Jennifer Karmin co-curates the Red Rover Series and is a founding member of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at a number of festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets. She teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the Chicago Public Schools. During 2008, she will be a guest writer in California with the Djerassi Program and in Kenya with the Summer Literary Seminars. Recent poems are published in Bird Dog, MoonLit, Womb, Seven Corners, Milk Magazine, and the anthologies A Sing Economy, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, and Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces.
Currently, you are working on a project in response to the war called 4000 WORDS 4000 DEAD, for which you’re taking submissions until April 30. The resulting poem was performed as part of the Guild Complex's Art Against War event, and will also be done as a downtown street performance on May 2 at Looptopia. What is the goal of this? Can overtly political artistic gestures and poetry really “make a difference,” or is it a mistake to substitute artistic activity for political activity?
I think one of the jobs of the poet/artist is to remind us of what’s happening in the world and to help us think of these things in new ways. The work we make documents resistance. I get excited when the result is cross-community building. In 20 or 50 or 100 or 2000 years, people will find evidence that there were some of us who said NO to the Iraq War. Many many more than 4000 people have died and continue to die every day in this war. I want to literally bring this war back home to people in the United States and create a public memorial for the dead. In an era where we don't see images of our dead--of body bags and coffins, I think the number 4000 is a smack of reality.
4000 WORDS 4000 DEAD is a companion piece to Revolutionary Optimism, an anti-war poem I wrote in 2004. Revolutionary Optimism is based on confessions from Iraqi prisoners, sympathy cards and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. During the past 4 years, I’ve performed it locally/nationally about a dozen times in art spaces and on city streets. For Looptopia, I've decided to perform selections from both 4000 WORDS 4000 DEAD and Revolutionary Optimism [pictured].
The weekend of May 9-11 at Links Hall. you will be performing a play that you created with Joyelle McSweeney, Johannes Göransson, Patrick Durgin, and Jacob Knabb. How is creating poetry in this? This kind of theatre/poetry combo has been known to cause fellow blog editor Elisa Gabbert’s mouth to literally hang open in awe. What is the appeal of doing poetry this way and how does one make it so mind-blowing?
Historically, many poets have written plays and novels too. There’s even a movement among some of the writers I know to get rid of these genre labels altogether. Do they hold us back from the act of creating? From the true innovation that happens between genre? We all use language as our medium. For me, it’s about the process. The final product is shaped by the writer’s intention. Although once the work lives in the world, it may take on its own genre or shed itself of one altogether. The conventions of theatre offer new layers. Language moves off the page and gains lighting, sets, props, movement, a different relationship to audience.
Your own work and that of many of the groups with which you are involved place a premium on “experimenting” with language--what does it mean to you to experiment in this way, and why are you drawn to doing so?
Experimenting to me has always meant thinking about all of the uses of language as ways to write, read, and discuss poetry. Poetry is one of the oldest art forms. People made poems to remember their stories and ideas. Sound is an essential element of words. Some words are just delightful to say aloud or see on the page.
I don't believe that experimentation is an elitist activity. Poetry is a living language. A poem can be whatever you want it to be. A list of words, a rap, a description, a joke, a dream. If you can question the text of a poem, you can question the text of a politician's speech or a news report. The biggest problem is when people think poetry has to be a certain way.
I was never told the correct way to write a poem. I was asked to read everything, old and new, with a lot of focus on contemporary writing. What are poets doing in the world right now? When I got to the University of Buffalo in 1991, they had just started the Poetics Program. I was an undergrad with a free ride at a state school and figured out that poetics meant something about studying poetry. Working with Bob Creeley, Susan Howe, and Charles Bernstein, I didn't know too much about their writing at the time but the playful energy of words was everywhere.
In keeping with this taste for experimentation, you are one of the curators of the Red Rover Series here in Chicago. How did you become involved in curating and how does that role influence your own work?
