MEMBERS
Writer, Bookmaker, Multi disciplinary Artist
Canada/ Essex and Yorkshire
About:
"Jessica Bebenek is a writer, bookmaker, & interdisciplinary artist splitting her time between the lands currently known as Montreal & Toronto. k2tog, her collection of knitting patterns for poems, was released by Berlin’s Broken Dimanche Press, Fall 2018. Bebenek’s recent poetry can be found in PRISM International, CV2, Cosmonauts Avenue, and in 30 Under 30: an Anthology of Canadian Millennial Poets. Her third poetry chapbook, Fourth Walk, was released by Desert Pets Press (2017). “The Waste Land”, her knitted poetry performance investigating gendered labour & the English canon, was featured in Toronto’s Nuit Blanche 2017. She continues her public knitting performances through her ongoing durational performance, “Rag Bag”, in which she is knitting all 116 of Ezra Pound's cantos. She is currently completing her first full collection of poetry, No One Knows Us There, and is at work on a non-fiction collection, Writing for Men. Bebenek is a graduate of Concordia University’s MA in Creative Writing & English, where she studied poetry & expanded poetics, the culture & technologies of feminist subjectivities, and the revaluation of gendered labour. She continues her work as Risograph Coordinator at the Centre for Expanded Poetics, where she organized the Occult Poetics Symposium (Spring 2017). Bebenek teaches poetry and bookmaking workshops institutionally and independently, and works as a freelance designer and bookmaker."