Adeena Karasick


Adeena Karasick is a Canadian poet, performance artist, and essayist. Born in Winnipeg of Russian Jewish heritage, she has authored several books of poetry and poetic theory, as well as a series of parodic videopoems, such as the ironic "I Got a Crush on Osama" that was featured on Fox News and screened at film festivals, Ceci n'est pas un Téléphone or Hooked on Telephonics: A Pata-philophonemic Investigation of the Telephone created for The Media Ecology Association, "Lingual Ladies" a post-modern parody of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies", and "This is Your Final Nitrous" a poetic response to the Burning Man Festival., White Abbot, a parodic videopoem Karasick created during the writing of Salome dedicated to the impossible anguish of forbidden love, and Medium in a Messy Age: Communication in the Era of Technology created for the 71st Annual New York State Communication Association Conference and the Institute of General Semantics, 2013.
Her eighth book, This Poem, which was released in August 2012, opened on The Globe and Mail Bestseller List for Winnipeg. It was also named one of the Top Five Poetry Books of 2012 by The Jewish Daily Forward. One of her most recent projects is The Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall McLuhan, co-edited with Lance Strate. She teaches literature, critical theory and performance at the Pratt Institute and global literature at St. John's University and is co-founding director of KlezKanada Poetry Festival and Retreat.

Education

Karasick received her Ph.D., in 1997 from Concordia University in Montreal and was the first interdisciplinary scholarship, which linked the work of French deconstructionist philosophy with 13th-century hermeneutics. Her doctoral dissertation, Of Poetic Thinking: A 'Pataphysical Investigation of Cixous, Derrida and the Kabbalah, examined the relationship between the major texts of Kabbalistic discourse and contemporary deconstructionist and literary practices.

Teaching career

Karasick is a visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute teaching literature and critical theory and performance and professor of global literature at St. John's University. Prior to that, she was an associate professor of communication and media theory at Fordham University From 2000 to 2012, she held teaching positions at St. John's University. Between 2008 and 2010, Karasick taught writing and film and literature at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Between 1991 and 1992, and from 1993 to 1996, Karasick taught Canadian contemporary literature and cultural theory at York University, Canada, and in 1992 was writer in residence at the Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany.

Projects and collaborations

Both her poetic and scholarly work focuses on issues of contemporary writing strategies, media, culture and aesthetics and has been described as "electricity in language." Nicole Brossard, "a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick's signature 'syllabic labyrinth.'" Craig Dworkin, "a delirious interplay of tongue twisting cacophony and serious exploration of language and meaning." Herizons, "plural, cascading, exuberant, in their cross fertilization of punning and knowing, theory and theatre", Charles Bernstein.
Her ongoing collaboration with Maria Damon, Intertextile: Text in Exile: Shmata Mash-Up, explores the interwoven relationship between gender and textuality and debuted at The Banff Centre for the Arts and The Poets House in New York.
Her study of the Kabbalistic traces in Charles Bernstein's opera, Shadowtime and her ongoing work tracing the patterns and intersections between Kabbalah and Contemporary poetics were published in Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture. An analysis by Maria Damon of Karasick's own poetry also appears in the book. According to Jake Marmer, "Karasick is after the "meaning that is not fixed but in flux, fluid; a logic that is often illogical; a rationality that is not irrational but relational and affirms that like the text itself we must embrace contradiction, conflict, discordance."
A study of Kenny Goldsmith and conceptual poetry and its relation to 13th-century textual practices was presented at The Kelly Writer's House, University of Pennsylvania, as part of North of Invention: Festival of Canadian Poetry.
An investigation of the relationship between conceptual writing, media and pop culture, "Glammed Out, Googley-Eyed and Gangsta: Parody, Satire and Cultural Sampling in the Age of Media Obsession" was presented at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, 2011.
Her work on the language and locus of Marshall McLuhan includes "In My Blogal Village, Print is Hot" for the "Cityscapes" session of the Marshall McLuhan Centennial, University of Toronto, and "We'll Cross that Road When We Come to It: On Media, Writing, and Creativity" at the 13th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association, Manhattan College.
"Exile & Nomadicism: A Community Manifesto" was presented at the Poetry Communities and the Individual Talent Conference, University of Pennsylvania and printed in Jacket2, 2012.
Since 1989, Karasick has collaborated in both print and performance with fellow poet bill bissett and in June 2011, they embarked on a 20th Anniversary World Performance Tour through London, Manchester, Paris, Geneva, Barcelona, Ghent and St. Petersburg promoting sound collage and asemic performance. In November 2012, they celebrated a lifetime of work with The 25th anniversary jubilee celebration of Adeena Karasick & bill bissett collaborations & the Toronto launch for This Poem and novel, which was streamed on the Occupy Toronto channel of Livestream.

Videos, films, and CDs

Today's politics have reached such a completely absurd level, I felt compelled to comment," said Adeena Karasick of her new video I Got a Crush on Osama released today on YouTube to help promote her new book from Talonbooks, Amuse Bouche: Tasty Treats for the Mouth. The book is a delectable feast of her trademark poetry combining the obsessions of popular culture, politics and linguistic theory into a multi-layered banquet of language often humorous and wry, surprising and sometimes shocking in its juxtapositions, reflecting the often ludicrousness of the techno-saturated world we live in.

In addition to the anthologies below, Karasick's work also has appeared in literary magazines, and academic journals and publications.