As a student, I curated readings at the University of Buffalo and the School of the Art Institute. After finishing my MFA, I joined the artists’ cooperative the SpareRoom and began curating multiarts events with more visual/performative work. When Amina Cain and I collaborated on an Anti Gravity Surprise project, she suggested we put together a reading at the SpareRoom. This was 2004 and we had been friends for a few years. There were already a lot of wonderful reading series in Chicago like Discrete, Myopic, and Danny’s, besides the readings being held at local schools. We wanted to add to what was happening in the writing community and provide something new. For us, this meant creating a series that would be not so male, not so white, and something that would actually try to redefine the act of reading to a live audience. The Red Rover curatorial line became to create “readings that play with reading” and design each event as a separate “reading experiment.” Experiment #1 premiered in April 2005 at the SpareRoom and this month we celebrated our 3-year anniversary with Experiment #20 at our new space, the Division Street Dance Loft.
Curating and collaboration in all of their forms push me to take creative risks that might not happen by myself. It’s thrilling, scary, pleasurable, and amazing when it all comes together to work in ways that you’ve never even imagined. In this spirit, Red Rover is about to embark on a new adventure with Amina moving to Los Angeles in August and Lisa Janssen jumping in as our new curator.
First Car?
A 1984 silver Nissan Pulsar that came from my favorite aunt (the other artist in the family) after she died. I was just starting college.
What was your favorite book and band in high school?
Book: On The Road. It definitely helped to bring out the traveler in me. Band: The Velvet Underground.
Which crowd did you hang out with in high school?
I took Kerouac seriously, ie -- “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’ ”
First job?
In high school, serving coffee at the Dunkin Donuts down the street.
Car now?
That was the first and only car I’ve ever owned. I’m proudly car-free since 1996. I grew up on public transport and still like it because I can use my time to read and write.
Favorite book now?
It changes day to day, hour by hour. I’m usually reading a few books at the same time. What’s next to my bed right now: Hannah Weiner’s: Open House, A Humument, John Cage: Composed in America, Working (I Do It For The Money).
What's new on you iPod or CD player?
I’m a semi-luddite and don’t own an iPod. In my CD player today: James Brown, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Fela Kuti, and the poetry CD All Poets Welcome.
What's the best DVD you've rented of late?
I’m not an avid DVD renter. Most of the movies I watch are with friends who offer their suggestions. I’m more likely to see a video installation at an art space. I went to Providence to do a reading a few weeks ago and saw Walid Raad’s We Can Make Rain But No One Came To Ask at a Brown gallery. He’s a Lebanese artist focusing on the history of car bombings in his country. As an American, it’s important to see what war really looks like. Most days, we’d rather view pictures of bombed buildings than bombed people.
What are you working on these days?
My main writing project is a series of poems about the lives of Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, and Helen Keller. I have been researching each of the women's lives, contemplating the ways illness transforms history, and examing the elements as catalysts for change: fire, air, water, and earth. This summer I’ve got a residency at the Djerassi Program and hope to put together a draft of this new manuscript. Poets Sarah Mangold, Jen Hofer,and Jennifer Scappettone will also be at Djerassi in the next few months so we’re planning a collaborative project together.
A few more projects that are occupying my time:
Creating a traveling art-activist book, Tell Us What You Think with Anti Gravity Surprise co-founder Kathleen Duffy. We’re getting ready to give away these free books in public places around the world, track their travels on our website, and ask readers to give them away again and again.
Curating a month-long festival with Amina Cain at Links Hall in Chicago. When Does It or You Begin? (Memory as Innovation) will take place in January 2009. This multidisciplinary festival explores the ways new forms of expression are created from the memory of individuals, groups, cultures, and places.
Being a monthly contributor to performance group Goat Island’s web-based writing project, The Last Performance. This work is collectively authored and documents Goat Island ending their 20 year collaboration.
Anything coming out soon?
An e-chapbook from Ahadada Books. Selections of performance projects on How2 and Action, Yes. Excerpts from my text-sound composition aaaaaaaaaaalice on a soundpoetry CD Max Middle is editing.
What are you reading that's fun?
