{"id":23381,"date":"2017-03-17T03:58:20","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T10:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=23381"},"modified":"2017-03-14T13:29:31","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T20:29:31","slug":"karasick-gives-to-sfu-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/03\/17\/karasick-gives-to-sfu-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Karasick gives to SFU library"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adeena Karasick has donated her archive to the Collection of Contemporary Literature at Simon Fraser University\u2019s Bennett Library. (photo from Adeena Karasick)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Critically acclaimed poet and Vancouver native Adeena Karasick was in her hometown last month to celebrate the donation of her archive to Simon Fraser University.<\/p>\n

The Collection of Contemporary Literature at SFU\u2019s Bennett Library contains one of the biggest selections of avant-garde poetry in North America. \u201cThe collection has been building since 1965,\u201d said Tony Power, the librarian-curator who oversaw the addition of Karasick\u2019s works. \u201cThe collection features many of the poets whose tradition Karasick is associated with, such as Michael McClure and Robin Blaser. Karasick was influenced by her teacher, Warren Tallman, who also influenced, for example, Fred Wah, George Bowering and Daphne Marlatt. These are all poets who are featured in the Bennett Library collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cKarasick has a very high profile for a poet,\u201d Powers added, \u201cand a certain amount of notoriety for her more daring works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karasick told the Jewish Independent<\/em> that the Feb. 23 event, in which her personal notebooks became, in effect, public artifacts, was \u201csurreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was honoured to be included in this collection, one of the greatest collections in North America of contemporary poets and avant-garde renegades, provocateurs and risk-taking challengers of esthetics,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Karasick, whose work has been called \u201cbeautiful linguistic carnage\u201d by Word Magazine<\/em>, specializes in non-narrative, intimate works that are most concerned with the play of language itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am interested in using language to create different effects of meaning production, highlighting language as a physical, material, construct. Play, jouissance<\/em> [delight], as Jew-essence,\u201d she explained with a smile.<\/p>\n

Karasick regularly plays with Jewish themes in her work, whether it\u2019s the invocation of the Kotel (a wall made of words in more ways than one) at the heart of Dyssemia Sleaze<\/em>, or the Hebrew letter mem<\/em>, which inspires M\u00eamewars<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the kabbalah, the world is created through language,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s also the way I view things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo
Among Adeena Karasick\u2019s donations to the Collection of Contemporary Literature at SFU\u2019s Bennett Library were books and personal notes. (photo from Adeena Karasick)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Karasick\u2019s speech is peppered with words like \u201cintervention,\u201d \u201ctransgression,\u201d \u201cdisruption,\u201d \u201cnomadicism\u201d and \u201cvagrancy.\u201d She aims, she explained, to \u201cdestabilize and subvert linguistic power structures with the hope of instigating new ways of seeing. My poetry uses playfulness and celebrates a sense of creative homelessness, a mashing up of poetry, critical theory and visuality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked how she felt about being a postmodern artist whose work has been called \u201can impressive deconstruction of language and meaning\u201d by Canadian Literature<\/em>, in an age where the American president, it could be said, was much maligned for engaging in similar activity, she pointed to Jewish postmodern philosopher Emanuel Levinas (1906-1995).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying there\u2019s no truth. There is truth. There is what happened,\u201d she said. \u201cThe search for the truth cannot be solitary or uniperspectival though, and cannot be an imposition of \u2018the truth\u2019 on others in a totalitarian way. Levinas said that truth itself arises out of discourse \u2026 it rests in the ethical relation between people, where a search for the truth can take place. Truth requires humility and multiplicity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in Winnipeg, Karasick\u2019s family moved to Vancouver when she was six months old, and she grew up here. She had her bat mitzvah at Congregation Beth Israel and was very much a part of the local Jewish community. She went to the University of British Columbia for her undergraduate degree, did her master\u2019s at York in Toronto and her doctorate at Concordia, in Montreal, in \u201cFrench feminist post-structural theory and kabbalistic hermeneutics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karasick now teaches at Pratt Institute in New York and is enjoying a growing distinction as one of the premier avant-garde poets of her generation. She is becoming known for her innovative use of video as well as the printed page.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Karasick will release a new book, Alephville<\/em>, a poem composed of faux Facebook updates. \u201cI was un-nerved by the timing,\u201d she said, referencing the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, \u201cby the fact that it is basically a poem composed of \u2018alternative facts.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Also next year, Karasick will debut her \u201cspoken-word opera\u201d Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valour<\/em>, a feminist reinterpretation of the biblical character. She co-wrote the piece with Grammy Award-winning musician Frank London of the Klezmatics. They met through KlezKanada, an annual klezmer camp that has been meeting in the Laurentians for 20 years, the poetry division of which Karasick has been director for the last six years.<\/p>\n

Karasick wrote the libretto for Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valour<\/em> and London composed the music, an original score that blends Arabic, klezmer, jazz and bhangra. The nomadic and subversive piece will premi\u00e8re at next year\u2019s Chutzpah! Festival.<\/p>\n

Matthew Gindin<\/strong> is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the <\/em>Forward and <\/em>All That Is Interesting, and has been published in <\/em>Religion Dispatches, <\/em>Situate Magazine, <\/em>Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adeena Karasick has donated her archive to the Collection of Contemporary Literature at Simon Fraser University\u2019s Bennett Library. (photo from Adeena Karasick) Critically acclaimed poet and Vancouver native Adeena Karasick was in her hometown last month to celebrate the donation of her archive to Simon Fraser University. The Collection of Contemporary Literature at SFU\u2019s Bennett […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6842,6761,387,2092],"class_list":["post-23381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-adeena-karasick","tag-literature","tag-poetry","tag-sfu"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}