Jennifer K. Dick's Blog, page 4

Jennifer K Dick texts on THE END OF NOW

The weirdest writing project I have participated in? The End of Now a very exciting, engaged group reflecting on collaborative artististic and curatorial processes. On the BRIDGES part of the site, you click words to see "stars" with my texts in them. Origins of this?: A group of researchers asked me to take their piles of dossiers and reflections about their projects and sort of "make poems". Which I did. And (rarer than rare for an author) I got some money for doing this. I also participated in a lot of conversations about the making of the site, which is visually lovely but still hard to navigate. The unfortunate side of things is that as the work went on and people grew tired, I was never informed that the work had been published in the visual play site format we had been struggling with. This form that we had worked on for awhile together. SO, no where on this site, or around these poems, is it revealed that this is my writing. But it is. And it was a lot of fun to work with them on this. And I hope you will therefore enjoy these random "stars"

So, find a constellation in the BRIDGES section of the website: https://theendofnow.org/bridges/topics/. Open a star by clicking on it. Read ad hoc the bits and bobs which emerged a few years ago from this project. But also I had fun hyperlinking back through elements of the project and previous projects and to other videos and texts and art pieces that were part of our ongoing dialogue at the time. So enjoy the work by others these small bits of text spiral out to!

CERN 38 by Jennifer K Dick online at Eye to the Telescope

 

In case you missed it: CERN poem online

CERN 38 by Jennifer K Dick was published on JULY 15, 2020 in EYE TO THE TELESCOPE, issue 37, online at: https://eyetothetelescope.com/index.html
You like science fiction? Fantasy? Poetry? Well, Eye To The Telescope is an online magazine that draws them all together. And I am enjoying having the CERN poem they accepted published, as it has long been one of my favorites. 
CERN 38 was inspired by the humor so evident in some of the physics lingo out there. This brings CERN, physics and Ian Ziering's time in Chippendales together.  

Updated "Who Am I?" bio on me as an academic

Jennifer K Dick is an author, translator, teacher and poetry event organizer. Director of the English Department (from Jan 2021), CA member (2020-24), and Maître de Conférences (since 2010) at the Université de Haute Alsace, she teaches American Literature, Creative Writing and Civilization and is a member of the ILLE research lab.

Jennifer K Dick’s academic research explores the overlapping fields of poetry and visual poetics. She is fascinated by the liminal spaces between language use in the visual arts and typography and imported visual work implanted on the page in contemporary American and European Literature (as seen, for example, in the work of Susan Howe, Anne-Marie Albaich, Jacques Sivan or even Anne Carson). This focus on visuality has also lead to recent research on multilingualism as visual and textual space in the identity poetics of American authors, as seen in work by Craig Santos Perez, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Myung Mi Kim and others. Publications on these topics have appeared in La poésie motléculaire de Jacques Sivan (presses du reel, 2017), American Multiculturalism in Context (Cambridge, 2017), Point, Dot, Period…The Dynamics of Punctuation in Text and Image(Cambridge, 2016), Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre (University of Michigan Press,2015), Trans (university of Paris III), Poétiques scientifiques dans les revues européennes de la modernité (1900-1940) (Classiques Garnier, 2013) and in the volume L’Ecriture Emprisonnée(Harmattan, 2007). A forthcoming article from the Nov 2019 talk at the Université de Lyon II conference "Le Depaysment" on Craig Santos Perez is under peer review. Her talk at "La poésie hors du livre" conference (Paris, October 2013) extended her focus out of the book space as she examined billboard and wall publications of poetry.

On the road to this focus of research, Jennifer completed her DEA with Director Stéphane Michaud then her PhD with Director Jean Bessière at the Université de Paris III—la Sorbonne Nouvelle, France, in Comparative Literature (Littérature générale et comparée). Her DEA focused on the visual use of the page in Maurice Roche, Lisa Jarnot, Susan Howe and Claude Royet-Journaud’s works. Her doctorate focused on post-Mallarmean and Appolinairean influences on contemporary authors Myung Mi Kim, Anne-Marie Albiach and Susan Howe.

