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Klara du Plessis
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies
Email: klara.duplessis@ubc.ca
Research Summary
Contemporary Canadian poetry, literature in performance, sound, curatorial, and archival studies, and listening as critical method.
Biography
Klara du Plessis is currently the SpokenWeb Critical Remediations postdoctoral fellow at UBCO. She holds a PhD in English Literature from Concordia University. Her ongoing research looks at literary studies off of the page to incorporate insights from a sound and curatorial studies perspective too. It focuses on curatorial structures in the context of twentieth century and contemporary Canadian poetry in performance, thinking critically about the poets’ and curator’s often neglected labour, and how it shapes poetry reading events, whether live or in the audio archive. She is also currently interested in connecting the practical and conceptual labour of organizing literary events to the subjective act of listening relationally to that curation. This thinking has also materialized in an ongoing research creation project of poetry reading organization called Deep Curation. Here Klara works with other contemporary poets, such as Oana Avasilichioaei, Kaie Kellough, Kama La Mackerel, among others, to design deliberately interwoven and discursively sounded and public-facing presentations of their work. Klara is also a critically acclaimed writer known for her contributions to long-form and translingual poetics (mainly between English and Afrikaans). Her debut poetry collection, Ekke, won the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. The book-length narrative poem, Hell Light Flesh, was adapted and produced as a mono-opera film, composed by Jimmie LeBlanc, and premiered at the International Festival of Films on Art in 2023. She is the author of three more books of poetry and literary criticism, most recently Post-Mortem of the Event (2024). This collection encompasses creative work mobilizing audiovisual media, transcription, waveform visualization, and digital humanities and interdisciplinary methods. Klara develops her writing practice to include visual, sound, and moving image installations, and has exhibited work at Artexte, Centre Clark, and the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, among other venues.
Websites
Degrees
Doctor of Philosophy in English, Concordia University, 2023; Master of Arts in English, McGill University, 2012; Joint Honours Bachelor of Arts in English and German Studies, McGill University, 2010
Selected Publications & Presentations
“Curating Poetry as Sound: Four Modes of Literary Event Organization.” Affective Signals: Sounding the Curatorial. Special issue of Amodern. (Forthcoming)
“Curatorial Agency at Véhicule Art Inc.: ‘openness was a guiding spirit to VÉHICULE.’” Resistant Practices in Communities of Sound. Eds. Deanna Fong and Cole Mash. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024.
“Stop Words.” Future Horizons: Canadian Digital Humanities. Eds. Paul Barrett and Sarah Roger. Ottawa University Press, 2023.
“‘do you read me?’: Kaie Kellough, the Words and Music Show, and a Self- Curated Series Within a Series.” English Studies in Canada 46:2-4. Eds. Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod, 2023.
“Deep Curation: Experimenting with the Poetry Reading as Practice.” Co- produced with Jason Camlot for the SpokenWeb podcast series, 2020.
Translation of André P. Brink’s “Op die Drempel.” Global Modernists on Modernism. Eds. Alys Moody and Stephen Ross. Bloomsbury Press, 2018.
Selected Creative Publications
Post-mortem of the event, Palimpsest Press, 2024
I’mpossible collab, Gaspereau Press, 2023
G, Palimpsest Press, 2023. In collaboration with Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi.
Hell Light Flesh, Palimpsest Press, 2020
Ekke, Palimpsest Press, 2018
Selected Grants & Awards
Fonds de Recherche du Québec, doctoral training scholarship, 2019-2023
Explore and Create: Research and Creation, writing grant, Canada Council for the Arts, 2023
Explore and Create: Research and Creation, We’ve Weave, Deep Curation, Canada Council for the Arts, 2022
Explore and Create: Research and Creation, Artexte Residency, Canada Council for the Arts, 2021
Awards & Distinctions
Winner of the Arc Magazine Critic’s Desk Award for “Verso Versus Verso,” 2022
Winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Ekke. League of Canadian Poets 2019
Group Exhibitions
Dead air (two screen video installation). Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, Bloemfontein, 2024
Scree/n (sound installation). Center Clark, Montreal, 2023
Incipit. Scree. Explicit. (artist’s book). Artexte, Montreal, 2023. In collaboration with Kadie Salmon.
Incipit. Scree. Explicit. (video). Gallery at Glen Carlou, Cape Town, 2023. In collaboration with Kadie Salmon.
Quotes: Transcriptions on Listening, Sound, Agency (making-of a book display cases). Concordia University Library, 2019. In collaboration with Emma Telaro
Professional Services/Affiliations/Committees
The AMP (Audio Media Poetry) Lab at UBCO
The SSHRC SpokenWeb Partnership at Concordia University