Edmonton Economic Development Corporation at flickr.com
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“You Never Looked So Simulating,” a poem presented at the In(ter)ventions conference in Banff, February 2010, and first published in West Coast LINE.
The next stop was Edmonton where I got lost in the Fantasyland Mall on the way to one of the demi- keynotes at the International Association for Philosophy and Literature “Thinking Between Poetry & Philosophy” convention & so missed most of the lecture on the “The Ineluctable Split of Poetry’s Unsayable Name: Reading Derrida through Nietzsche’s Unknowable Answer to Celan’s Joyce (A Response to Benjamin).” Many of the conventioneers noted that the “Bourbon Street” food mall was a perfect example of “simulation” — a view I have trouble understanding (not unusual for me) since the patrons of the food court seem to enjoy the fact that “Bourbon Street” is ineluctably in the West Edmonton Mall & the designers of the street seemed to go out of their way to emphasize this fact, making it look like a plaster cast sketch of a picture of a New Orleans street & not like the “real thing” at all; the only ones fooled were we conventioneers having our dinner as we chatted about the breakdown of reality and simulacra (or simusoy for the lactose intolerant). & talk about authentically local as you might, the Buffalo wings on Bourbon Street in the West Edmonton Mall never tasted so real or would have. I had trout.