PROJECT // We’ve Weave: Deep Curation
Deep Curation is a practice of experimental poetry reading organization developed by Klara du Plessis, emphasizing the directed and mediated nature of the literary event as performance and the act of curation as art form. Deep Curation is curious to shape readings that enter poets’ work into dialogue with each other, to excerpt, rearrange, intertwine, and rewrite a new, collective script for performance. During the residency at Studio303, du Plessis will collaborate with poets and interdisciplinary artists Kama La Mackerel and Alexei Perry Cox to produce a performance that will observe themes of place, identity formation and grief surrounding binaries and borders. The process is intended to be improvisational and playful, expanding the minimalism of the poetry reading format with movement, costumes, props, and audiovisual technology to emphasize a kinetic, gestural, and affective practice. A version of this work will be performed at White Wall Studio, 28 of July 2022 at 7 p.m. and at Théâtre aux Écuries, 9 of August at 7 p.m.
BIOS // Klara du Plessis (she/her) is a poet, critic, and literary curator. Winner of the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Klara du Plessis’ debut collection, Ekke, was published to critical acclaim. Her newest book is Hell Light Flesh, shortlisted for the 2021 Raymond Souster Award, the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and released from Palimpsest Press. Since 2018, Klara is expanding her curatorial practice to include experimental Deep Curation poetry reading events, an approach which places poets’ work in deliberate dialogue with each other and heightens the curator’s agency toward the poetic product. Recently she completed a video-poem, Eye Rhymes, in collaboration with Qirou Yang for Le Festival de la Poésie de Montréal, and a sculptural artists’ book, Incipit, Scree, Explicit, with U.K.-based artist, Kadie Salmon, to be exhibited at Artexte in 2023. Klara is currently in the final year of her PhD in English Literature at Concordia University.
Kama La Mackerel (they/them) is an award-winning Mauritian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, educator, writer, curator and literary translator who works within and across performance, photography, installations, textiles, digital art and literature. They are the author ZOM-FAM (Metonymy Press) which was named a CBC Best Poetry Book, a Globe and Mail Best Debut, and was a finalist for the QWF Concordia University First Book Award and the Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize. World Literature Today called ZOM-FAM “a milestone in Mauritian literature.” Kama has exhibited, performed and lectured internationally and their writing in English, French and Kreol has appeared in publications both online and in print. In 2021, Kama was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Joseph S. Stauffer Prize for emerging and mid-career artists in Visual Arts. In 2021, Kama presented their new multimedia exhibition Queering the Is/land Bodyat La Galerie de l’UQAM as part of MOMENTA, Biennale de l’image.
Alexei Perry Cox (she/her) is a writer, teacher, performer, and organiser. She is the author of Night 3 | اليوم الرابع (Centre for Expanded Poetics), Re:Evolution (Gap Riot Press), Finding Places to Make Places (Vallum), as well as the full length poetry collection Under Her (Insomniac Press). Her second full-length book, PLACE, is forthcoming with Noemi Press (2022). Her creative work and criticism have graced the pages of a wide variety of publications, including Journal Safar (جورنال سفر), Arc Poetry Magazine, Moko Magazine, Puritan, carte blanche and The Georgia Review. Her interdisciplinary stage production Balance|Unbalance and her current sound & music collaboration [Enters] finally have international tour dates on the horizon again. At the core of her makings is the belief that we imagine relationally, sometimes with words and sometimes with gaze. And that both are important.
DETAILS //
Curator: Klara du Plessis
Poets and performers: Kama La Mackerel and Alexei Perry Cox