Art-Text by Jennifer K Dick now showing in Australia

 I am thrilled, and humbled, by the invitation to partake in this group art show "WHEN YOU CALL MY NAME" curated by Mayu Kanamori (click HERE for her participant's page, then on names to see her works) which opened on 11 Sept 2025 and will be going until 22 Sept 2025 in Canbera, Australia at: Australian National University: Coombs Building Coombs Tea Room Foyer, 9 Fellows Rd Acton, ACT. Here is the image of the window I made a text-paint collage across for Tomashi Inouye:

I was supplied with a name, and some background information, then went out and did more research and reflected on the position of someone in my time, and from my background, trying to address a hidden/lost history of the person I was asked to dedicate a work to: Tomashi Inouye. As I wrote in my artist statement, available at the show's website and in the catalogue: 

(online at: https://mayu.com.au/WhenYouCallMyName-arts/?internee=inouye-tomoshi)
 

As for the text, I have continued to revise it and sharpen it, but I have also thought through time of this person I do not, will not, ever know, and hope others will also think of him and the other names that Mayu selected to be part of this wonderful project. As she declared: 

"There is a saying that we die twice:

The first time being our physical death.  

The second being when our name is mentioned for the last time." --Maya Kanamori 
"When You Call My Name" exhibition statement

 

 

Recent academic Talks:

 Recently participated in these wonderful conferences this fall: 

28-30 novembre: PHILIPPE BECK: UNE AUTRE CLARTE organized by Paris-Cité and Virginia Tech. I gave the talk: Création et didactique : la place de la pensée dans l’œuvre récente de Philippe Beck by Jennifer K Dick

Cette intervention poserait des questions et des réflexions sur l'usage de trois styles de pensée "didactique" dans la poésie du livre Ryrkaïpii (Flammarion, 2023) de Philippe Beck. Style 1: l’énonciation dans un ordre énuméré (a, b, c).  Style 2: l’emploi du signe « égale » en contraste avec son usage des deux points. Style 3 : Phrases du type « axiome » (qui vont en paire avec des questions, souvent rhétoriques). Pour cette troisième "style didactique", j'ai aussi proposé des sous-catégories des axiomes : Catégorie 1 : axiome directe, Catégorie 2: axiome-observation, Catégorie 3:  axiome d’insistance : emphatique, Catégorie 4:  axiome de l’ordre taxonomique et Catégorie 5: axiome avec une logique par connexions. Pour conclure: je montrerai comment l'usage des styles didactiques contribuent, dans cet œuvre, à établir l'énigme et à établir un espace de transformation.

24 November 2023: Participated in the Round Table at the close of the MICROSCOPIC IMAGINARIES IN 20th and 21st CENTURY LITERATURE Journée d'étude at la Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.  

Round Table with: Sarah Bouttier (Ecole Polytechnique), Jennifer K. Dick (Université de Haute Alsace), Catherine Larose (Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement) and Dorothy Lehane (Litmus Publishing). We discussed poems by the following authors: Jen Bervin, Pattiann Rogers, Les Murray, Adam Dickinson, and Simon Smith--adding some remarks on Christian Bök. 

9 and 10 October 2023: Gave a talk on the 10th of October for the International and quite interdisciplinary conference "BORDERS IN THE ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD: MAPPING AND COUNTER-MAPPING" at la MISHA, Université de Strasbourg.  My talk was:  De-or re-routing California in Fugitive Assemblage by Jennifer Calkins

Mapping loss, ancestral history and the self onto the backbones of California: the roadways, no-tell motels, tourist sites and natural landscapes that surround and are embedded in the body and history of the speaker, Fugitive Assemblage (the 3rd Thing, Washington, 2020) is a work both deconstructing and reconstructing self and geographic (s)place. What makes us whole? What tears and rends us? Calkins' fragmented, collaged (including specific geographical maps) road-trip, which intended to go straight up the 105, takes a detour and thus maps, accidentally, the state onto the event haunting this story. Or rather, it is the map of place that makes this story about a rending from a whole. It asks what is native/who is native of a place? What is place over time? What borders are we allowed to traverse in what directions (north-south into and out of Mexico, south-north as a questionable return)? This talk will explore the intimate lineage of self and place as it is mapped and as the map is followed and detoured from in Calkins' unusual “assemblage”. Is the author scrambling the maps of California, or rather, in her own search for clarity, straightening the lines and the lineages of space and place back into place? Can we map our way home? Are maps redrawn by personal trips and the order we follow the lines of a place? Where do navigation and mapping collide? This literary work provides a form of counter-mapping demanding exploration in the context of a conference on mapping and counter-mapping like this one in Strasbourg. 

