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    • The dreaming machine n 10
    • The dreaming machine n 9
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    • The dreaming machine n 7
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  • Poetry
    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    The delicate hour of the birds among the branches – Poems by Melih Cevdet Anday (trans. Neil P. Doherty)

    Afro Women Poetry- SUDAN: Reem Yasir, Rajaa Bushara, Fatma Latif

    Afro Women Poetry- SUDAN: Reem Yasir, Rajaa Bushara, Fatma Latif

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    A flock of cardinals melted in the scarlet sky: Poems by Daryna Gladun

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    The wolf hour and other poems by Ella Yevtushenko

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Testing the worth of poetic bombshells – Four poems by Abdul Karim Al-Ahmad

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

  • Fiction
    Chapter ten, from”Come What May” by Ahmed Masoud

    Chapter ten, from”Come What May” by Ahmed Masoud

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    The Naked Shell of Aloneness – Kazi Rafi

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    The Shadow of a Shadow – Nandini Sahu

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Football is Life – Mojaffor Hossein

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Origin – 1. The House, at night, by Predrag Finci

    HOT MANGO CHUTNEY SAUCE – Farah Ahamed (from Period Matters)

    HOT MANGO CHUTNEY SAUCE – Farah Ahamed (from Period Matters)

    Take Note of the Sun Shining Within Twilight – Four Poems by Natalia Beltchenko

    BOW / BHUK – Parimal Bhattacharya

  • Non Fiction
    My Lover, My Body – Gonca Özmen, trans. by Neil P. Doherty

    My Lover, My Body – Gonca Özmen, trans. by Neil P. Doherty

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    A tribute to Carla Macoggi – An invitation to reading her novels, by Jessy Simonini

    A tribute to Carla Macoggi – An invitation to reading her novels, by Jessy Simonini

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    What Gets Read: How the Beats Caught on in Italy – Clark Bouwman

    What Gets Read: How the Beats Caught on in Italy – Clark Bouwman

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Of romantic love and its perils: The lyrics of the enigmatic Barbara Strozzi – Luciana Messina

  • Interviews & reviews
    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Paradoxes of misfits and wanderers: Modhura Bandyopadhyay reviews Stalks of Lotus

    Beauty and Defiance: Ukrainian contemporary paintings in Padua- Show organizer Liudmila Vladova Olenovych in conversation with Camilla Boemio

    Beauty and Defiance: Ukrainian contemporary paintings in Padua- Show organizer Liudmila Vladova Olenovych in conversation with Camilla Boemio

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    A preview of Greek poet Tsabika Hatzinikola’s second collection “Without Presence, Dreams Do Not Emerge”, by Georg Schaaf

    Ascension: A conversation with Matthew Smith

    Ascension: A conversation with Matthew Smith

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Of Concentric Storytelling, Footballs and the Shifting World

    Lexically Sugared Circuits of R/elation: A Conversation with Adeena Karasick

    Lexically Sugared Circuits of R/elation: A Conversation with Adeena Karasick

  • Out of bounds
    • All
    • Fiction
    • Intersections
    • Interviews and reviews
    • Non fiction
    • Poetry
    Camilla Boemio interviews Malaysian artist Kim Ng

    Poetic bridges and conversations: Icelandic, Kiswahili and English through three poems by Hlín Leifsdóttir

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Human Bestiary Series – Five Poems by Pina Piccolo

    Bear encounters in Italy:  Jj4, anthropomorphized nature and the dialectics of generations – Post by Maurizio Vitale (a.k.a. Jack Daniel)

    Bear encounters in Italy: Jj4, anthropomorphized nature and the dialectics of generations – Post by Maurizio Vitale (a.k.a. Jack Daniel)

    Chapter four from “La cena- Avanzi dell’ex Jugoslavia”, by Božidar Stanišić

    Chapter four from “La cena- Avanzi dell’ex Jugoslavia”, by Božidar Stanišić

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    A song of peace and other poems by Julio Monteiro Martins

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    I am the storm rattling iron door handles (Part I)- Poems by Michael D. Amitin

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Spirited away by the northern winds (Part I) – Poems by Marcello Tagliente

