Leah Kogen Elimeliah Interviews Poet and Art Critic Ilka Scobie

Interview by Leah Kogen Elimeliah

I’d describe Ilka Scobie as a free spirited, cosmopolitan, blunt, urban poet. The femme shaper of free verse, born in the 1950’s, an authentic New Yorker, Ilka speaks to the City in her poems, to the neighborhoods, the people, culture, politics, using the senses, luring the reader right to the depths of the cityscape. Around the block and into the interior, we find ourselves corresponding between the inner and the outer layers of our perception and her vision. 

LKE: What has it been like for you to grow up and live all your life in NYC as a poet and an art lover? 

IS: New York is a wonderful city to grow up in especially if you are interested in culture and counterculture. Since I was a child I read and wrote poetry and published in my elementary school magazine, it was always part of my life. In 1965 I saw John Giorno perform and it was life altering, he was like Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan but cooler. It was the first time I saw poetry jump off the page, really electrifying. I got really into the beats and those were the poets I grew up on, NYC provided that. I lived across the street from the Brooklyn Museum and took art classes there as a kid drawing Egyptian mummies, Native American art and African fetish objects. Later on, when I was reluctant to go to college I went to SVA because it was easy to get into plus Andy Warhol supposedly lectured there. 

LKE: You recently co-curated Art Am3 in Soncino, Italy. Can you speak about that a bit? 

IS: Yes, the exhibition was held in a 15th century town Soncino, Italy, which is in Lombardia, in the local castle and in a Filanda which is an old silk factory. My husband, Luigi Cazzaniga who is an artist and photographer was born there, and it's where the famous artist Piero Manzoni was born, which is also home to many other artists. They do a town Biennale which has been going on for about three decades. We invited artists from NYC as well as local artists, Alex Katz, Martha Diamond, Rita Barros, Uman, Ugo Rondinone. We got a piece from Piero Manzoni from when he was a student, one from Stafano Badessi that we borrowed, along with other talented artists. During the exhibition we had music and poetry, it was a fun event and is part of the culture of the town. 

LKE: You write in one of your poems that you have an “unapologetic nostalgia for NYC, the mature love,” how has that changed and if at all? 

IS: As a Jewish native New Yorker who is non-observant and not religious, who doesn't like any kind of organized religion, these last few months have been very trying. Growing up in New York I certainly knew people who hated Jews or would say derogatory things about Jews, but I never felt the prejudice - as a woman more than as a Jew. But this year, everything changed after October 7th. I found the amount of hatred, anger and violence against Jews, with streets exploding - it’s just not the New York I know, it feels like a different place, another time. Of course, being a paranoid Jew, growing up and hearing about all the atrocities of Nazi Germany, the gulags, you realize how on a dime all this can turn into that. You have people talking about a ceasefire and now they are talking about annihilation of Israel. I have been taking the NYC Subway for almost sixty years and have never seen a swastika on trains until this year, never saw kids chanting death to Israel without even knowing where it is on the map. This is just very sad. 

People talk to me about the time I, including many others, protested Vietnam, but back then, we didn't protest out of anger, it was more about peace and love. Now you watch these demonstrations in Columbia University, NYU, City College, and these kids are full of hatred, anger, and violence. The fact that they don't even want to show their faces…it makes you think about what is really going on in America, in NYC, in Jew York City as many people would say. 

LKE: Can you speak about the poem, “What to Wear to the Demonstration?” 

In the 1980s before AIDS, I was living downtown New York, a great time to live in Soho and was part of a group called Women’s Action Coalition, made up of mostly artists from the area. These were fabulous women, educated, middle to upper class, who often debated about what to wear to a demonstration. And of course, every woman has black clothes, to wear all black to the demonstrations. These meetings were often contentious because we were fighting about gentrification, real estate, the Mayor, and now even wardrobe, and these mouthy women had a lot to say. 

LKE: How long have you been an art critic? 

IS: I never went to school for it. I was working on a magazine called Cover with Jeffrey Cyphers Wright as the editor, I was living on West Broadway with Mary Boone on one side and O.K. Harris on the other, galleries surrounding me, going to openings, going to parties and it was kind of natural. I have published in Italian magazines, Marie Claire, La Stampa. In NY I have published in Brooklyn Rail, Art List, London Art List, Whitehot Magazine. With my husband, Luigi, we did profiles on studios of artists like Kiki Smith, Alex Katz, Chuck Close, Terrence Koh, Kara Walker. I was very fortunate to be in such close proximity to such wonderful and generous artists. 

LKE: What are you currently reading and what is the last show you have seen? 

IS: The last show I have seen was of Sonia Delaunay who started out as a painter and then got really involved in textile and graphic arts and it was a lifetime survey of her work. I also recently visited the Brooklyn Museum and saw the Dean and Alicia Keys Collection of Black Contemporary Art and that was quite energetic and interesting. The other show I saw was Beatrix Potter and her life’s work at the Morgan Library. I am reading “A Revolver to Carry at Night,” by Monika Sgustova, about Vera, the wife of Vladimir Nabokov and the support she extended to her genius husband. 

LKE: In what direction do you think art is currently going in? 

IS: If I was clever I would talk about art and AI and the wonders and brilliance of it all. But because I am old fashioned, I do not believe that AI is going to take over the art world. Moving pictures did not takeover the art world. Now of course, AI will certainly be a tool for young people. It might be as natural as picking up a brush or pencil, and I am sure wonderful things will come of it, nothing I have seen yet that has dazzled me. But I do believe that a hand will still continue to be an important tool for an artist. It's as close as we get to spiritual incandescence, even more than a poem, more than music. Just like books will not be obscure, they will always exist and so will visual art, maybe not a premier cultural currency but it will not leave us.