teaches you that you had better buckle down, be contented with softer things, softer ways.

--Louise Bourgeois

26 NOV 06

14 sentences:

Do we take them all with us--the people we've been? In earlier days, we'd write down who was there and what we ate. To answer the question, where we come from. In a better world we'd all be doing more. I knew they laughed to convey I had not been at fault. It was meant as a kindness.

--I'm over it.
--I'm not.

Ten brothers sat for a portrait. If you look at people from a certain angle, they never let you down. Even one's own unglamorous past exists on the surface, unhoped for. I'm considering what would make a good next step.

As for the deep background, I've changed, but--also the world. The world has opened up, to let me in.

24 NOV 06

How has your first book changed your life?

41.  Brigitte Byrd

How did it happen that your manuscript was picked up by Ahsahta Press?

I had entered the 2004 Sawtooth Poetry Contest and Fence above the Sea was a finalist. Janet Holmes, the editor of Ahsahta Press, liked my manuscript and she called to tell me that she wanted to publish it. I was absolutely thrilled. Janet is a great person to work with, and her presence in the press made my first book experience absolutely fantastic.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your finished book for the first time?

I had been wondering how I would react to this book, my book. I am lucky to be published by Ahsahta Press because they make beautiful books, so I was not disappointed when I saw the book. So many of my friends are unhappy with the way their books end up looking. When I first opened the book and saw my words there, it was just a magic moment. This is when it really sank. I had written a book, and it was there, in my hands, and I ran in my daughter's room to show her "the book."

Were you involved in designing the cover?

Yes, actually, I was. Janet had asked me if I wanted the press to come up with a design for the cover or if I had something in mind, and I really appreciated the option since I actually had a few ideas regarding the cover. My first thought was to use Dali's painting La Navire (1942-43). I love this work. This said, Janet pointed out a few problematic things with this painting for a book cover, and I totally trusted her opinion. Janet had assured me that she would use La Navire if I did not want any other cover.

I had another painting in mind, Gustav Klimt's Mada Primavesi (1912), and both of us agreed on this work for the cover. My daughter thought this choice was "freaky" because she looks so much like the young girl in the painting. And she is right. At first, many of our friends asked me if the cover of the book was a painting of Camille. It is very funny how suddenly I thought of the child as a fence above the sea....

 
Before your book came out, did you imagine your life would change because of it?

Yes, I knew certain aspects of my life would change because of my book.

How has your life been different since?

Well, we all know that publishing a book with a good press helps one's career, if the author has chosen to pursue an academic path. I have a PhD in Creative Writing, so it is obvious that I have chosen this path. I know that having a book with Ahsahta Press helped me getting my current position. I am an Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing, and feel quite lucky to hold a position in my field because many of my friends are still adjuncts and still on the job market. Indeed, I am aware of the conflict between the so called academic poets and non-academic poets. To me, this is not a real conflict. I have experienced the world as much as I could earlier on. I have not gone from school to university to a job in academia.

And besides, I have always written what I want to write. I am considered an experimental poet and that's fine because I don't see why I would try to reproduce what has been done very well before me. On the contrary, I really believe in pushing my literary influences toward new directions. That's why I prefer the term "innovative" to the term "experimental," if we must be categorized.

If I were not in academia, I don't know if I could survive corporate America, now that I live here. I need to be involved with an intellectually stimulating community. Academia provides this for me, along with a way to support the child, the cats, the dog, and myself. So basically, publishing my first book changed my life in the sense that not only it made me feel good about my work by validating it, but also it helped my academic career. Yes, a book did all that.

Were there things you thought would happen that didn't? Surprises?

Actually, I had no surprise in that regard. All the surprises were rather good things that happened that I did not expect.

What have you been doing to promote the book, and what are those experiences like for you?

I started to contact people to give readings and thus promote the book. Some of these people I knew, some I did not know. I found out that most people were very nice and willing to help me promote the book. About readings, I just love performing, so that's always a great experience when an audience is moved by my words. And I have this French accent, which sometimes worries me, but so far, it has not been a problem. I just have to remember to read a bit slower than most people, maybe.
 
What advice do you wish someone had given you before your book came out? What was the best advice you got?

I have no idea. All I know is that Janet Holmes guided me through the entire experience, and things fell in place. It was very important for me because I have anxiety issues. I suppose then that establishing a good relationship with your editor and trusting him/her are essential since it is after all your first book.
 
What influence has the book's publication had on your subsequent writing (or other artistic pursuits)?

This is a very good question because my first book's publication had a very strange effect on my writing. Fence above the Sea is a collection of prose poems, and somehow, I felt that I had to do something different after this book.