She also co-organized three conferences on Poetry in Expanded Translation in the UK and France alongside Zoe Skoulding and Jeff Hilson (Jan 2017-2019), and conceived of and co-organized the international conference Lex-ICON : treating text as image and image as text in June 2012 (http://lex-icon21.blogspot.fr/). Other conferences she co-organized include Station to Station with Didier Girard and Frédérique Tudoire-Surlapierre to honor the train industry and new Paris-Dijon-Mulhouse TGV line, and a conference on translation in the social sciences at EHESS with Stephanie Schwerter.

Other research interests of Jennifer K Dick's include the varied practices of postmodern poetic autobiographies (primarily those using visual and collage techniques in conjunction with more standard written forms of poetry) and cyborg poetry and poetics (Bhanu Kapil, Jacques Sivan). The interest in autobiography and reality vs fiction stems as much from her own creative as from her critical work. A first talk on this topic was presented at the 2013 SAES conference in Dijon, France ("Self-Naming in Postmodern Poetic Autobiography") though the roots of this work can be seen in her explorations of Susan Howe's writing (see her publication "Invisible Collisions: Considering Susan Howe’s Reform of the Poetic, Critical and Autobiographical Essay," online on Seventeen Seconds: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Ottawa, Canada, issue 7, June 2013, pp 7-24).

Tangential to her literary study, has been her interest in translation practice and theory. She has participated in conferences on alternative forms of translation and on self-translation (invited conference with Cole Swensen for the Nanterre University’s translation research lab). Jennifer also co-edited with Stephanie Schwerter 2 books on translation in the social sciences: Transmissibility and Cultural Transfer: Dimensions of Translation in the Humanities (Ibidem Verlag, Stuttgart, 2012) and Traduire, transmettre ou trahir: Réflexions sur la traduction en sciences humaines (éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris, 2013).

Outside the sphere of strictly academic work, Jennifer K Dick co-organizes the bilingual monthly reading series Ivy Writers Paris(founded 15 years ago) and, since 2010, the residencies Ecrire l'Art with the Directrice of La Kunsthalle Mulhouse Centre d'Art Contemporain. Their book assembling 10 years of texts from this project, accompanied by their avant-propos, was published in Sept 2019: Ecrire l'art: DOSSIER DES OUVRAGES EXECUTES(Kunsthalle éditions, available through les presses du réel, France).

Jennifer is also a published author of poetry and prose (most recently Lilith: A Novel in Fragments, Corrupt Books, 2019, and forthcoming That Which I Touch Has No Name, Eyewear, London, 2021), and a translator of French artist’s statements and writing by poets or on visual artists--including Vannina Maestri  (forthcoming 2021), Véronique Arnaud (gallery catalogues, 2018), Jean-Michel Espitallier (in READ, 2019), Yves Peyré’s writing in the volume on Takesada Matsutani (Centre Pompiou/Hauser & Wirth, 2019), poems by Michaël Batalla (for book Concrete  LTD, 2014, and in PLU n°3 2015) and poems by Jérôme Mauche, among others.

Workshop From Memory to Character with Jennifer K Dick on 9 Jan 2021

WORKSHOP IS ON Jan 9, 2021, from 14h30-17h France time:

Join me, Jennifer K Dick, for a FICTION WORKSHOP with Strasbourg Write a Story.