Keep an eye out for publication announcements following these events!

 

Jennifer K Dick's talks, readings and hosting in the coming weeks

 Jennifer K Dick, yep, me, is running around giving talks, reading, hosting. 

So where can you find me?

25 May 2023: 11am session: I will be speaking on Anne Carson--as the program says, Jennifer K Dick talk: “De-Stabilizing the Known / Restauring the Unknown: Reading Anne Carson through the Lens of Quantum Physics (and Dark Matter)” at the Anne Carson and the Unknown: Explorations in 21st Century Experimental Poetry Conference. For the entire programme, links to watch online, go to:
https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/incal/ecr/evenements/anne-carson-and-the-unknown-explorations-in-21st-century-experimental-poetry.html ABSTRACT: Perhaps it is not the unknown in Carson, but rather that one “knows” only in an instant before something changes the outcome: the uncertain, the flux returns—i.e. Schrodinger’s paradox. In this manner, Carson inhabits the transformatory space of scientific theoretical practice, ever striving for deeper knowledge where any response to a question is immediately undermined by another query. As Carson’s own admiration for Jacques Lacan’s declaration reveals: “The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom” (Carson/Aitkins interview). I propose to borrow from Kathryn Schaffer and Gabriela Barreto Lemos’s assessment of how quantum physics can provide ideological and theoretical tools for the arts and humanities. I will study select passages from Carson’s books where the vacillating waves of plots intersect with a potential development in consciousness for a character, consciousness related to their being part of, though often felt as outside or left of center, or of events, societies, communities, relationships and most of all a secured, fixed sense of self-understanding (self knowledge).... [truncated abstract here--full version on the conf website]

27th May 2023: starting from 15h30: I will read a text as part of the

open-forum event organized by the amazing and dynamic author Bénédicte Heim. The theme is about aging, and overall the event will be in French.: Dans le cadre de l'exposition " Faire son âge " qui se tiendra à partir du 24 mai jusqu'à la fin du mois de juin dans la galerie de la Reine Christine, au 12 rue des Patriarches 75005 (métro Censier-Daubenton), paroles, art, etc autour du vieillissement le samedi 27 mai à partir de 15h30. 

30 May 2023: 19h30 I am hosting the next IVY WRITERS PARIS evening with Susan Schultz and Françoise de LaRoque at Delaville Café, 34 bvd bonne nouvelle. Full info on the Ivy blog at: https://ivywritersparis.blogspot.com/2023/05/ivy-le-30-mai-avec-s-schultz-et-f.html

 

3 juin 2023: 9h30 I am giving another conference presentation: Jennifer K. DICK (Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse) : "Resisting Transmission: Against a poetry of communication?" at the 62nd annual SAES Congrès in RENNES on Transmission(s) in Atelier 14: Poets and Poetry. https://congres2023.saesfrance.org/programme-scientifique/programme-par-atelier/ ABSTRACT:

As the globalized world leans—as if in a kind of anglicized linguistic immigration—towards Twitter and Insta-poetry, to the directive statement and easy access in a kind of all-for-one English as dominant language, a second poetry and poetics has been slowly emerging and growing in force: that of the multilingual author. These writers’ works might be published as “English” or “American” but their pages are dotted by a wide array of other languages, languages that often absorb, cover, and bury the English. The books I am addressing here are by authors that refuse to self-translate. For some, this poses no real barrier to being interpreted as their second and third languages share roots with English. But for others, writing in radically different alphabets or where non-bilingual readers will not be able to grasp the semantic meaning of the words, the “transmission” (in a habitual sense of reading poetry) finds itself at the end of a dead end street. In this case, the foreign language(s) often acts as extra-lingual expression, pushing these works into boundary zones between poetry and visual art or performance, or poetry and music (zaum-like sound poetry practices).

