Karen Kovacik is Indiana's new State Poet Laureate, succeeding
Norbert Krapf whom I profiled
here. (Please see the Krapf post for background on the position.) She was selected by a seven-member
Indiana Arts Commission panel representing both state-supported and private higher education institutions.
Kovacik's two-year term begins in January 2012.
According to this Indiana University-Purdue University
press release about the appointment, announced earlier this month, Kovacik intends during her tenure to write a literary blog on Indiana writers, create a poetry-teaching "toolkit" for the Indiana Humanities Council, and sponsor literary events at schools and libraries throughout the state. She also plans to "break down barriers [between academic and spoken word or "slam" poetry] and get diverse groups of poets talking together."
* * * * *
Poets have always been the voices of opposition, the voices of
conscience. Some of the most urgent images of the horrors
of war have been given to us by our poets. . .
Poetry can offer a historical analogy. . . It fortifies our
historical imagination. That's so crucial in a country
lacking that connection with the past. Poetry
can provide a much needed antidote. . . .
~ Karen Kovacik on Poetry's Use in Dissent*
Karen Kovacik, Ph.D., is a poet, translator, short story writer, and essayist. She is the author, most recently, of
Metropolis Burning (Imagination Series, Poetry Center, Cleveland State University, 2005), which draws partly on her own experiences in Poland. Her other collections include
Beyond the Velvet Curtain (
Wick Poetry First Book Series, Kent State University Press, 1999), which received the
Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, and
Nixon and I (Wick Poetry Chapbook Series, Kent State University Press, 1998). Kovacik also is an highly regarded translator of contemporary Polish poetry. Her short story "My Polish Widower" is included in
Warsaw Tales (
New Europe Writers, 2005), a compilation edited by James G. Coon.
Art, world history, politics, ancestry, cultural history, new world/old world contrasts, the immigrant experience: you'll find these themes in abundance in Kovacik's work.
Here are excerpts from several of Kovacik's poems. Note especially the careful selection and combination of imaginative detail, vivid imagery, and skillful creation of atmosphere and scene. Kovacik has a great "ear", an assured voice, and sharp wit; her poems are bright with erudition that's never pedantic.
Your Kino Moscow gleams like a pink dish
with the films of Clint Eastwood and French farce.
I feel like an umbrella in for repair.
I'd rather be a telescope, to see past
the scrim of things American,
to smell past pickles, smoke, and grief
and understand the idiom of uprisings.
You are the map that exists and the ones that have disappeared.
You are the cigarette that makes the slow bus come.
I'm a thin glass of oolong, lucky in lust,
in this province of lip and teeth
where syllables squeak like sugar
and our hands are always hot
and my marriage dies on double beds of cake. . . .
~ From "To Warsaw" in Metropolis Burning
A tricycle somersaults
in a maple tree
and in the cloud a violin
bulging with music—
the girl spots it—
is about to rain down
thirty-second notes
on a cat disguised
as a coil of garden hose. . . .
~ From "Ars Poetica: Highlights for Children"
With us, it is easy: a tug on the tie, the ubiquitous zipper.
But with a woman, you can never be certain how deep
the layers go. First, perhaps, a jacket of mink, gloves
lapping up the greedy length of the arm, shoes
like airy Eiffels for the feet. Then the untethering
of beads and bracelets, the slow dismantling
of those hanging gardens of skirt
crashing around foundations of lace and bone. . . .
~ From "
Nixon on the Pleasures of Undressing a Woman"
Kovacik has published poems in
Glimmer Train,
Chelsea,
Hamilton Stone Review,
Indiana Review,
Massachusetts Review,
Not Just Air,
Salmagundi, and
Valparaiso Poetry Review, among other literary periodicals. Her translations of Polish poetry have appeared in
American Poetry Review,
Boston Review,
Crazyhorse,
Mid-American Review,
Southern Review, and other publications. One of Kovacik's poem "Moving Forward", is showcased in three bus shelters along the
Indianapolis Cultural Trail as part of a public art project honoring published writers. Another, "
Invisible Movements", won the Moving Forward Contest. Kovacik's "
Requiem for the Buddhas of Bamiyan" was awarded First Place in the 2002 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry competition sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Kovacik directs the creative writing program in the
School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University/Indianapolis, where she is also a professor of English and adjunct professor of women's studies.
Karen Kovacik
Profile at Indiana University-Purdue University School of Liberal Arts
Karen Kovacik Essays Online: "Between L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and Lyric: The Poetry of Pink-Collar Resistance" (
Abstract) at
NWSA Journal
A number of Kovacik's translations of
Izabela Filipiak's poetry can be found
here. Her "Against Descartes", a translation of a poem by Katarzya Borun-Jagodzinska, is
here; others are
here (see last three poems).
Art of the Matter
Podcast, WFYI, with Karen Kovick and Terry Kirts (Kovacik talks here about the Reiberg Reading Series ad IUPUI Creative Writing Program. She appears at about the 38:40-minute mark.)
Leonard Kress, "
Everything's Better in Poland",
Artful Dodge Reviews (This includes a review of Kovacik's
Beyond the Velvet Curtain, which addreses the Cold War and America of the 1950s and 1960s, with Richard M. Nixon a particularly prominent subject.)
The Writers' Center of Indiana (This site describes the "Moving Forward" public art project for Indiana Poets. As noted above, Kovacik's poem "Invisible Movements" is one of three selected for public art bus shelters.)
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