From Memory to Character . This generative workshop is designed to help build character-based stories. Breathe life into these new beings you ink into the world, onto your pages where they will emerge and head out on fabulous adventures. But where do characters begin? Some say from questions, others, from recollections of people we have known, seen, or spied on. The goal of this workshop is to sketch, like a studio artist might, a few new characters based on some exercises. (Whether this will be in person or via ZOOM remains to be determined). Sign up at: http://sxb-write-a-story.org/workshops-2020-21/

The Bodies Remains Return To Us by Jennifer K Dick on Poetry in a Pandemic

NOW ONLINE: “Of Tradition & Experiment XIV: The Bodies’ Remains Return to Us (Poetic Migration in the Time of a Pandemic” at Academia.edu with permission of editor David Caddy  AND IN PRINT in Tears in the Fence, (UK literary magazine), n° 72, Autumn 2020 issue: 

Abstract:
In this essay which opens: 

    "To what extent do place and time determine a poet?
      To what extent do plague and time determine a poet?"

the issues of value during a period of mass loss, of motivation to write, and rituals of remembrance are explored. The text vacillates between critical prose readings of recent poets, political poetics reflections on pandemics and migrations due to attempts to escape contamination, and more poetry-like writing emerging from my Spring 2020 journals. Here, as I read others, I interrogate my own continuation and writing during this time of limbo and loss, in an ambiance of latent fear. Only one of the poets I speak of, Laura Mullen, is directly addressing Covid-19. Other works I examine were published before this illness appeared, but these poems, thoughts, and lines are resonant and pertinent to these times—and in particular to current issues of grief, absence, mourning. This explains the large reliance on my reading of Ghost Of by Diana Khoi Nguyen (Omnidawn, 2018).

Read the article / download as member from Academia.edu site: Click HERE

Or Purchase a PRINT COPY of TITF N°72 or SUBSCRIBE by Clicking THIS LINK HERE

Rencent Poetry Publications in GHR and ETTT

2 POEMS: "Crank" and MOD (Maximum Operating Depth)" by Jennifer K Dick published in GOLDEN HANDCUFFS REVIEW N° 29 June 2020:

Thrilled to have new poems from my manuscript in process SHELF BREAK appear in the exciting print issue of GOLDEN HANDCUFFS REVIEW. Help this paper-printed review survive by BUYING A COPY either ordering online OR via bookstores.  http://goldenhandcuffsreview.com/



CERN 38 by Jennifer K Dick published on JULY 15, 2020: CERN 38 in EYE TO THE TELESCOPE, issue 37, online at: https://eyetothetelescope.com/index.html
You like science fiction? Fantasy? Poetry? Well, Eye To The Telescope is an online magazine that draws them all together. And I am enjoying having the CERN poem they accepted published, as it has long been one of my favorites. 
CERN 38 was inspired by the humor so evident in some of the physics lingo out there. This brings CERN, physics and Ian Ziering's time in Chippendales together. 

George Vance reviews LILITH

I am very honored to read this review published on May 1st on the University of Arizona Poetry Center website. George Vance, a long time reader and aficianado of Beckett, really delves into his reading of the fragmented nature of Lilith in his kind reading of the book, a reading which feels thoroughly the longtime Gerard Manly Hopkins study he has also done. I feel honored to be the recipient of this "Valentine to 'Lilith'" as he has titled his article. Enjoy: 


https://poetry.arizona.edu/blog/valentine-lilith
Lilith is available for purchase from CORRUPT Press BOOKS at: https://www.corruptpress.com/books/lilith.shtml

Video Readings and Projects

Here are a few links to recent videos of me reading:
 