Guillermo Gómez- Peña’s The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems & Loqueras for the End of the Century. For example, from the book’s Glossary of Borderismos: “ALIEN – a term used by opportunistic politicians and sleazy reporters to describe any legal or illegal immigrant, people with heavy accents or exotic clothes, and people who exhibit eccentric social, sexual, or aesthetic behavior.”
What's your favorite a) writing exercise, and b) physical exercise?
Writing exercise: found poems. Go through old notebooks and books. Then, take a walk and write down interesting words/phrases you see. Physical exercise: yoga, swimming, and walking my beagle Walt.
What's your favorite piece of clothing?
A warm and funky hat.
What are some of your guilty pleasures?
People watching, chocolate, getting a massage.
Favorite recipe (please be specific, like so we can cook it if we want)?
Simple vegan lentil soup to warm your belly and not burn a hole in your wallet: Fill a medium sized pot ¾ of the way with water. Add half a small bag of lentils, more if you like thick soup. Boil at medium heat. Cut up and add onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, and any other favorite veggies. Add salt, pepper, chili powder, and lots of good spices to taste. Cook until all lentils and veggies are soft. Best served with friends and wine.
What’s on your desk?
At this moment: too many folders, papers, books, a travel water color set, a polaroid camera, a broken typewriter, a pile of change, a miniature monster sculpture from a free art show, a piece of wood from the Arizona desert, a postcard from Istanbul. My desk and I have a funny relationship. It’s always a place to put work on but not work at. I prefer the kitchen table.
Stones or Beatles?
Patti Smith or PJ Harvey?
So sometimes we ask: Fitzgerald or Hemingway. Feel free to answer that too, but I’d also like to know: Ashbery or O’Hara?
How about: Dickinson or Stein? Plath or Sexton? Brooks or Giovanni? DiPrima or Waldman? Howe or Heijinian? Berssenbrugge or Mullen?
Porn name (first pet's name + first street you lived on)?
Kip Shepard, who would be an intellectual-sexpositive-revolutionary-superhero lovin’ and fightin’ against greed, exploitation, and the power hungry motherfuckers.
April 29, 2008
Quickie Interview #32: Jennifer Karmin
April 28, 2008
Contest Culture and Poetic Community
In a recent post, Silliman surveys the current publishing landscape, pitting small/micro press publishing against the contest model. While less prestigious, Silliman sees small/micro presses as being a more effective way to reach the right audience for your poems:
"A book by somebody I’ve never heard of before from one of these presses [he lists a bunch of his apparent faves] comes to me with a context that may help me to understand what the writer is trying to do. In marketing, this gets called brand equity, but in the low-level economics around poetry it really has to do with the degree that any well-run press is itself a concrete manifestation of an aesthetic community...Just coming from one of these presses directs a book toward a community of readers, a range of sympathies and expectations. As a poet, you can’t ask any more of a press."
I'd even go one step further to say that the opposite can occur as well--an aesthetic community can spring up as a result of a press or journal, or more likely a group of presses and journals. And I take "aesthetic community" to mean something more then a group of people who value the same type of poetry, who identify with a similar branding of art, but people who share similar values, ethics, world views, etc....are these not the things that shape our aesthetics? Certainly a majority of my friendships are based on a shared, albeit fairly general, poetics. But it seems intuitive to assume that the richness of these friendships owes itself less to the fact that we like similar poets and more to the reasons WHY we like the poets we do. As shallow as it may sound, we often wonder aloud to each other, "Would I like you if I hated your poems?" I guess my point is, such a question isn't shallow at all, but essential. In any case, the contest culture takes none of this into account.
"Contests, however," according to Silliman, "tend to do rather the opposite...Judges are cycled through too quickly, there’s no aesthetic focus, the resulting book series has little if any connection to an audience."
And it seems to me, if the books aren't connecting with an audience, then an audience certainly isn't connecting over the books. While I usually place a little more of the blame for this phenomenon on the aesthetic choices of the judge/press than Silliman does in this post, I think the issue of context/community is a vitally important one.