I wrote a second manuscript which is a collection of poems investigating the idea of schism--i.e. dealing with a split in love, identity, culture, landscape. This collection is now circulating. It is a schism with the prose poem as well since it is framed by two crowns of sonnets written in Alexandrines while the rest of the collection vacillates between prose poems and poems written in free verse.

But now that I am working on a third collection which investigates the texture of consciousness and questions the solidity of fixed identity, I have returned to the prose poem because I have realized that it fits better my "poetic" voice. These new prose poems have moved into a new direction. The collection is turning into this hybrid form which is a sort of poetry/fiction work. So far, that's all I can say since I am still working on it.

How do you feel about the critical response and has it had any effect on your writing?

The critical response to my first book has been very positive, so that's great.
 
Do you want your life to change?

My life changes all the time.
 
Is there something you're doing now that you think will bring about a change that you seek?

Well, I would like to have more time to write, so yes, I am working toward this goal.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Absolutely. I think that words are very powerful and that poetry enriches the mind by opening it to new voices. Once they are in, they stay. That to me is a way to create change in the world because the broader the minds, the better and more tolerant the people.

:

2 poems from Fence Above The Sea by Brigitte Byrd:

The Door Was Open

    The father is buried in the ground under sand and gravel. There is a tradition and it is cold. That there is a strange fragrance does not come from the earth and we do not and animals do not. A star falls into a body and it hangs in a frame that pulses like numbers burrowed under skin folds. Is the movement from man to God is it not the opposite like faith and where does it go. There is always an empty place and not often a soundwave. A soul maybe if she is not. Present and absent at the same time and always alone. She covers her fear she enters her body and looks for the father and he is there and he always was.

Loud Darkness

    Why writing when there is no more time to read. She listens to an escape artist who left his name in a suitcase watching the sun come down on his forlorn luck. Is alienation a defiant freedom. Dans mon pays, on ne questionne pas un homme ému. She watches the daughter canter in the riding ring and he is not going back to this broken heart. It is a terrible fate when a young man cannot leave his country and all there is left is a cry when his only hope vanishes with a plane into the blue clouds. When all curiosity is gone he knows the meaning of horror. A vicious sun above the tin roof swallows the shadows of men who walk by her door. She knows what happens to these displaced bodies when she speaks her native language with a foreign accent. This is a waltz and they shall not meet again.

. . .

read more first-book interviews

. . .

22 NOV 06

Pre-holiday conversation

she: "god, we have got to clean up! If we'd just put the effort in now... Imagine--if we came home from Thanksgiving and the house was clean."

he: "Imagine if we came home from Thanksgiving and I was an internationally famous runway model."

20 NOV 06

Rebecca Loudon's new book, Radish King, has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

(Below, a photo of my copy, showing a little wear at the spine.)

A poem from Radish King by Rebecca Loudon:

Topgallant

All the streets are named for water.
She's ready to go it alone, more than ready
having tired of and tidied her family,
having sewed her daughter, her son, into waterproof coats, having secured their passage on the bullet train.

There is no difference between her shoulder
and the boat's cedar flanks.
She creates a small ceremony with fire.
She has stopped sleeping
having wrapped biscuits and lemons in wax paper,
having named a mouse Bowsprit,
having sent the mouse ahead to scout.

A longwinded wasp noses at the pit
of her left arm but she is too intent
on her task to notice, hurry, hurry
having lifted the hair from her neck,
having knotted the hair in a shoelace,
having tied the clove hitch.

She throws her shoes over the prow,
clutches the sides of the boat
as in teeth,
as in fist.

:

ps: Rebecca's first book, Tarantella, is pretty hot too.

18 NOV 06

28 sentences:

It's possible they're not seeing people change that much. "Luckily Christopher is not and Bobby is not, so she's hoping that Donny is not." They look like the heads of U.N. interpreters. The way time passes in the eyes. People have all kinds of reasons for being nice. Wearing my sister's shoes. First impression? Something is already settled. "Stop by the shop before you leave town." Then he walked down the platform, smiling, his two tiny daughters dancing around him. He'll be there tomorrow, on a Sunday. Fine art? I like the little snowman, why not. Mostly I just think of the days.

I hate to fall, do you? It makes me angry. Walking down a hallway, all the doors open and the people in the rooms inviting me to join them. But when I see that lit door at the end of the hall and head toward it, then I'm happy. Just shy of that lit door, a quiet door marked "stairs" and I turn to it. Soon I'm in another hall and it is more or less the same. Guided to "stairs" again and again--is this living? Every man woman and child in America wants to put a gun to someone's head. We know that. We're the audience.

--What's on your mind?
--Things I wish I hadn't said.

--How would you characterize your ambition?
--It didn't break the skin.

. . .

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