LitFest 2025 Excerpts: Video Poems by Paisley Rekdal

Amherst College’s tenth annual literary festival runs from Thursday, February 27 to Sunday, March 2. Among the guests is PAISLEY REKDAL, whose book West: A Translation was longlisted for the National Book Award. The Common is pleased to reprint a short selection of video poems from West here.

Join Paisley Rekdal and Brandom Som in conversation with host Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, on Sunday, March 2 at 2pm. 

Register and see the full list of LitFest events here.


Not

 

What Day

 

Heroic

 

Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction and seven books of poetry, most recently West: A Translation, which won the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was longlisted for the National Book Award. The former Utah poet laureate, she teaches at the University of Utah, where she directs the American West Center.

LitFest 2025 Excerpts: Video Poems by Paisley Rekdal

Related Posts

Cover of the Undercurrent by Sarah Sawyer

Excerpt from The Undercurrent

SARAH SAWYER
They will join the two lonely streets together, and the mice will disappear, and the tall grass, and maybe the bluebonnets too. Probably the girl will be allowed to ride her bike from here to the other side of the neighborhood. The new street will be hers, too, after all. But the field she loves will be gone.

Black and white image of a bird with a long neck

Dispatch from Marutha Nilam

SAKTHI ARULANANDHAM
With the swiftness and dexterity / of a hawk that pounces upon a chicken / and takes it by force, / the bird craves / snapping up a vast terrain / with its powerful, sharp beak / and flying away with it. // When that turns out to be impossible, / in the heat of its great big sigh, / all the rivers dry up.

Lola Milholland's "Group Living and Other Recipes" book cover with a tote bag full of various vegetables on the cover.

Excerpt from Group Living and Other Recipes

LOLA MILHOLLAND
My mom sets her bike seat high—she claims it keeps her left foot from cramping. As she pedals, her butt swishes across the saddle, side to side, so she can reach each pedal at its lowest point. I bike a little ways behind ... The Amish in their fields and buggies wave at us.