Watch Party Compilation 3 Adeena Karasick and bill bissett

START

[Piano melody. Whoosh sound effect.] | Video Description: Black screen with a white logo and white text that reads "SpokenWeb" transitions to a black screen with white text that reads "Enough Said / Adeena Karasick / bill bissett" and a banner on the bottom left of the screen that reads "SpokenWeb Presents".

Video Description: Black screen with white text that reads "Enough Said / March 13th 1995 / Adeena Karasick"

[Explains the Poetry Express project in Toronto, in which poets performed on a bus. Performs a piece beginning with the line "Keep your eyes on the road." Applause.] | Video Description: Medium shot as Karasick flips through papers on a blue box over a trolley cart, which also holds an almost full glass beer bottle. Medium closeup as Karasick performs a piece. Karasick wears a black zippered vest over a black long-sleeved shirt, gold dangling earrings, and shoulder length black hair that is loose and slightly curled.

Nice 90's hair!

Jill Battson organized that poetry Bus

Adeena, you have NOT changed a bit.

The poetry bus sounds like such a cool project

HAHAHAHA

Bus verse yeah! I remember the express!

I'd love to ride on the Poetry Express!

So many road poems. I rolled 3 cars in my day including Warren Tallman's when we drove cross country for me to go study with Frank Davey in Toronto --- Needless to say, I no longer drive ; )

You knew a lot if this one by heart, it looks like.

Nomadic and vagrant in exile - even then

Even though it must have been pretty new.

Was the Poetry Express a regular event at the Fringe or just a one off thing?

Omigosh very animated

I love being on th poetree bus

Video Description: Black screen

[Introduces and performs an excerpt of a longer work called Archetorture (Wave7Press, 1990) that, Karasick explains, explores memory and her mother's death. Applause.] | Video Description: Flips through papers on trolley. Sips beer. Flips through papers again. Medium closeup as Karasick performs a piece.

Nice! From Morrison to Derrida bam!

What street is in the background?

Reading from my first book 1992 The Empress Has No Closure

St. Laurent!

Reacted to Jade Palmer: "St. Laurent!" with HEART EMOJI

I was 25 when my mom died of cancer. She never got to see me perform or any of the books

Written by her bedside as she lie dying

She would have loved watching you perform, I imagine.

A beautiful way to honour her

That's heavy

awsum

And beautiful

Still obsessed with the play of language even then --- non narrative linguistic mashups; a euphorically conflictual arena between textual and acoustic space

Totally. Sonorific.

[Tells story about travelling in Germany. Performs a piece beginning with chanting and followed by the line, "And I go in to take the (?) to Mainz, to Mainz," which contains both English and German. Karasick interrupts the poem to explain how food vocabulary is often the first words picked up in a new language, and then continues performing. Laughter throughout. Applause.] | Video Description: Sips beer. Shows audience an illustration in one of her collections (cover unidentifiable.) Performs a piece. The camera maintains a medium closeup. Closes books, sips beer, and it overflows with foam. Exits the stage and the frame.

Haven't yet learned to not stick the book right in front of my face ;)

Haha.

I know what you mean.

Another driving poem!

Love how I'm smiling / smirking at my own puns --- vs evoking the horror of the holocaust

Drew doing his best to take her all in

Your performance skills were already so mature, though. You used amplitude (volume) so well (loud to quiet). It's so quiet while you read. Everyone really listening.

Oy! So many redic puns and interventions even then 30 years ago interested in the multiplicity / polyvalence of meaning --- and how these socio-political fraught linguistic mashups lead to new ways of thinking, seeing and being

Omg . . . Freitags and toast! A mushroom umlaut! Sheesh ;)

The mixture of such heavy content and joyous play with an audience in sounding it out.

It's obvious here that you've had so much fun playing with those multiple meanings

Sew wundrful

I was literally a child there teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Mainz --- and every day there were Neo nazi uprisings I was all alone living in an attic across from the Gutenberg Museum

in Mainz?

Crazy.

I didn't know that.

Originally it was a response to Robert Kroetsch's Frankfurt Hautbahnhof

Oh man

Video Description: Black screen

My beer runneth over

Oh boy!

[Performs a piece, reading it from the Revival anthology. The piece opens with the line "can't get enough serotonin." Applause.] | Video Description: Medium closeup then closeup of Karasick reading a piece while holding a copy of the Revival anthology, gesticulating and dancing.

We had such fun dressing for this night

I just came off touring with Lollapalooza --- I think this is a listing of drugs...

