Jennifer Scappettone

Jennifer Scappettone, a poet, translator, and purveyor of visual stills and prose, is the author of the chapbooks Thing Ode / Ode oggettuale (La Camera Verde, 2008), translated into Italian with Marco Giovenale, Err-Residence (Bronze Skull, 2007), and Beauty (Is the New Absurdity) (dusi/e kollectiv, 2007). She is now at work on Exit 43—an archaeology of Superfund sites and opera of pop-ups—for the cross-genre publishing project Atelos Press. Excerpts of that book appear in Belladonna Elders Series #5: Poetry, Landscape, Apocalypse, featuring work by Scappettone, Etel Adnan, and Lyn Hejinian (Belladonna, 2009). Pop-up scores are being adapted for performance in collaboration with choreographer Kathy Westwater as PARK. A selection of Neosuprematist Webtexts, filmed phrasal stills, was installed at Infusoria, an exhibit of visual poetry curated by Helen White for the Festival Le Off in Brussels and Het Zilverhof in Ghent, in 2009, and another is coming to Speechless. She was guest editor of the feature section of Aufgabe 7, devoted to contemporary Italian experimental poetry, and is at work on a range of translations from Italian, with a focus on the “Babeling deeply felt” of the postwar polyglot author Amelia Rosselli. Modernism in Venice, a critical manuscript, is in its late stages. Talks and readings are available for download at her PennSound author page. She is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.

• PennSound recordings.
• ON: Contemporary Practice No. 2 review. February 2010.
• BOOG City review by Alan Ramon Clinton. December 2009.
• SPD Best-Seller for May - June 2009.

Author photograph © Sarah Lang.