1) April 2020: In lieu of reading in Ypsilanti, MI, I made an in-quarantine reading of ASM (Arctic Shield Mission) with background sounds. This is from SHELF BREAK, a manuscript in process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__KKaL4v2WQ&feature=youtu.be
2) In lieu of reading in Athens, GA at Avid Books, I made this in-quarantine reading of Timber Hitch, a poem which appears in Jacket2 HERE. This poem is also from SHELF BREAK, a manuscript in process. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSpWjrk8rbc
3) A reading by my of my translation of the amazing poet Virginie Poitrasson. Here we are on stage for the Paris Lit Up launch in Fall 2015. https://youtu.be/5L8TBT5MplE
4) A snippet from the middle of salon house reading in New Orleans, LA at the end of February, before Lisa Pasold and I set off on the road across the south reading and doing workshops. Filmed by Bremner Duthie. (this gets a bit better sound quality wise towards the end). I am reading an extract from LILITH: A Novel in Fragments (Corrupt, 2019). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVGD0a2yqMU&feature=youtu.be
5) A section of LILITH: A NOVEL IN FRAGMENTS (Corrput, 2019) recorded in lieu of reading on the 19th of April in Athens, GA though only posted up online in April 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWlvbLyjhrM
6) Participation as filmer in LE FILM DES INSTANTS / THE FILM OF MOMENTS, collaborative project orchestrated by Frank Smith where 52 people filmed 1 minute from their windows on 29 March 2020 during set times to make this 12-12:53 film. : on VIMEO at: https://vimeo.com/404007303
OLDER VIDEOS: 7) A not-new reading video, but for your interest for anyone who has not seen it, made by Lisa Pasold in 2017. Radial. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhFqjW0hruw
8) I am also one of the voices and poets reading during the film LE MOULIN, by Gilles Weinzaepflan. My reading part begins at 8m50. I am reading an extract of the poem Collectif: that appears in my forthcoming book THAT WHICH I TOUCH HAS NO NAME (Eyewear, Oct 2020):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjd83luhmtw&t=37s 
9) LECTURE pour remue.net en français: https://remue.net/Nuit-remue-11-Jennifer-K-Dick
10) Reading at the Tears in The Fence poetry festival, Fall 2014. Introduction by David Caddy. Filmed by Tom Kiziewicz and Georgie McGregor, Produced by Andrew Henon with thanks to Somerset Film. In this video I do calm down a bit after those first few nervous minutes. I read the poems "Animal Logic", "The Memory Machine", taken from by book CIRCUITS (Corrupt, 2013) and a selection of CERN poems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJp1qq8hf3Q
11) Also: film of my installation in Basel at the SBB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmye8THGxww&t=75s

