Social Etymologies

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE!

The Poetix Collaborative: Readings by Gabrielle Civil, Kazim Ali, Kao Kalia Yang, and G. E. Patterson
Thursday 17 April, 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Nolte Center 125

Gabrielle Civil

A bilingual poetry reading by GABRIELLE CIVIL, Associate Professor of English, Women's Studies and Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity at the College of Saint Catherine. Prof. Civil comes to performance art at the intersection of poetry, installation and conceptual art. Often, she creates environments, walks into them, and makes things happen. Performance becomes then for her a new way to make poetry. More than character or plot, image and interaction entice her - as well as the challenge of being in her own body while being with others in public space.

Civil will be followed by readings from KAZIM ALI, KAO KALIA YANG and G.E. PATTERSON. Kazim Ali is a faculty member in Creative Writing at Oberlin College. He is the author of two books of poetry, The Far Mosque (Alice James Books) and the forthcoming The Fortieth Day, and the novel Quinn's Passage, named one of the Best Books of 2005 by Chronogram. Kao Kalia Yang is the writer of the film A Million Miles Away to the Place Where We Were Born and author of The Latehomecomer, both works about the Hmong refugee experience. G. E. Patterson is a poet, critic, translator and teacher. He is the author of Tug (Graywolf Press, 1999) and To and From (Ahsahta, 2008), and winner of the Minnesota Book Award.
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The Poetix Collaborative: Mark Nowak in a poetry dialogue with writers from AFSCME 3800 18 April 2008, 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM Location: Folwell Hall, 108

Mark Nowak

MARK NOWAK is Associate Professor of Humanities at the College of Saint Catherine and his multidisciplinary work includes publications in anthropology, poetry/poetics, cultural studies, and photography. He is editor of the journal Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics which in recent years has brought into print new works by writers and artists such as Amiri Baraka, Lila Abu-Lughod, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Diane Glancy, Kamau Brathwaite, and Gerald Vizenor. Nowak is also editor of Theodore Enslin's Then, and Now: Selected Poems, 1943-1993 (National Poetry Foundation) and co-editor (with Diane Glancy) of Visit Teepee Town: Native Writings After the Detours (Coffee House Press). Two collection of Nowak's poems and ethnographic writings, Revenants and Shut Up Shut Down have also been published by Coffee House Press and work from Revenants has appeared in over thirty literary journals and anthologies.
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The Poetix Collaborative: "The Guantanamo Poems" with Mark Falkoff and W. Flagg Miller Friday 18 April, 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Location: Nolte Center 125

David Chiasson, NY Times (19 August 2007)

MARC FALKOFF, is a human rights lawyer and editor of Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak (University of Iowa Press, 2007). W. Flagg Miller is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Davis. He is an anthropologist specializing in Middle Eastern poetics as social practice, who provided a scholarly foreword for the book, and is the author of The Moral Resonance of Arab Media: Audiocassette Poetry and Culture in Yemen (Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2007).

Guantánamo detainees wrote poems on Styrofoam cups. The Dow Corp. came up with Styrofoam in 1942 as part of the war effort. These poems in Arabic or Pashto were recyclable yet they were discarded. The Guantánamo poems neither exist, since the originals are gone, nor do they not exist, since the translations, done by the legal translators involved in their defense, remain. The internment camp was invented in 1896 in Cuba (according to Giorgio Agamben). Guantánamo is in Cuba but it is under no active jurisdiction other than that of the US. It conforms to what theorist Carl Schmitt calls "the state of exception." This is what happens when a legal system is circumvented by force. Schmitt's paradigm was Hitler's suspension of the Weimar Constitution after the burning of the Reichstag. The suspension of a Constitution requires a paradoxical legal space outside of the Constitution. This legal space, which Schmitt calls sovereignty, defines dictatorship.

Excerpts from Poems from Guantánamo (Download file)

The poems themselves, their translation and translators, were all deemed security risks. Only twenty-two poems were approved for publication, at the behest of a human rights lawyer representing seventeen of the captives.
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The Poetix Collaborative: "The Collapsible Poetics Theater" with Rodrigo Toscano and reading by Jeff Derksen Friday 18 April, 8 PM - 10 PM
Location: Nolte Center 125

Poetics Theater is a test of poetry. The Collapsible Poetics Theater is an all volunteer effort, one that assembles itself within a given 24 hour period of each performance. Each locale (with its resident poets, experienced actors, experienced non-actors) brings an entirely new set possibilities. It is reminiscent of Commedia Dell'Arte in its traveling, portable, rapid-set up qualities. To be sure, Poetics Theater fits into the poetry scene as a baby does in itchy burlap; it fits into the drama scene as does a little crown, little scepter, little gown, all neatly stored in a metal suitcase (quite literally!). The dings are just dings. The persistent question is: can the poem be tested any further?

RODRIGO TOSCANO (Labor Institute, NYC), is a poet, founder of Collapsible Poetics Theatre, and author of (among others): The Leveling Swerve (Krupskaya, 2004), Platform (Atelos, 2003), The Disparities (Green Integer, 2002), and The Partisan (O Books, 1999).

JEFF DERKSEN is an Assistant Professor of English at Simon Fraser University. He is a poet, cultural critic, and author (among others) of: Transnational Muscle Cars (Talonbooks, 2003), Dwell (Talonbooks, 1994), and Down Time (Talonbooks, 1990).