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Like a geological specimen in a darkened room: Two poems by Neil Davidson

  • News
    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5:  Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5: Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    IL BIANCO E IL NERO – LE PAROLE PER DIRLO, Conference Milan Sept. 7

    IL BIANCO E IL NERO – LE PAROLE PER DIRLO, Conference Milan Sept. 7

    OPEN POEM TO THE CURATORS OF THE 58th VENICE BIENNALE  FROM THE GHOSTS OF THAT RELIC YOU SHOULD NOT DARE CALL “OUR BOAT” (Pina Piccolo)

    OPEN POEM TO THE CURATORS OF THE 58th VENICE BIENNALE FROM THE GHOSTS OF THAT RELIC YOU SHOULD NOT DARE CALL “OUR BOAT” (Pina Piccolo)

  • Home
  • Poetry
    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    The delicate hour of the birds among the branches – Poems by Melih Cevdet Anday (trans. Neil P. Doherty)

    Afro Women Poetry- SUDAN: Reem Yasir, Rajaa Bushara, Fatma Latif

    Afro Women Poetry- SUDAN: Reem Yasir, Rajaa Bushara, Fatma Latif

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    A flock of cardinals melted in the scarlet sky: Poems by Daryna Gladun

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    The wolf hour and other poems by Ella Yevtushenko

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Testing the worth of poetic bombshells – Four poems by Abdul Karim Al-Ahmad

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

  • Fiction
    Chapter ten, from”Come What May” by Ahmed Masoud

    Chapter ten, from”Come What May” by Ahmed Masoud

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    The Naked Shell of Aloneness – Kazi Rafi

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    The Shadow of a Shadow – Nandini Sahu

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Football is Life – Mojaffor Hossein

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Origin – 1. The House, at night, by Predrag Finci

    HOT MANGO CHUTNEY SAUCE – Farah Ahamed (from Period Matters)

    HOT MANGO CHUTNEY SAUCE – Farah Ahamed (from Period Matters)

    Take Note of the Sun Shining Within Twilight – Four Poems by Natalia Beltchenko

    BOW / BHUK – Parimal Bhattacharya

  • Non Fiction
    My Lover, My Body – Gonca Özmen, trans. by Neil P. Doherty

    My Lover, My Body – Gonca Özmen, trans. by Neil P. Doherty

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    A tribute to Carla Macoggi – An invitation to reading her novels, by Jessy Simonini

    A tribute to Carla Macoggi – An invitation to reading her novels, by Jessy Simonini

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    What Gets Read: How the Beats Caught on in Italy – Clark Bouwman

    What Gets Read: How the Beats Caught on in Italy – Clark Bouwman

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Of romantic love and its perils: The lyrics of the enigmatic Barbara Strozzi – Luciana Messina

  • Interviews & reviews
    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Paradoxes of misfits and wanderers: Modhura Bandyopadhyay reviews Stalks of Lotus

    Beauty and Defiance: Ukrainian contemporary paintings in Padua- Show organizer Liudmila Vladova Olenovych in conversation with Camilla Boemio

    Beauty and Defiance: Ukrainian contemporary paintings in Padua- Show organizer Liudmila Vladova Olenovych in conversation with Camilla Boemio

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    A preview of Greek poet Tsabika Hatzinikola’s second collection “Without Presence, Dreams Do Not Emerge”, by Georg Schaaf

    Ascension: A conversation with Matthew Smith

    Ascension: A conversation with Matthew Smith

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Of Concentric Storytelling, Footballs and the Shifting World

    Lexically Sugared Circuits of R/elation: A Conversation with Adeena Karasick

    Lexically Sugared Circuits of R/elation: A Conversation with Adeena Karasick

  • Out of bounds
    • All
    • Fiction
    • Intersections
    • Interviews and reviews
    • Non fiction
    • Poetry
    Camilla Boemio interviews Malaysian artist Kim Ng

    Poetic bridges and conversations: Icelandic, Kiswahili and English through three poems by Hlín Leifsdóttir

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Human Bestiary Series – Five Poems by Pina Piccolo

    Bear encounters in Italy:  Jj4, anthropomorphized nature and the dialectics of generations – Post by Maurizio Vitale (a.k.a. Jack Daniel)

