Adeena Karasick, Ph.D., is a New York based Canadian poet, performer, filmmaker, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of 18 books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard), “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha), noted for their “cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory” (Charles Bernstein), “a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick’s signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” (Craig Dworkin); “demonstrating how desire flows through language, an unstoppable flood of allusion (both literary and pop-cultural), word-play, and extravagant and outrageous sound-work” (Mark Scroggins). Most recent books include, Ouvert: Oeuvre: Openings, visualized by Warren Lehrer, Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations (both published Lavender Ink Press, 2023); Eicha: The Book of Lumenations film (NuJu Films, NY, 2023); Massaging the Medium: 7 Pechakuchas, (The Institute of General Semantics Press, 2022); Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018); and Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press, Italy, 2017), the libretto for her Spoken Word opera; Salomé: Woman of Valor CD, (NuJu Records, 2020); and Salomé Birangona, translation into Bengali (Boibhashik Prokashoni Press, Kolkata, 2020). Honors include: 2023 Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form (MEA), 2023 Inaugural League of Canadian Poets Spoken Word Award, 3-time recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award, Voce Donna Italia Award for contributions to feminist thinking, shortlisted for Outstanding Book of the Year Award (ICA, 2023). Karasick teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute, is Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology, Associate International Editor of New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, and is Poet Laureate of the Institute of General Semantics. The “Adeena Karasick Archive” is established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University.

June 2025

Poetry

three poems

three poems

Under the Rubble

Here’s the Thing: