Ilya Kaminsky

 Ilya Kaminsky figures in the April issue of Journal of American Poets.

My notes on April 1 reading by Kaminsky from Deaf Republic:  (The “Big Read” NEA grant)

(note, this is separate from “All Rochester Reads” — it is nationwide.)

 

Just as there are many different kinds of people in different cultures, "Deaf Culture" similarly draws with multiple colored-crayons

 

Several events coming up:

Artwork inspired by the book at NTID Dyer Arts Gallery from 4/3-4/28 10-4

 

 Beyond Sound: ASL Poetry and Wordplay with Eric Epstein, both Wed. April 12 (Central Library at 6:30 pm) and April 15 at 1:30 pm (Pittsford)   Registration here:   https://calendar.libraryweb.org/event/10245251

 

Performance of Deaf Republic as a play! April 14-15-16.  You can purchase tickets here:

https://rittickets.com/online/default.asp  It will be at the Henrietta Ballroom at the RIT Inn, Henrietta: 5257 W Henrietta Rd, Henrietta, NY 14467

 

4/14:  3 pm-4:30 pm Black Poetry and BLM presentation at RIT, Fireside Lounge

 

Nutshell: 4/1/2023 Reading by Ilya Kaminsky from Deaf Republic -- 

 

Ilya has a very strong Ukranian accent and learned to lip-read Yiddish and Ukranian in Odessa, but with no hearing aids. I asked him about translation of his book, which he wrote in English.  It has been translated into other languages, like Ukranian and Russian, but not by him.  His answer, spoken with gentle humility:  Because I have been living here, working with this language.  If I were living in a different country, I would write in that language.  From Odessa, to England he arrived in Brighton, NY in 1993.  

 

In the audience was Jane Schuster his beloved teacher at the HS and you should have seen their “secret signing” as they greeted each other!  I could imagine this was a special ritual they must have done in those hallways!  Wendy Lowe, from Writers and Books who used to teach sign language and was instrumental in driving him to NTID was also there— and he paid tribute to her and other poets like Tony Piccione.  In his introductory remarks, he mentioned Extraordinary Bodies  by Rosemarie Garland Thomson which had a major influence on him.  This book

is the first major critical study to examine literary and cultural representations of physical disability.  It situates disability as a social construction, shifting it from a property of bodies to a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do. Rosemarie Garland Thomson examines disabled figures in sentimental novels such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, and the popular cultural ritual of the freak show.

 

He has a most personable and kind manner, and for the Q& A after the reading, respectfully thanked each person with the question.  For instance, a question about the difference between the two "acts" revealed  that the second part of the book is based on the story of his grandfather and how his father was hidden — and why so many tomatoes show up in the poems!  Because, one of the hiding places, was at the market behind the tomato seller!  

 

 

All proceeds from his readings have been going to support war victims.  He received the Poets for Peace prize in 2019 (His other book, Dancing in Odessa is amazing too, published that year.).  As he put it… the first part of the story (well… a “closet play in poetry" — a hybrid genre to give shape to the story as he puts it)  is to demonstrate that in spite of violence, war, people still fall in love.  Have children.  Life continues, although, sadly the story often turns  away from what could have been in peaceful times to murder and chaos.  He did mention that in Odessa, his city, they are lucky — only 1-2 bombings a day.  Other places, 1-2 bombings per hour.  He urged us to contact our politicians… as the “war is also in this room”… and referred to the war started long ago… 

 

 

**

This poem just appeared https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/157519/i-ask-that-i-do-not-die

(not part of the Big Read, and he only read poems from Deaf Republic).

Although Ilya didn't mention this particular interview with Carolyn Forché, it is well worth the read:

https://lithub.com/in-the-hour-of-war-carolyn-forche-and-ilya-kaminsky-on-contemporary-ukrainian-poetry/

from the interview in the April issue of the American Academy's Poet Talk:

"When Kyiv was bombed a few months ago by the Russians, my friend was hiding in the subway, along with hundreds of other people, hiding there for weeks, older people, children.  To keep sane, my friend reciting poems from memory.  Then when she ran out of poems to recite,

she began to translate them.  Little kids who were there in the subway hiding from bombs,

for days, gathered around her.  What are you doing?  And so the kids formed a circle and started to recite these poems with her.  That's how people got through, how they survived the time of heavy bombardment.

 

Poetry helps us articulate the most impossible moments. 

When we have nothing else, we can still hold a handful of words in our memory,

a tune, and that might be all we have got now to survive. 

If we are lucky, it is there.  Keep it safe this verbal music.  Memorize new line poems if you can.

You might need them one day, war planes or not.  when facing the blank wall that is crisis,

everyone needs a bit of music, a tune, a balm."