    Bear encounters in Italy: Jj4, anthropomorphized nature and the dialectics of generations – Post by Maurizio Vitale (a.k.a. Jack Daniel)

    Chapter four from “La cena- Avanzi dell’ex Jugoslavia”, by Božidar Stanišić

    Chapter four from “La cena- Avanzi dell’ex Jugoslavia”, by Božidar Stanišić

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    A song of peace and other poems by Julio Monteiro Martins

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    I am the storm rattling iron door handles (Part I)- Poems by Michael D. Amitin

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Spirited away by the northern winds (Part I) – Poems by Marcello Tagliente

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Like a geological specimen in a darkened room: Two poems by Neil Davidson

  • News
    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5:  Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5: Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    IL BIANCO E IL NERO – LE PAROLE PER DIRLO, Conference Milan Sept. 7

    IL BIANCO E IL NERO – LE PAROLE PER DIRLO, Conference Milan Sept. 7

    OPEN POEM TO THE CURATORS OF THE 58th VENICE BIENNALE  FROM THE GHOSTS OF THAT RELIC YOU SHOULD NOT DARE CALL “OUR BOAT” (Pina Piccolo)

    OPEN POEM TO THE CURATORS OF THE 58th VENICE BIENNALE FROM THE GHOSTS OF THAT RELIC YOU SHOULD NOT DARE CALL “OUR BOAT” (Pina Piccolo)

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Home Interviews and reviews

INTERVIEW WITH ADEENA KARASICK by Aritra Sanyal, Kolkata, India 2017

December 4, 2017
in Interviews and reviews, The dreaming machine n 1
INTERVIEW WITH ADEENA KARASICK by Aritra Sanyal, Kolkata, India 2017
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A version of this interview has been translated into Bengali and will appear in Kabisammelan, 2018. 

 

 You are a teacher, a researcher, an activist, a media person. We will like to know how the different social identities contribute to the formation of your identity as a poet.

As a poet, prof, essayist, performer, art-maker, activist, i’m sliding between ever-shifting identities; but at bottom, i’m bound to a focus on language and exploring ways that it powerfully re-shapes how we see, think, feel and behave. Each “identity” informs the other in increasingly valuable ways. As a media artist, i am able to foreground aspects of the physicality, materiality of language in a very immediate and visceral way; urges me to think about aspects of high and low culture and how they intersect, which then inevitably affects the rhythms and textures of all that i write.

When i first discovered Critical Theory, not only did it give me a language to speak about what I was doing, (ie intertextual references, Grammatologic foci, traces, erasures, resistance…), and that very specific language bled into the “poems”; creating a kind of “inter-genreous” self-reflexive economy where parameters were continually shifting. Language, genre and identity were foregrounded not as something fixed and identifiable but more as an intertextual matrix of palimpsestic shadings and possibilities.

Further, each of the 8 books contains not only “poetry but visual infusions, full color essay collages. Its very composition stretches the limits of a “poem” and asks one to consider what a poem can be. Recently I’ve been creating politically ironic videopoems and pechakuchas. These 6.40 min. audio / visual “poems” merge poetic and theoretic discourse with cinematic elements. The temporal limitations urge me to write in increasingly different ways – working (as Roman Jakobson might say, simultaneously syntagmatically and diachronically). Also increasingly performing for ever-widening audiences — both in terms of internationality but also in terms of genre (ie not just Literary or Acadmic but those interested in media theory and pop culture), affects not only what is being written but in what ways. Thus, all of these “identities”, swirl, bleed into and speak to each other — impacting both the form and content of the “poetry”, asking me to re-view identity as a heteroglossic enunciative process which is being endlessly re-formed.

 

When did you take up writing seriously, at what age? How did it start?

