Adeena Karasick

Adeena Karasick is a poet, performer, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of 12 books of poetry and poetics; and since 2014 has been teaching as an active member of The Department of Humanities and Media Studies and has taught 51 classes, including Introduction to Literary and Critical Studies (HMS 101, 103, 201, 203), Public Speaking, Creative Writing for Art and Design and The Artists Book. Additionally, she helped design and install the “Book Minor”, (which since its inception she has taught the prerequisite for); was on the committee, helping to redesign Freshman English, and continues to be a committed member of the Freshman English Program (Literature and Critical Studies). Similarly she was a dedicated member of the committee responsible for both designing and instituting Creative Writing for Art and Design Students, Writing Across the Curriculums workshops, which she taught for 3 years working with students in Industrial Design, Interior Design and the Photography Departments. She is a member of the C.A.R.T committee and each summer, devotedly teaches Common Experience readying our phenomenal incoming students for their Pratt adventure.

Recently featured at the 2022 Faculty Artist Book Exhibition, at Pratt University Libraries, all her work is dedicated to extending the notion of the book – whether through hybrid-style essays which include full-color mash-ups and collage, a variety of typefaces and multiple covers, or through new technologies which combine, multi-media, enriched graphics; or text based performances, incorporating visual projections and electronic music, contemporary dance; exploring ways language, as both a physical and material object and as medium of transference can be brought into a public space highlighting interactive creativity. Further, her award-winning research exposes how women throughout history have been serially mis-represented and re-inserts her back into her rightful place in history. With her most recent Spoken Word Opera Salomé: Woman of Valor, (re-translating the anti-semitic myth to one of female empowerment, Karasick’s, Salomé is not presented as a victim but a revolutionary. Incorporating contemporary sound poetry, Midrash, 13th C. Kabbalistic references, pop culture and homophonic translations, it celebrates how disruptions of form and content can lead to new ways of seeing; reminding us how there is never one story be told– and allowing the unvoiced be celebrated and heard; how history is not something static but how myths, stories, legends are multiperspectively received and must be continually re-evaluated. A sentiment, she highlights in all her classes.

Recognizing the importance of a wide range of voices, politics and aesthetics, she regularly hosts guests in her classes; poets, performance artists, scholars and book artists in addition to organizing a wide range of Pratt-wide events: included “brethfest! bill bissett @ 80” (Nov. 2019), at the Schafler Gallery, featuring famed Canadian poet, painter and sound artist, bill bissett, from Toronto, but showcased his 50 years of Artist Books, with a talk back with Artist Book Publisher, and rare books and archives dealer, Steve Clay. In 2017, she organized “The Canadian Poetry Festival” celebrating Canadian superstar poets, Fred Wah, Daphne Marlatt and Colin Browne; exposing our Pratt students to the sometimes overlooked post-Colonial, feminist and proto-language work of our Canadian neighbors; celebrating their recent literary contributions and had a book signing reception and talk-back with them in Memorial Hall Atrium, presenting the excited students with the “live” poets they were studying. And in 2016, Karasick showcased, her spoken word opera, Salomé: Woman of Valor, with live music, dancers and screen projections in Memorial Hall, to a sold-out audience again aiming to further enrich the learning experience – (particularly as book, CD and performance, underscoring ways information can be communicated, and how that alters meaning production, encouraging her students to re-envision acoustic and textual environments; and how language, as a performance, as theatre, with all its power and sublimity, its (in)finite permutation and combination, is inseparable from our lives.

As an internationally acclaimed author, 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); “demonstrating how desire flows through language, an unstoppable flood of allusion (both literary and pop-cultural), word-play, and extravagant and outrageous sound-work.” (Mark Scroggins). Most recently is Massaging the Medium: 7 Pechakuchas, (The Institute of General Semantics Press:  2022), shortlisted for Outstanding Book of the Year Award (ICA, 2023) Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018) and Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press, Italy, 2017), the libretto for her Spoken Word opera; Salomé: Woman of Valor CD, (NuJu Records, 2020), and Salomé Birangona, translation into Bengali (Boibhashik Prokashoni Press, Kolkata, 2020). Karasick teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute, is Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology, Associate International Editor of New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award recipient and winner of the Voce Donna Italia award for her contributions to feminist thinking, and has just been appointed Poet Laureate of the Institute of General Semantics. The “Adeena Karasick Archive” is established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University.  Hot off the press is Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations, and Ouvert: Oeuvre: Openings, (Lavender Ink Press, 2023).

Medium is The Message: Seven Pechakuchas, 2022, Institute of General Semantics Press, NY https://newexplorations.net/oral-aural-and-linguistic-literary-tensions-in-paginated-presentations-a-review-of-adeena-karasicks-massaging-the-medium-seven-pechakuchas/?fbclid=IwAR0TF4

Salomé Woman of Valor Book Review “Poesis of Sweet Disorder” by Peter Valente, Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, 2021, https://www.talismanmag.net/valentekarasick.html

Salomé: Woman of Valor Show Review The Forward, “Reclaiming Salomé as Seductress, Murderess and Misunderstood Jew” by JP Grisar https://forward.com/culture/music/456360/salome-john-the-baptist-jewish-poetry-adeena-karasick-frank-london-klezmer/?fbclid=IwAR3B47qArEH6y5b2pGQHPERcNIF9aYE6dfvmqjG0VhAMGWLZYY376AEsiBI

Checking In Review Adeena Karasick’s Facebook Likes by Jake Marmer November 06, 2018 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/adeena-karasicks-facebook-likes

The Un-creation of the Wor(l)d: Conceptual Poetry as Kabbalistic Trope — Adeena Karasick http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2012/02/24/the-un-creation-of-the-world-conceptual-poetry-as-kabbalistic-trope-adeena-karasick/

Nix Magazine, Interview with Adeena Karasick by Megan Yetman http://talonbooks.com/meta-talon/interview-adeena-karasick-on-this-poem-nix-magazine

Aerotomania videopoem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ANxhF6jTc

Adeena Karasick Archive article https://www.jewishindependent.ca/karasick-gives-to-sfu-library/