According to Silliman, the contest culture is based on there not being a context, or rather, on MFA programs not connecting themselves or their students to a contemporary poetry community:
"...I think for a lot of young writers, in particular, especially those coming out of MFA mills (and especially the programs that don’t quite “get” contemporary poetry, which is to say most of them), I think the transition to becoming a practicing writer can be a daunting, even crushing task. It’s when most people stop writing. They find that the context they had for poetry in school no longer exists in the “real” world and don’t know how to build one out of whole cloth. These are the people for whom contests exist, and it’s why I think they’re ultimately damaging. For one thing, the odds are preposterous. For another, unless they actually know the work of the judge, and know who the judge is, there is no way to ascertain if there is any reasonable expectation of even being competitive. They send in their money and their manuscript, they hope and they can feel crushed if they lose, sometimes again & again & again."
I couldn't agree more. And the two things that especially jumped out for me were "judge" and "money." It's my guess that the judges would be appalled to find out what DIDN'T get to them. Who, exactly, wittles the slush pile into a manageable finalist pool? I've done it as a student intern, just barely into a graduate program. It's this odd model of allowing, theoretically, the least qualified of those involved (the intern) choose the work that gets to the, theoretically, most qualified of those involved (the judge). The chances I, as a student intern 10 years ago, passed along the 10 best manuscripts, if given the chance to go back and review my choices, are slim to none. My guess is that a lot of sophistication and subtlety is lost on many a preliminary judge, as it was on me. This leads me to believe that much of what gets through is either gimmicky and loud or numbingly quiet--those that are undeniably under the umbrella of Poetry.
And this is simply a numbers problem. There are too many submissions for presses/journals to operate any other way. According to Silliman, "If there were only a few hundred publishing poets in the 1950s, by 1970 that total had swollen to some number over 1,000, but not so dramatically over it that it was difficult for a new poet to get heard...Today, however, there are at least ten thousand publishing poets working in the English language in & around North America. Unless all the MFA factories shut down at once, that number can be expected to double in the next decade. And there are more books of poetry published – roughly 4,000 a year."
The PoBiz, like suburban sprawl, has grown up too quickly and there just aren't enough resources to go around...namely book buyers. So the *money* has to come from somehwere. This may be shooting fish in a barrel here, but when contests, like MFA programs themselves, become cash cows, something is inevitably is lost. As someone who has spent an extra month's rent on contests each year for the past few years, my advice to you is the same as Silliman's:
"...get together with [your] friends and publish one another, [you'll make] enormous headway much more quickly. And [your] books [will reach] the right audiences."
The catch is, if you actually want to teach for a living, I'm not sure being on your friend's press is going to get you a job. Believe me, I wish I didn't want to teach. And I mean actually teach...not just enjoy the, ahem, "lifestyle." I envy my friends who are satisfied with their non-teaching jobs; their art is free from becoming a commodity. They don't have to use their poems to get to where they want to be. But tomorrow many of us will be sending another batch of mannies and their accompanying $20 checks to beat the 4/30 postmark date. I assume the Biz is well aware of this and is pleased.
April 23, 2008
Shotgun
Frank Bidart thinks lyric poets (deployers of “verbal filigree”) are drunk.
Walt Whitman was a cult leader, sort of. He kissed Oscar Wilde, but also received lascivious attentions of another kind.
You, yes you, are awash with diatoms.
Why do less and less people give a damn about literature? Maybe because the critics have demanded that any cultural artifact be evaluated politically rather than aesthetically.
Scholarship means never having to admit that an aardvark isn’t a medium-sized inflatable banana.
Sometimes, I write my name on my underpants.
April 21, 2008
Public Poetry
This weekend I was in Minneapolis and was lucky enough to walk across Siah Armajani's Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge. On each segment is a line from a commissioned John Ashbery poem. 
Go here to read it and/or listen to Ashbery read it. In any case, I realized that, after having lived in Boston for over five years, and having gone back and forth to New York for countless poetry-related events, I hadn't seen anything like it in terms of public contemporary poetry in either city. Maybe it's the tourist vs. resident thing and there are actually tons of things like this here in the northeast that I've simply missed by not being a visitor.
