Kate Greenstreet
Biography
Kate Greenstreet is the author of case sensitive (Ahsahta Press, 2006) and the chapbook Learning the Language (Etherdome Press, 2005). Her poems have appeared in Cannibal, Fascicle, the tiny, 26, Conduit, and other journals.
Poet's Note
I’ve described case sensitive as a narrative experiment because I imagined it was written by an invented character: a woman traveling from one coast to another, reading books in motels (Lorine Niedecker, Marie Curie, Paula Modersohn-Becker), listening to a mystery as she drives. She’s left her old life for something else. (Most of the plot is invisible.) Her poems reference what she’s reading, hearing, remembering—what’s on her mind. They were my attempt to make a book I couldn’t find, a mystery but with all the stuff I don’t need (the murder, etc.) removed.
I’ll read from case sensitive and from my new manuscript, The Last 4 Things. Since we’ll have 40 minutes, I might also read a couple of poems from Learning the Language. Currently I’m putting together a second chapbook, to be published by above/ground press coinciding with my Factory Series reading in Ottawa (first stop on a two-city tour of Ontario). Actually, currently (you know, at the moment) I’m on the train to New York City. I live in New Jersey and have a reading tonight in Brooklyn. Before I left for the train, I was out in my studio, looking at the floor. Spread across it are 20 pieces of paper, the approximate number of pages that will be in the new chapbook. For quite a while today I stood considering these pages-in-progress—sparsely printed sheets, strips of paper set onto some of them, lines in type or pencil—the latest draft. Although I mostly work in the computer, sooner or later every project winds up on the floor. I like to stand back from what I’m doing and see its shape, all at once. And walk around it. I talk to myself too, and listen—walking around the room like a dowser in a field, waiting for a pull—I think a lot of us are like this.
External Link
Greenstreet's site and blog (includes links to online poems)