These works are a reckoning and recognition of linguistic and cultural otherness within perceived unified nations and literary traditions. As such, exploration and study of these authors provide essential tools for deeper reflections on notions of transmission of meaning in poetry and literature. They also demand perhaps that we rethink our old definitions of the verb “to read”.

6 June 2023: 19h30 Back in Paris it is already time for me to host another Ivy night. This one is the final of our spring 2023 season, and will feature visiting American author and translator Cynthia Hogue alongside Paris local authors and translators Vincent Broqua and Virginie Poitrasson. at Delaville Café, 34 bvd bonne nouvelle. A pre-announcement for this is already up on the Ivy blog at https://ivywritersparis.blogspot.com/2023/05/ivy-le-30-mai-avec-s-schultz-et-f.html

Jennifer K Dick is Reading Anne Carson through the Lens of Quantum Physics and Dark Matter at this May 2023 conference

 I am thrilled to be participating in this very exciting conference on Anne Carson in May. Below you can find the provisional schedule. I am in the final panel before the conference closes. 

 

Anne Carson and the Unknown: Explorations in 21st-Century Experimental Poetry
PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME
24-25 May 2023, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

“A phenomenologist from Louvain-la-Neuve
is telling us what Heidegger thought during the winter term
of 1935.
There was an interrogation of art.
There was a circle to be made.”
—Anne Carson, Plainwater (2000 [1995], p. 56)

DAY 1: WEDNESDAY 24 MAY 2023
8.30 – 9.00 Registration & coffee
9.00 – 9.15 Conference opening by the Embassy of Canada to Belgium
9.15 – 9.30 Opening remarks
9.30 – 10.15 Keynote by Ian Rae (King’s University College at Western University), “Knowing Collapse: Anne Carson’s ‘The Fall of Rome’”

10.15 – 10.45 Coffee break

10.45 – 12.15 Session 1 (“Reaching Towards Other Selves and Otherness”)
- “Norma Jeane Baker, ‘Harlot of Troy’: Anne Carson’s Unknowable Hellenic Eidolon” – Amanda Kubic (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
- “Albertine or the Unknowability of the Other: Carson’s Reading of Proust” – Christina Kkona (Bordeaux-Montaigne University)
- “Poetics of the Caesura” – Elizabeth D. Harvey (University of Toronto)

12.15 – 13.45 Lunch

13.45 – 14.15 Performance by Annabel Wilson (Massey University), “‘Dismantling of Wisdom’: Creative-Critical Responses to Anne Carson’s Nox”

14.15 – 15.45 Session 2 (“Oscillations between Knowing and Sensing”)
- “Anne Carson’s Radical Formalism” – David Fearn (University of Warwick)
- “Anne Carson’s ‘Anarchitecture’ and the Disrupting Potential of Matter in Float” – Helena Van Praet (Université catholique de Louvain)
- “A Montaging of the Senses: The Chor(e)o-Phonographics of Anne Carson’s H of H Playbook” – Annie Felix (University of California, Berkeley)

15.45 – 16.15 Coffee break

16.15 – 17.00 Keynote by Laura Jansen (University of Bristol), “On Not Knowing – Yet”
UCLOUVAIN | LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE | BELGIUM
Collège Erasme, Place Blaise Pascal, 1 bte L3.03.31, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgique
– www.uclouvain.be –https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/incal

17.30 – 19.15 Walking dinner

19.30 – 21.00 Poetry performance by Margaret Christakos

DAY 2: THURSDAY 25 MAY 2023
8.45 – 9.15 Registration & coffee
9.15 – 10.15 Session 3 (“Experiments with Myth and Media”)
- “Tracing the Unknown Herakles in Anne Carson’s H of H Playbook” - Zina Giannopoulou (University of California, Irvine) & Lena Grimm (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
- “Re-reading Tragedy with Comics in Carson & Bruno’s The Trojan Women” - Natalie J. Swain (University of Winnipeg)

10.15 – 10.45 Coffee break

10.45 – 12.15 Session 4 (“Towards Critical Epistemologies”)
- “On Carson’s Transparency” – Elizabeth Sarah Coles (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
- “Dogs Talking: Translation, the Female and the Unintelligible in and between Anne Carson’s Texts” – Theresa Mayer (University of Hildesheim)
- “The ‘Floating’ Gender: Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red and the Lost Trans Archive” – Mary Mussman (University of California, Berkeley)