It seemed important that the poem was off the page, that multiple...citizens, as in, not poets, could read it all at once, that the poem was an everyday reality to the city. It made me sad that this was the first time I'd experienced something like this. It made me eager to make more things like this happen.
Are there lots of things like this out there? It'd be fun to go on a road trip to visit all of the public poems. Or at least catalog them so if people were passing through a particular city that had one/several, they'd know to check it/them out.
April 17, 2008
So Much for Writing What You Know
Hopefully this strange bit of news will kill that terrible adage still haunting MFA workshops: “write what you know.” Apparently a writer for the Lonely Planet travel guidebooks plagiarized/invented large sections of his books. In one instance, he hadn’t even visited the country he was writing about: "They didn't pay me enough to go to Colombia. I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating—an intern at the Colombian consulate.” Yikes.
Clearly the context of guidebooks differs from accuracy issues in literary nonfiction, plus the Lonely Planet guy just sounds kind of lazy. Even so, seeing another headline about a writer getting the facts wrong did make me think about, if artifice can find its way into guidebooks of all things, how inevitable it must be for some artifice to make its way into literary nonfiction. Oddly, it seems some readers are approaching literary nonfiction with expectations that aren’t so different from the ones they’d have for a guidebook—that it’s a “product” that has promised to deliver absolute truth, whatever that means.
I wonder what would happen if In Cold Blood—which is so genre bending, it’s often shelved in multiples sections at bookstores—were published today? Would people have crucified Capote, who took huge liberties, including inventing some minor characters? There’s always artifice in art, including literary nonfiction, which doesn’t provide an exact replication of an experience, but an artistic approximation of it. Huge ethical gaffes aside (i.e. Margaret Seltzer), how “true” can we reasonably expect nonfiction to be?
April 14, 2008
The topic of my post this week…
…is Elisa and me. You’ve been hearing us mouth off about literature on this blog for over a year, and now is your chance to see if we can deliver the goods. Our first collaborative poetry collection, That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness, is now available from Otoliths Books at the low low price of just $9.30 for a limited time only.
Also, attention Chicago-area readers, Elisa and I will be reading this Sunday, April 20th at Myopic Books at 7 pm. Also reading will be the lovely and talented Simone Muench (aka Quickie Interview #14) who has a collaborative chapbook called Sonoluminescence with Bill Allegrezza. Don’t miss it.
April 9, 2008
First word, most expensive word
Missed this the first time around: Ian Daly’s great piece on Aram Saroyan’s deployment of what he termed “The Most Expensive Word in History,” a poem that reads, in its entirety, thus:
lighght
Saroyan published it in the Chicago Review in 1966 and a year later, George Plimpton put in The American Literary Anthology, which entitled the poem to a $750 check from the NEA. Also outrage from U.S. Representative William Scherle and, as always, the redoubtable Jesse Helms. The NEA (full history here) had to send the deputy chairperson before Congress to explain the poem. I imagine he did a better job than Plimpton, who answered one Congressman by saying, “You are from the Midwest. You are culturally deprived, so you would not understand it anyway.” I love you, George, but have ya heard of audience there, pal?
[Lighght called to mind Kenneth Patchen’s more elaborate (but not by much) “The Murder Of Two Men By A Young Kid Wearing Lemon Colored Gloves,” which consists of the word “Wait” randomly repeated 14 times, followed by a “NOW.” There is a sound recording with Patchen backed by the Chamber Jazz Sextet (Patchen also got to read with Mingus and had a play scored by John Cage, that lucky devil).]
All of this makes me very happy. That one word--and not even an obscene one--could make a lot of money and a lot of controversy seems a testament to the fact that poetry (even in miniature amounts) invokes some kind of quantum syntax.
April 6, 2008
It's everyone's fault, man.
Last weekend in NYC I saw probably the best poetry reading I've ever seen. And I think the reason I liked it so much was because it wasn't much like a poetry reading. This edition of the Segue Series featured Mark Wallace and Rodrigo Toscano. I have been a Mark Wallace fan for a while now but this was my first time seeing him read; it was almost like intellectual stand-up (the dark, semi-seedy Bowery Poetry Club added to this effect, what with the little stage and the 2-for-1 drinks). His poetry can be L-O-L hilarious ("You are Flamboyatard, regent of worlds") but a certain Terror of the Future (Which Is Now) is always catching up with you.