I started writing very early. I always found that writing was very hermeneutic. Though I didn’t read “poetry” or even call what I was doing “poetry” there was a very real feeling that to write it down was very healing, somehow made it real. From an early age I was particularly excited by the shapes of the letters; how they looked on a page, how they were encircled by white space, their arcs, lines, mounds, crevices; how each letter was like a body nestled against another — almost alive and breathing on the page. It wasn’t until I was in university did I go to my very first “reading. Hearing poetry read aloud was life-changing. I started to meet poets, published a magazine with some friends in our basement on an off-set press; began to do readings, organized events; hitchiked great distances to meet poets. I studied with everyone i could — from Allen Ginsberg to Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Jerome Rothenberg, Charles Bernstein. bill bissett, bp Nichol, Warren Tallman (the co-editor of the veritable poetry “bible” of the 70’s – The New American Poetry and Poetics Anthology and the founder of the TISH moment) — all highly instrumental in my formation as a poet. And I got to experience it all up close and personal — so many different trends, trajectories of thinking, political and aesthetic concerns, ways of expression. And I think this range: from the Beats to Black Mountain, San Francisco Renaissance, Canadian Sound and Concrete poets, and later the American L=A=N=G=A=G=E Poets, i learned there were endless possibilities to paint and compose with words.

 

Who do you think had major influences on you?

One doesn’t know how or what is going to change your world. And sometimes you don’t realize it until years later. But over the years not only have those poets been of crucial significance to my poetic psyche but also Louis Zukofsky, Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Gertrude Stein; on the theoretic side of things, Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Edmond Jabès, Baudrillard, Barthes and Borges — as well as Kabbalistic scholars Gershom Scholem, Elliot Wolfson and 13th C. Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia – each of them focus on an ecstatic sense of language; question normative models of communication and meaning production.

 

You are a renowned performer. Elocutionists in Bengal have always been very popular among general audience. There are several schools where students take formal trainings of recitations. We are eager to know about the lineage of Performance poetry in America. Who, as a performer, influenced you? How popular is the genre there?

 The politics of sounds and performance poetry in America has had a bit of a convoluted past. Like everything, it goes in cycles, waves, trends. When I was first starting out in the 80’s, performance poetry was not en vogue. I grew up in Canada and at that time, there was a political Marxist aesthetic that devalued decried any kind of performance. They saw it as foregrounding a sense of self – and there was a feeling that the words should all be non-hierarchical. Nothing should be fetishized, and certainly not the reader. This was very difficult and confusing to me – especially with my “Jewy” embodied style of being-in-the-world. However, in the 60’s and 70’s, there was a robust tradition of performance – Allen Ginsberg and his harmonium accompanied by all sorts of jazz musicians and rock stars, Jerome Rothenberg chanting with the Klezmatics, the 4 Horseman, Owen sound, Fluxus; bill bissett chanting with his rattle channeling voices from the netherworlds; or Paul Dutton throat singing. All of these had huge impact on me growing up. Also the sound recordings of Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball. Then in the late 80’s performance poetry had a major resurgence with SLAM – a populist, competitive genre, born out of the Hip Hop zeitgeist – offering 3 min political rhythmic rants – originally written for the stage vs the page. This still is an increasingly popular genre and have found audiences worldwide.

What i find most interesting these days are poets who mix genres – Nicole Peyrafitte who draws on French chanson and Dada cabaret, Julie Patton who deconstructs the very notion of performance by sometimes sliding on the floor and using improvisational found and sound techniques or even destabilizing the audience by stuffing her mouth with fragments of text, literally eating her words while she is delivering her piece; or Jake Marmer, performing Talmudic-inspired, hebrew-inflected rants with jazz accompaniment, and Tracey Morris who came out of the SLAM scene but now mixes that up with a African American, identity-focused, theoretic edge.

 

Is the popularity of poetry as a genre waning?- As a global citizen, and a person who stays in America, how will you respond to the question? Ignoring it is not an option (smile)

Poetry is growing stronger and more vigilant and widespread – as a genre it is expanding and becoming more and more part of public consciousness. And in this dire political climate, a needed mode of expression.

 

You are a Canadian-American poet with Russian descent. Trans-nationality can’t be a mere theoretical term in your life. How, according to you, is your poetry affected or enriched by the heritage? How do you connect with the heritage of exile literature?

