This year, to accompany the debut of the KlezKanada Poetry Initiative, Kolya Borodulin’s annual “Bagegenish mit Yidish” will become a special “Bagegenish mit yidisher poezye.” Each day a different poet will be featured and there will be special concert presentations in this period.
OCCUPY YIDDISH! – Di anarchisten (Tuesday)
This will be a session about Dovid Edelstadt and others who wrote inspiring poems and songs about transforming the world. The Fraie Arbeter Shtime (Free Voice of Labor) said of him, “David Edelstadt, a fine idealistic nature, a spiritual petrel whose songs of revolt were beloved by every Yiddish-speaking radical.” In Argentina Jewish anarchists named their cultural circle in Buenos Aires after him.
Benjy Fox Rosen “Hayse Trer Song Cycle” (Wednesday)
An arresting new synthesis from composer / performer Benjy Fox-Rosen based on poems of Mordechai Gebirtig, written from roughly 1915-1942, which were either never set to music, or for which the music was lost. The poems tell the stories of neglected children, gravediggers, vengeance seekers and peace makers.
Abraham Sutzkever, a multi-media presentation (Thursday)
Kolya Borodulin will make a multi-media presentation on the beloved poet, Abraham Sutzkever (1913 –2010), the Yiddish poet acclaimed as “the greatest poet of the Holocaust” belying Theodor Adorno’s oft-quoted aphorism, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”
Deborah Strauss – “The Kadya Project: Voices of the Yiddish Fidl” (Friday)
While the world of the klezmer violinist was traditionally male-dominated, Kadya Molodowsky’s poetry was strongly female, and grappled with women’s identities and changing roles within traditional society. Keryn and Abigale Reisman, fellows, join Deborah Strauss on fidl.
Faculty: Kolya Borodulin
