We are honoured to announce that Perdu will host a performance by the American poet CAConrad on March the 5th. Without a doubt, CAConrad is one of the most extraordinary poets in contemporary American poetry. His “(soma)tic poetry rituals” constitute an experimental praxis that focuses less on formal or ideological innovation, but rather on establishing a physical presence and thereby releasing transgressional forms of creativity.

In the introduction to his last collection of poetry Ecodeviance, (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness CAConrad recalls that by being a writer and artist he tried to break free from the routines of factory labor dominant in his family. When he realized that much of his writing habits followed the same mechanical procedures – from constructing poems to arranging them for future submissions to magazines – he fell into a major crisis. ‘One morning I made a list of the worst problems with the factory, and at the top of that list was “lack of being present.” (…) That morning I started what I now call (Soma)tics, ritualized structures where being anything but present was next to impossible.’

CAConrad’s poems both consist of a description for a ritual (for example only eating red food for a week, visiting Emily Dickinson’s house and rubbing the dirt from her garden all over your body, or asking random men on the street how thick their sperm is) and the poem resulting from it. This creates a completely unique poetry that is, at the same time, text on a page and pure performance art. Moreover, it aligns CAConrad’s work right with contemporary queer poetry, continually breaking open reality to make space for deviant beings of all kinds.

CAConrad will treat the audience to an elaborate poetry reading, and sit down with Dutch poets Frank Keizer and Joost Baars for a conversation on his work. Tungsten Press has printed a special plano/broadside of a new poem by CAConrad, which will be for sale after the program.

Here you can read and translate the poem UNKNOWN DURATION OF FEAR, posted in Ooteoote’s Vertaallab in 2013.

CAConrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He has six full-length poetry collections, including ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books, 2014), A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon (Wave Books, 2012) en The Book of Frank (Wave Books 2010/Chax Press 2009). The last book has been translated into German, Spanish and Swedish. He is a 2011 Pew Fellow, a 2013 Banff Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2012 and 2013 visiting faculty member for the Summer Writing Program of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.