Quarantine Report Week 1

Quarantine Week 1 : 16 March-23 March 2020(I have decided to do a weekly quarantine reflection until the CoVid-19 wave "passes")
This week, from Iowa, where the government has not set into law the same official restrictions as many other states, we are already folded within our homes. Our home. My childhood home—in my parent’s house in the slip of what remains of the woods between I-80 and the Iowa River as one wends one’s way out of the center of Iowa City on Dubuque St towards the Coralville Reservoir. From here, we can hear the traffic blast past on the interstate like a rush of somewhat muted white noise while we watch the eagles who have nested along the bend in the river below the steep almost-cliff slopes beyond the slip of woods rise up through the still-leafless trees, into bright blue sky after the snows from Saturday have already melted.
Damp leaves needing raking stick to old tree trunks and wet grass. We go out. There is no one else in sight. Our feet leave prints in the soft earth. We watch chipmunks and squirrels, darting birds in preseason courtship. The deer who often come to lounge in the middle of the backyard have yet to pass by, and the hummingbirds, too, have not returned. There are no rabbits yet, either, though soon enough, I know, they will be bounding about everywhere in twos, then fours and sixes. There are, however, hints of rose-white buds at the tips of one tree: the promise of flowers and fruit to come.
And then we go inside. The news is on and there are reports and reports of reports and comments on reports. We watch the Task Force and their contradictions. We keep a keen eye on the worldometer, watch daily, hourly, as the numbers rise in every column. Even the recovered, you think. But the percentage of deaths has come up to 15 for resolved cases though the percentage of serious cases in the “active” box remains the same: 5%. I check China, France, Spain, the USA. I look farther down on the list. Looks pretty good in Nepal. We have never been to Nepal, not one of us. I suppose this is not the moment. In Iowa the number of cases strikes 90, then climbs. Today we are at over a hundred. But no deaths. Yet.
I watch my adoptive home town on the screen. In Mulhouse, France, there is the scramble for more doctors, nurses, beds, care. The hospital (off and on on strike since June 2019 because of a lack of ER staff Doctors and caregivers) is overwhelmed. It has been working over capacity for 3+ weeks now. Yet the town everyone has always said “where?” to has inched its way into the local newspapers, radio programs, TV spots from London to Iowa. In Mulhouse, we see, the military begins to airlift patients to other parts of France. The military is constructing a massive outside tent-hospital in the parking lot across from the regular hospital. No one I know is hospitalized. News pours in little by little of doctors passing away: 3 so far. Instagram videos of balcony serenades for medical staff go viral. Clapping in the dark under a sky of silence. Then, a friend writes, the roar of helicopters begins their nightly rounds.
I receive emails and text messages: “We are ok, but the news next door is not so good.” “We only have a mild case.” “We are working at home, feeling the effects, but will pull through.” Silence.
The first week of quarantine: people are (mostly) fine. They go out (too much). They do not really fear (going out) (getting it). Or they fear (everyone dying). Both (extremes). The apartments are cloying, tight, small, full of activity despite despair. “Too much to do” “To occupied with... to find the time for...” but the news shows more images of worsening conditions in Italy and Spain. We do not want that here. We see it coming. The worst thing about quarantine is... the list keeps growing. It is hard to know. From here, perhaps, the worst thing about quarantine is just waiting for the inevitable.
24 March 2020Iowa City, IA, USA
This week on Self-Quarantine Lines , I have also posted various poems: *  Perhaps I Could Live in These Woods (24 March): https://selfquarantinelines.blogspot.com/2020/03/perhaps-i-could-live-in-these-woods.html *  To Poem Without Voice, for Margo Berdeshevsky (22 March): https://selfquarantinelines.blogspot.com/2020/03/to-poem-without-voice.html *  The Thing Is, Things Continue (21 March): https://selfquarantinelines.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-thing-is-things-continue.html  *  Harbingers of Spring, for John Sears (18 March): https://selfquarantinelines.blogspot.com/2020/03/harbingers-of-spring.html  *  Root/Reboot (17 March): https://selfquarantinelines.blogspot.com/2020/03/root-reboot.html *  Attaining Iowa (15 March):  https://selfquarantinelines.blogspot.com/2020/03/attaining-iowa.html
This week on Christophe Fiat's Instagram "Tea Time / Rien ne va plus" I was also invited alongside numerous authors from France and elsewhere to supply poems for the 21st of March 2020 World Poetry Day. I wrote 4 "Tea Time"s in French: which appeared on his instagram feed and were also republished as photos on his FB page, and they appear also on my own.

COMMUNITY CREATIVITY INVITED in times of quarantine

Photo credit: Design winner KOALADESIGNER from 99 designs logo contest REVERSING THE QUARANTINE: COMMUNITY CREATIVITY & PLAY: 
Going stir crazy, even though your self-quarantine has only lasted 5 minutes and normally you would have spent all day, or all weekend, alone, reading, writing, watching netflix, painting, drawing, emailing or playing video games anyway? 
There is something about the obligation not to go to the movies, theater, shopping, etc that makes us want to go. But no, can't, so... I suggest we all find ways to leap into the dialogue. To not go stir crazy, to not over obsess. To not lose hope.
Starting today and hopefully soon including LOTS of other authors, I have created the blog  SELF QUARANTINE LINES  which are, in fact:
"Self-Quarantine Lines" or "Lines in a Time of Quarantine" or "Pandemic missives"or "Corona Compositions"
In short,15 authors, to start, on this, the 15th of March 2020, have been invited to "join" and to begin posting. With their help and suggestions of others, in the coming week we will hopefully get the number of official authors up to the blogger maximum. 
BUT check out the comments options: YOU, too, if not on this year or not sure you want to be, can post poems, fragments, mini stories, or whatever onto the posts that appear in the coming days and weeks. 
WHY? I am hoping this will be a way to keep up the morale, the dialogue, the livliness of expression not only in one voice, but across voices, places, and time zones in these, our quarantine times. https://selfquarantinelines.blogspot.com/