Poet: Kate Greenstreet

This is a traveling song by Kate Greenstreet

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An author-made videopoem by Kate Greenstreet. As always, she was assisted by Max Greenstreet, listed in the credits as “right hand”. The text is poem #7 in her latest book from Ahsahta Press, The End of Something (where the poems rather than the pages are numbered), and the soundtrack incorporates the 7th track in Greenstreet’s EP drawn from the book, birds in the house. The video first appeared in Typo 28.

The End of Something is, by the way, a beautifully designed book which I read last month with great enjoyment, savoring the openness of the poems, full of imaginative leaps and half-unspoken truths that induce a kind of contemplative mood. This quality makes them ideal for multimedia adaptation, I think. Watch all four of the videopoems from the book, and download the EP, on the book’s website.

Translations (from The End of Something) by Kate Greenstreet

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A fascinating experiment in bilingual videopoetry from the always inventive Kate Greenstreet. Here’s the description on Vimeo, with italics and links added:

Based on early versions of poems from The End of Something translated into French by Alexander Dickow for the anthology Ligatures: Poets of France and America (Catala Press, 2017). Featuring the voice of Virginia Konchan speaking the French lines and a short video clip of Amaranth Borsuk (“the girls are gone”). This video first appeared in The Continental Review (thecontinentalreview.com).

It’s good to see The Continental Review, one of the oldest online poetry video journals, still putting out issues. Browse their latest material here. And be sure to visit Kate Greenstreet’s webpage for The End of Something to download a free music EP and watch three more videopoems based on texts in the forthcoming book. Ahsahta Press’s description begins:

In curating cartography together with lyric, poly-vocality with loneliness, and even the unspeakable with common speech, poet and artist Kate Greenstreet has created a surprising hybrid with The End of Something. The intimacy in Greenstreet’s partial narratives and slow admissions contrasts with much of what we consume as Americans, which is fleeting and feigns being “factual.”

Five Minutes by Kate Greenstreet

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Poet-filmmaker Kate Greenstreet notes:

Five Minutes originally appeared in Pastelegram (pastelegram.org/e/108) as five one-minute movies.

But they clearly work best as a single film.

Act by Kate Greenstreet

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“This videopoem is based on the chapter “Act” from my book Young Tambling,” says Kate Greenstreet in the Vimeo description. Young Tambling is “experimental memoir” that includes “poetry, prose, art”; read excerpts on Greenstreet’s website. Here’s the Ahsahta Press catalog description:

Young Tambling resonates with Greenstreet’s relentless exploration of what it means to be human, to need to feel, to make art. Memory, in this book of “experimental memoir,” works something like the narrative tactics of a traditional ballad— “alternate leaping and lingering,” in one formulation. Greenstreet does not dabble in teleological platitudes: the lives crosscutting these poems are not singular but plural and sublime, full of sacrifice and empathy for the lost. In Young Tambling, a life’s meaning is born of its poet’s song, and a memory cannot reveal its truth until it finds its ballad.

locating faraway objects by Kate Greenstreet

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This was made for The Volta: Medium, a weekly video column that often features poetry. Greenstreet also posted the text to her website.

goodbye. by Kate Greenstreet

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This originally appeared in the online journal Trickhouse, which also printed a transcript.

For more of Kate’s work, visit her website, kickingwind.com.

Cloth by Kate Greenstreet

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This video essay on poetics by Kate Greenstreet is itself very poetic in its use of metaphors, intuitive leaps and interesting visual juxtapositions. It features Carrie Lincourt, and credits Max Greenstreet for “second camera and second opinion.” “Cloth” was produced for Evening Will Come: A Monthly Journal of Poetics (Issue 8: August 2011).

the giant by Kate Greenstreet

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Poet and filmmaker Kate Greenstreet’s most recent book of poems, The Last 4 Things (Ahsahta Press, 2009) included a DVD with two films based on the book’s contents. This is an excerpt from one of them. For more about the book and DVD, including links to reviews and interviews, see her website. Here’s her bio.

The Ballad Form by Kate Greenstreet

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Another great addition to the “author-made video poems” category, originally published in the online journal Dewclaw (along with the text). Kate Greenstreet‘s most recent book of poems, The Last 4 Things from Ahsahta Press, included a DVD with a half-hour of videopoetry.

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Moving Poems is going on hiatus until the third week of May while its proprietor is off traveling. Why not take the opportunity to catch up and view all the videos in the archive?