So much of my focus centers around issues of nomadicism, exile, displacement, whether in overt ways or more formally, embracing a sense of de-colonized hybrditiy, syncreticity. Through puns – highlighting a sense of multiplicity and heterogeneity or multiple discourses juxtaposed against each other, there’s a sense of differrance (wandering) through meaning, being — where language is continually de-centered, displaced, ex-static (outside of stasis) and celebrates an “excluded middle” and how meaning erupts in the ever-widening margins. Or in the words of bp Nichol “murmers merge at the margins of meaning”.

Last August (2017) when i read for Jadavpur University as part of Forum on Identity, Border and Nation, in Prayukti Bhawan, i was thinking how now our borders are demarcated not just in terms of geography and gender and subjectivity, race and class but with our infinitely shifting screen of urban suburbia; our “reality” is increasingly constructed (and negotiated) from within our webbed networks —

Thus, the whole concept of nation must be re-thought because our locus, a colloquy of illocatable locution colloquated through screens, mirrors, phones, walls, re-creating its own borders, orders, limits, laws, flaws).

 

All twittering and blogoscopic

 

NATION can no longer be seen as a thing-in-itself but

an iter[]ation; an emaNation

a dissemiNation forging (4G’ing itself), through 144 characters

patterns; structures, codes, logics, idioms

through an emerge’Nation, a merger’Nation –

an enjambiNation; germinating the interval of all that is uncharted.

 

Or rethought in musical terms,

nation must be seen as a jammiNation

of riffs, drifts, grifts, like in Jazz — a calculus of constructs foundations;

an immersioNation of links, subversions excursions perversions.

 

And through all that is twittered and youtubed foursquared and flickred

my nation

an intra-galactic lexical plexus

of screening media

 

a misc-en-sceney panacea

cannibalizing itself through its own lateral feed nodes,

all mythinformed and tweety

like a chatroulette stalker

sucking on its own

saucy posturing of

geographies of content

My nation, an imagiNation

An homageiNation

a generative narration

all webbed up and sticky, intratextual and hyperlinked

 

A gemmiNation; of infinite redoubling because NATION is never singular and unique but an infinite redoubling of mirrors, mires murmers, morés.

 

A margiNation; mirage’Nation

reminding us to rethink universalized notions of nation

–not as something totalitarian and fixed but infinitely divergent,

evolving; and opening dialogue , of spectral possibility

 

Nation then must be seen as a merger-ation of multiple aesthetics, styles, embodying a range of difference, errance,

an invagiNation of communication strategies and procedures,

of creases caverns, infolded crevices

 

amis[c]engeNation generating a contiguous infolding of meaning –

encompassing all possible

permutations and combinations

 

I think these sentiments, concerns, are a major focus played out through all of my work, all of the books – perhaps borne out of being Jewish, and a woman, a post-colonialist, anarchic poet, performer and theorist on the margins of many communities – embody a sense of displacement, in both form and content, that everything is shifting, layered and changing and asks that we keep re-exploring language, meaning, being, from continually new perspectives.

 

You have authored eight books of poems and you are very famous as a performer. How will you defend your identity as a poet in the face of your burgeoning fame as a performer? A performance of poetry somehow becomes the imposition of authorial intent on the audience. What about the readers’ response?

What you seem to be focusing on here is the relationship between the stage and the page. For me, they are two different but related realities. i love being on stage and how that offers a visceral immediacy – a connection with an audience. They can bask in the rhythms, textures, sound and breath and cadences of the work, the musicality of language. And through that, experience a passion and intensity which is immediate and physical and present. However, reading the text offers its own range of thrilling complexity. When one “hears” the work one misses all the visual puns, the beauty of the typography. According to the Kabbalah (13th C. Jewish mysticism), the visual text is holy, inscribed as black fire on white fire – in performance this is absent. Further in reading the text, one can read it their own way, at their own pace; delve into the erotics of its physicality, how it looks, feels, smells, moves; and can more easily interact in a more “productive” interactive manner. In no way do I see the book as a transcription of the oral performance, but rather that the performance feeds the text and the text becomes a “score” and together they offer equally but differing somatic and cognitive experiences.

 

The arrangement of the words you write in your poems are astonishingly challenging for the traditional set of ideas. Does your performance, in its own way of reaching out to the audience, ever try to compensate for the radical process of your writing?