I was not familiar with Toscano's work and had no idea what to expect. He brought several other poets/actors up on stage with him (including Kristin Prevallet and Paolo Javier) for a highly rehearsed audio-visual performance they termed Collapsible Poetics Theater, and it was definitely closer to experimental theater than any poetry reading I've ever been to, very reminiscent of a David Ives or Richard Foreman play. It totally blew my mind; my mouth was literally hanging open.
I admit I'm usually a reluctant attender of poetry readings. I go out of a sense of obligation combined with a sense of hope, since some great poets actually are great readers. But I'm usually bored and find I'd rather be reading the work to myself. For me poetry is largely a private art, an engagement between my mind and a page. This reading reminded me that taking written art public is difficult -- what is powerful in my room is not necessarily powerful out loud in front of 30 restless people. Good poetry is not sufficient for a good reading; you also need either a lot of charisma, or some serious planning and possibly multimedia components.
April 3, 2008
Is The Orange Prize Sexist?
A. S. Byatt sure thinks so. She recently commented that she was so critical of what the Orange Prize stands for that she forbids her publishers to submit her novels for consideration, noting that “such a prize was never needed.” This isn’t the first time the Orange Prize has encountered criticism; others have accused the award of “ghettoizing women writers," and when the prize was launched in 1996, Alain de Botton said “What is it about being a woman that is particularly under threat, in need of attention, or indeed distinctive from being a man when it comes to picking up a pen?”
I can see both sides of the proverbial coin here. Clearly female authors are walking away with plenty of top-notch literary prizes—see, for example, the most recent recipients of the Booker and the Nobel—which supports the argument that the Orange Prize isn’t “necessary.” But what puzzles me is why, say, the Lambda Awards aren’t subjected to similar critiques? If one follows the logic of the Orange Prize critics, then isn’t the Lambda “ghettoizing” authors with LGBT concerns? What about prizes for writers of a particular ethnicity? Or authors concerned with a specific region? While I’m sure someone out there has criticized such prizes before, I’ve not personally encountered anything that carries the high-profile vitriol of the Orange Prize critiques. I wonder if this is related to the underlying assumption held by some that discrimination due to race and sexual orientation are still significant social issues—which, of course, they unfortunately are—while sexism is now a thing of the past. I understand the argument against prizes like the
PS—this isn’t the first time gender issues have come up at the Pshares blog. For more conversation, check out Elisa’s post on gender dynamics in poetry land.
April 1, 2008
"So that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
The Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets edited by Jessica Smith was based on the principle that "This scene is so diverse, geographically and aesthetically, that it requires rethinking the 'anthology' as a genre." As such, it was "intended to provide a detailed record of the sheer magnitude, energy, and plurality of experimental poetry at the turn of the millennium." Set to be published this year, it was recently and seemingly abruptly declared "postponed indefinitely".
The book was a massive project that may have been doomed from the start by its very scope, but it is still impressive to contemplate, even as a ruin. It had many ideas, but one of its biggest was that the anthology itself would be really BIG. As an early set of FAQ asked and answered:
Q: I hate anthologies. Isn't this a stupid project?
A: Perhaps, but it is BIG. Size matters.
The Outside Voices Anthology blog remains. Jessica's leaving it up (at least for now), and the names of the contributors—many if not most of whom have links to blogs, websites, or work of some kind—are all still listed. So in some sense, you could use this record to build your own anthology if you were so inclined. And how DIY is that? And isn't the Internet kind of the biggest anthology ever, the anthology that renders all others obsolete? Like that map in the Borges story that is so large that it has a one-to-one correlation to the kingdom it represents?
So if the task (or maybe one of the tasks) of an anthology is to provide a survey of a particular scene or community or practice at a particular time, then what does a massive self-destructed anthology say about poetry these days?