12.15 – 13.45 Lunch

13.45 – 14.30 Keynote by Christine Wiesenthal (University of Alberta), “A Poet’s (Unpredictable) Techne Semeiotike”

14.30 – 15.00 Coffee break

15.00 – 16.30 Session 5 (“Exploring Emotions and the Invisible”)
- “Emotional Commitment and Response: Simone White, Anne Carson and Affective Criticism” – Nicholas Vila Byers (University of California, Berkeley)
- “De-Stabilizing the Known / Restauring the Unknown: Reading Anne Carson through the Lens of Quantum Physics and Dark Matter” – Jennifer K Dick (Université de Haute Alsace)
- “‘That Emptiness Where God Would Be’: Anne Carson and the Postsecular” – Kyra Sutton (University of California, Berkeley)

16.30 – 17.00 Concluding remarks

Coordinating committee:
- Ben De Bruyn, Professeur (UCLouvain)
- Michel Delville, Professeur ordinaire (ULiège)
- Stéphanie Vanasten, Professeure (UCLouvain)
- Helena Van Praet, Assistante (UCLouvain)
UCLOUVAIN | LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE | BELGIUM
Collège Erasme, Place Blaise Pascal, 1 bte L3.03.31, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgique
– www.uclouvain.be – https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/incal - https://uclouvain.be/fr/institutsrecherche/
incal/ecr

Scientific committee:
- Jan Baetens, Professeur émérite (KU Leuven)
- Ben De Bruyn, Professeur (UCLouvain)
- Michel Delville, Professeur ordinaire (ULiège)
- Bart Eeckhout, Professeur ordinaire (University of Antwerp)
- Bertrand Gervais, Professeur titulaire (Université du Québec à Montréal)
- Laura Jansen, Associate Professor (University of Bristol)
- Stéphanie Vanasten, Professeure (UCLouvain)
- Helena Van Praet, Assistante (UCLouvain)

Organised in association with and the support of NEDLIT (Groupe de Recherche en littératures et cultures de langue néerlandaise et comparées), ECR (Centre de recherche écriture, création, représentation), and INCAL (Institut des civilisations, arts et lettres) at the UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Organised in collaboration with Poëziecentrum, Ghent, Belgium.
With the support of the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.–FNRS) and the Embassy of Canada to Belgium.

Contact: annecarsonconference2023 [at] uclouvain.be
Website:
https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/incal/ecr/evenements/anne-carson-and-the-unknown-explorations-in-21st-century-experimental-poetry.html

RED WHEELBARROW READING the 19th of June 2022 at 3pm

  READING THE 19TH OF JUNE AT 3PM
AT THE RED WHEELBARROW:
ALEXANDER DICKOW
JENNIFER K DICK
BISWAMIT DWIBEDY
& LAURA MULLEN

 

The Red Wheelbarrow
9 & 11 rue de Medici
75006 Paris
M° Odéon, Cluny or RER B Luxembourg

BIOS:

Alexander Dickow is the author of 8 books—most recently Le premier souper (La Volte, 2021) & The Appetites (Madhat, Inc, 2018). He writes with equal versatility in both English & French as well as in a combination of the two. He has also translated 2 books & edited 2 critical volumes. For more, see: https://www.alexdickow.net/

Jennifer K Dick is the author of 4 collections of poetry & 6 chap/artbooks. She directs the department of English at Université de Haute Alsace, France. She will be reading from That Which I Touch Has No Name (Black Spring Press Group, 2022) & artbooks from Estepa Editions, France. For more, see https://jenniferkdick.blogspot.com  

Biswamit Dwibedy is the author of 6 collections of poetry published in India & the United States, including Hubble Gardener (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018). He is the founder & editor of Anew Print, a small press that publishes limited-edition chapbooks from writers in India & abroad, & he edited selections of Indian poetry in translation from 7 different regional languages for Aufgabe in 2015. He teaches at The American University of Paris.

Laura Mullen is the author of 8 books of poetry (most recently Complicated Grief, Solid Objects 2015). Her translations from the French include Hero by Véronique Pittolo (Black Square Editions, 2018). Mullen is currently the Kenan Professor of the Humanities in Creative Writing at Wake Forest University’s Department of English. She will be reading recent translations alongside the French. For more see: https://www.lauramullen.biz/