Ha! i wouldn’t so much say that the performance compensates for its complexity – because it offers a whole set of further sonic and acoustic layers that in many ways exacerbate a sense of destabilization and defamiliarity. For example, in performance one doesn’t have the luxury of reading at one’s own pace – of looking at the words, their spelling, their compositional layout. And if read quickly, words, phrases, phonemes, can bleed into each other and then even a more traditional / narrative / typically “followable” poem can devolve into a contrapuntal sonic sensorium (highlighting as Louis Zukofsky might say, its “upper limit music”).

I’m interested in the productivity of meaning, embracing the complexity of language and how that impacts our perceptions: socially, aesthetically, politically. As Charles Bernstein lays out in his Attack of the Difficult Poem, (2011), “it’s not incoherent, meaningless or hostile but rather invites a sense of ambient and associative readings”, navigating through aporias, paradox; investigating its recombinant structure. The poem is to be celebrated as not a bearer of a message but as a verbal construct reverberating continual social and aesthetic significance; mirrors of overlapping meaning. Thus, having a more “welcoming” style in performance is not a bad strategy ; ) – provides one with a softer entry / as it seduces the unassuming listener into the secret labyrinths of lingual recombinance.

 

How will you describe your experience in Kolkata?

Kolkata! My experiences there was life changing! Not only have I never felt so welcomed and celebrated, but was so overwhelmed and surprised to learn that there on the east coast of Bengal; was a raging book center; a dizzying euphoric, almost “religious” commitment to literature, publishing, translation. Whether losing myself with you in the labyrinths of Oxford street (meeting magazine editors, anarchist book sellers, organizers, renegades theorists and poets or performing at Nanadan; West Bengal Film Center, for Baschimbanga Kobita Akademi and sponsored by the Government of West Bengal, or The National Academy of Letters at Sahitya Akademi Conference Hall, University of New Delhi; Jadavpur University; The Lions Club Auditorium, Deshopriya Park; or having the luxury of meeting your exquisite and very generous family and colleagues; listening to the voices and concerns of the younger generation of Bengali poets or recording the CD with Subodh Sarkar, along the banks of the ganges – it was “holli” – in every sense of that word. i was so moved with the warmth and generosity, the passionate focus and commitment to poetry, and felt so uncannily “at home”.

And as a post-colonial poet, there was a very real sense of commonality – in terms of your reverence and celebration for both the written and the spoken word, that poetry historically was and should be sung” that nothing is holier than books. And i am so grateful to you, to Sabodh and everyone who made my experience so incredibly magical and fulfilling. i can’t wait to come “home”.

 

An Italian translation of Adeena Karasick’s work Salomé, Woman of Valor was featured La Macchina Sognante N. 3  http://www.lamacchinasognante.com/da-salome-woman-of-valor-adeena-karasick/

 


 

Adeena Karasick is a New York based Canadian poet, performer, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of eight books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard), “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha), noted for their “cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory” (Charles Bernstein) “a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick’s signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” (Craig Dworkin). Most recently is Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press, Italy, 2017). She teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute, is co-founding Artistic Director of the KlezKanada Poetry Festival and Retreat, Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology, 2017 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award recipient and winner of the 2016 Voce Donna Italia award for her contributions to feminist thinking. The “Adeena Karasick Archive” has been established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University.

 

Aritra Sanyal is a poet, translator, researcher, ex-sports journalist and presently works as a teacher of English language in a school in West Bengal, India. He is a doctoral candidate at Assam University focusing on the Use of Historiography in Amitava Gosh. Earlier he worked as a research scholar under the supervision of Chinmoy Guha focusing on the Impact of France on 19th and early 20th Century Bengali Literature and the author of four books. Forthcoming is Ekta Bahu Purano Nei (An Old Absence) from Pathak Press, Calcutta, January 2018.

 

 

 

Featured image: Photo by Aritra Sanyal.

Tags: Adeena KarasickAritra SanyalAsiaCanadacritical theoryidentityKolkatameaningmedia and poetryNorth Americaperformance poetryPoetrySalomé: Woman of Valortrans-nationalityUSAWest Bengal
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