Is this Bistro Quatre?

With Ms. Battson

This is the Fetish Cafe

No I think Lollapalooza tour was organized with Kedrick James

Well thes is a good respnse to "did I ever write more narratively?" lol I guess not

Reacted to Jade Palmer: "This is the Fetish Cafe." with THUMBS UP EMOJI

I remember buying that outfit.. I still have it

Classic finish!

Video Description: Black screen with white text that reads "Enough Said / January 16th 1995 / bill bissett"

[Reads "unmatching phenomena" (from Inkorrect Thots, Talonbooks, 1992). Audience laughter throughout. Applause.] | Video Description: billl bissett reads from binder. Audience members briefly pass through camera view.

The "yeah!" at the end sounded like you, Lee!

Awwwww look at baby bill!!!!

My hero my teacher my muse

You were so hot bill! SMILING MOUTH AND EYES EMOJI

That yellow folder went with us on all our world tours together! All over Europe and Russia in 1992

Wow.

How many times did you tour together?

excellent binder!

Wow. What a piece.

[Introduces "last nite I had a nitemare abt free trade" (from Inkorrect Thots, Talonbooks, 1992.) . Audience laughter throughout. Applause. bissett thanks audience.] | Video Description: Medium closeup of bill bissett introducing a piece, addressing audience, then reading from binder. bissett wears a black-and-white patterned vest over a blue tie-dye shirt with a white graphic on the front, large square plastic-framed glasses, and shoulder-length light brown hair with a receding hairline. Camera zooms in and out as bill bissett lowers binder and flips through its pages.

We've performed together at least 200 times --- 200 all over Europe and Russia, Canada and the US paris, berlin, st petersberg london, geneva, barcelona, oxford with Paula Claire and Bob Cobbing omigosh so many places -- including our anniversary performance in TO; 'n so many conferences, colloquia joint essays with him / on him so many collaborative poems. Right before Covid i organized a bissett brethday 80th birthdat tour in St. Catharines, at a Pratt Institute in Brooklyn at the Poets House 'n Players Club in NY, the Tarragon Theater in T); then his 85th at the Supermarket last Nov. Most recently together at the Secret Handshake a coupla months ago.

Was the binder filled with typed poems?

I have a full listing he taught me everything I know ;)

is that a tie-dye spirit tee?

Free trade. So topical, right?

What a lovely relationship between the two of you. So happy we get to showcase it!

He would write by hand every day on trains busses cafes and me too. In those days we didn't have printers - hand printed in 3 ring binders

But his was full of drawings as well

Omg loving this so much

[Begins reading Unnamed Poem beginning with the line "Who wrote the script though?" before breaking off to addresses audience. Audience laughter. Resumes reading poem before addressing audience and interacting with Unknown_Audience_Member. Audience laughter. bill bissett interacts with another Unknown_Audience_Member. Audience laughter. Resumes reading poem. Audience laughter and applause throughout.] | Video Description: bill bissett begins reading from binder before addressing audience, raising hand. bissett resumes reading before addressing audience again. An unseen audience member addresses bissett and they interact. bissett interacts with another unseen audience member. bissett resumes reading from binder. Camera zooms out to long shot as bill bissett finishes reading, lowers binder, and flips through pages. Camera pans across audience members applauding.

Wow. A shared ability, bill and Adeena, to deliver the darkest of materials with a life-affirming perspective of humour and joy.

Teaching me also about performance and its ok to not be serious all the time --- vs my Kootenay schoolers (who I love) but were all very serious ;)

Leaving space for the laughter

Yes, very good timing! Not rushing, very comfortable

Video Description: Black screen

[Reads "why dew we feer change feer uv th unknown" (from Th Influenza uv Logik, Talonbooks, 1995).] | Video Description: bill bissett reads from binder. Camera zooms in and out between closeup on bissett and long shot of bissett on stage, panning across the audience members listening to the reading and smoking. bissett finishes reading poem and briefly closes binder before asking Unknown_Audience_Member to hold it as he takes out a page.

Highrony really a bill signature

Smoking INSIDE!! Those were the days lol

Everyone is transfixed

Always he's mezmerizing

Just as I am now watching this.

So many shifts in texture tone

My love!

All the ways he mixes narrative and sonic elements play shifting weaving many threads reminding us how meaning erupts from so many signifying elements

[Black screen with white text rolling down listing the date, venue, performers' names, the researchers involved in the project, and copyright information.

More!