Algerian poet, journalist, and translator Salah Badis is a Fall 2018 Resident at the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and the inaugural IWP@OICR Writer-in-Residence.  A freelance journalist since 2012, he is a musical and cultural researcher for both print and radio and a founding member of Nafha, one of the most important cultural magazines in Algeria.  His poems and essays in Arabic have been translated into French, English, and Turkish, with his first volume of poetry, ضجرالبواخر [The Boredom of Ships], published in 2016 by Al Mutawassit Press (Milan and Beirut).  In 2017, he worked in the Algerian radio archives with French curator Yasmina Reggad for the project We Dreamed of Utopia and We Woke up Screaming.  A writer for the Algerian news site Casbah Tribune, he has also served as Visiting Editor of the literary supplement Kalimat for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.  He is currently working on the translation of two French novels to be published in 2018 by Barzakh Press.

The event will take place at the Library at Literary Arts: 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, 97205.

Algerian poet, journalist, and translator Salah Badis is a Fall 2018 Resident at the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and the inaugural IWP@OICR Writer-in-Residence.  A freelance journalist since 2012, he is a musical and cultural researcher for both print and radio and a founding member of Nafha, one of the most important cultural magazines in Algeria.  His poems and essays in Arabic have been translated into French, English, and Turkish, with his first volume of poetry, ضجرالبواخر [The Boredom of Ships], published in 2016 by Al Mutawassit Press (Milan and Beirut).  In 2017, he worked in the Algerian radio archives with French curator Yasmina Reggad for the project We Dreamed of Utopia and We Woke up Screaming.  A writer for the Algerian news site Casbah Tribune, he has also served as Visiting Editor of the literary supplement Kalimat for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.  He is currently working on the translation of two French novels to be published in 2018 by Barzakh Press.

Algerian poet, journalist, and translator Salah Badis is a Fall 2018 Resident at the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and the inaugural IWP@OICR Writer-in-Residence.  A freelance journalist since 2012, he is a musical and cultural researcher for both print and radio and a founding member of Nafha, one of the most important cultural magazines in Algeria.  His poems and essays in Arabic have been translated into French, English, and Turkish, with his first volume of poetry, ضجرالبواخر [The Boredom of Ships], published in 2016 by Al Mutawassit Press (Milan and Beirut).  In 2017, he worked in the Algerian radio archives with French curator Yasmina Reggad for the project We Dreamed of Utopia and We Woke up Screaming.  A writer for the Algerian news site Casbah Tribune, he has also served as Visiting Editor of the literary supplement Kalimat for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.  He is currently working on the translation of two French novels to be published in 2018 by Barzakh Press.

Selections

Click to view + download PDF of readings.

• Childish Gambino, This Is America. Released May 5, 2018

• Abena Koomson performs "Let America Be America Again," by Langston Hughes. Poets in unexpected places. Published December 4, 2014

• Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus.” Written 1883

• Richard Wright, Chapter V, Black Boy, 107-126. Originally published 1945

• Alexis de Tocqueville, Selections from Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve:  Chapter II:  “Origin of the Anglo-Americas,” Pt. II, 53-64; Chapter III: “Social Condition of the Anglo-Americas,” 64-72; Chapter IV:  “The Principle of the Sovereignty of the People in America,” 73-75; 90-101; Chapter V:  “Necessity of Examining the Condition of the States Before that of the Union at Large,” Pt. II, 101-16; Chapter VI: “Judicial Power in the United States,” 116-24; Chapter VII:  “Political Jurisdiction in the United States,” 124-129. First published in English 1838

• G.K. Chesterton, Selections from What I Saw in America:  “Some American Cities,” 63-79. First published 1922

• Jean Baudrillard, “Utopia Achieved,” America, 75-105. First published 1989  

• Hannah Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing,” Men in Dark Times, 3-31. Originally published 1968

• Hannah Arendt, Selection from “The Revolutionary Tradition and Its Lost Treasure,” On Revolution, 217-251. Originally published 1963

• Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” Between Past and Future, 227-264. Originally published 1961

• Hannah Arendt, “The Alliance between Mob and Capital,” The Origins of Totalitarianism, 147-157. Originally published 1951

• Susan Sontag, “What’s Happening in America?” Partisan Review, Winter 1967

• Theodor Adorno, Selections from Minima Moralia: Reflections on Damaged Life:  “Paysage,” 48; “Dwarf fruit,” 49-50; “The Health unto Death,” 58-60; “Diagnosis,” 123-124; “All the world’s not a stage,” 143-145; “Don’t exaggerate,” 233-235. First published in English 1951

• Peter Sloterdijk, “The Exception: Anatomy of a Temptation, Americanology 2,” In the World Interior of Capital, 233-248. First published in English 2013

• Giorgio Agamben, “A Brief History of the State of Exception,” State of Exception, 11-22. Originally published in English 2005

• Jacques Derrida on American Attitude, e-flux conversations. Published 2016

• Joyce Carol Oates, “‘Good News!’” It Occurs to Me That I Am America: New Stories and Art, ed., Jonathan Santlofer, 247-262. Published 2018

• Marion Mainwaring, John Quincy Adams and Russia: A Sketch of Early Russian-American Relations as Recorded in the Papers of the Adams Family and Some of Their Contemporaries.  Published 1965*

  *Announcing the OICR Prize for the Redemption of the Most Illustrious Lost, Discarded, or Forgotten Work for Making Sense of Present-Day American Crises & Dilemmas

  We recently happened to find mention of an intriguingly-titled monograph on the sixth President of the United States by the late writer, critic, and translator Marion Mainwaring.  (The reference appears on the back flap of a discarded copy of The Portrait Game, a little-known book based on a little-known collection in the Bibliothèque nationale de France consisting of drawings of imaginary persons by the Russian writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev and subsequent character sketches composed by Turgenev and his friends—sketches translated and edited by Mainwaring, and published in English in 1973, a full 117 years after the group played their first round of “the portrait game” in Paris in 1856.)  Mainwaring’s study John Quincy Adams and Russia: A Sketch of Early Russian-American Relations as Recorded in the Papers of the Adams Family and Some of Their Contemporaries (1965) is now virtually impossible to find.  The Institute is offering a $250 cash prize to the first person who can locate and deliver a copy of the book to the Institute by the last day of October 2018, in time for OICR’s “Readings for Now” Seminar #4, which will be devoted to a variety of works on “Russian-American Relations,” early and late.  We will continue sponsoring this prize into the foreseeable future, with the second iteration completely open to any subject or theme of critical relevance.

Announcing the Winner of the First OICR Prize for the Redemption of the Most Illustrious Lost, Discarded, or Forgotten Work for Making Sense of Present-Day American Crises & Dilemmas

Cathy Denning swiftly located a copy of Marion Mainwaring’s study John Quincy Adams and Russia: A Sketch of Early Russian-American Relations as Recorded in the Papers of the Adams Family and Some of Their Contemporaries (1965), winning the $250 cash award. The work will serve as the basis for OICR’s “Readings for Now” Seminar #4, which will be devoted to a variety of works on “Russian-American Relations,” early and late.

left: Ryan Wilson Paulsen; right: Paulsen and Anna Gray

Given the devastating effects of global capitalism on our planet and growing consciousness of the oppression and inequality that characterize our social world and history, many are at a loss as to how to make a future without massive waves of violence.  Anxiety, despair, confusion, and depression are widespread; trauma is a fact not an exception.  How can we build practices centered on care for ourselves and our world?  How can art be a mode for accomplishing this work?  As social beings, self-care is more than an individual imperative to live healthier; it is a social process as well as a personal one.  Throughout the history of art, we find many examples of artists expressing the unspeakable, the internal, and the invisible, using visual expression as a process to care for themselves and to connect to others.  Contemporary artists have engaged with issues of mental health and self-care from many perspectives as well, utilizing therapeutic or advocacy practices, working therapeutically and empathically.  This talk and workshop explore and problematize representations of mental health and self-care in our contemporary world, using examples from art and music to begin suggesting a way forward.

The Oregon Institute for Creative Research proudly announces an affiliation with the International Writing Program, one of the nation’s key cultural exchanges, at the University of Iowa, the premier center for creative writing.  Under the leadership of writer Christopher Merrill, the IWP selects each year thirty to thirty-five writers from around the world to trade ideas and visions with writers from the USA.  Designed for emerging and established creative writers who have published at least one book, the program recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.  Since 1967, over 1,400 writers from more than 150 countries have participated in the IWP residency, which lasts from late August to mid-November, after which time select writers take up short residencies at other institutions in various parts of the country.  This year, the Oregon Institute for Creative Research has been chosen as one of a handful of institutions across the country to host an IWP writer, who will interact with OICR students and the wider community while exploring the natural and cultural wonders of the state.