Join Kundiman and the Brooklyn Museum for this special First Saturdays Pop-Up Poetry Reading. Held on May 4th, the first Saturday of Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, this event brings together four poets from Kundiman’s first-ever Retreat. Poets Margaret Rhee, Purvi Shah, R.A. Villanueva, and Gein Wong will gather to share original work on the occasion of Kundiman’s 20th anniversary. Seating is limited and is first come, first served.
This in-person event will be held on Saturday, May 4th from 7:30–8:30 PM ET in the Arts of the Islamic World Galleries on the 2nd Floor of the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238.
This reading is open to the public with limited seating.
RSVP is required via this link.
Margaret Rhee is a poet, scholar and new media artist. Her debut poetry collection, Love, Robot, was awarded the 2019 Best Book Award in Poetry by the Asian American Studies Association. Her forthcoming books include a scholarly monograph, Machine Dreams: Race, Robots, and the Asian American Body, and a lyrical poetry book, Poetry Machines: Letters to Future Readers, both from Duke University Press. As a new media artist, her project The Kimchi Poetry Machine is exhibited at the Electronic Literature Review Volume III. Currently, Rhee is an Assistant Professor in the School of Media Studies, and Chair of the Arts Writing Program in the Creative Writing MFA at The New School.
Purvi Shah seeds healing through anti-violence advocacy and creating art. She won a South Asian Social Service Excellence Award for her leadership fighting violence against women. During the 10th anniversary of 9/11, with Kundiman, Purvi directed Together We Are New York, a community-based poetry project amplifying Asian American voices. Her most recent book, Miracle Marks (Northwestern UP, 2019), investigates gender violence and intricacies of the sacred while her prize-winning debut, Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006), plumbs migration, belonging, and loss. With Anjali Deshmukh, she creates interactive public art like Missed Fortunes, a community healing archive which documented pandemic rituals through poetry & visual art prints. Purvi relishes sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice.
R. A. Villanueva is the author of A Holy Dread, winner of the 2024 Alice James Award, and Reliquaria, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (U. Nebraska Press, 2014). New work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Poetry, and National Public Radio—and his writing appears widely in international publications such as Poetry London and The Poetry Review. His honors include commendations from the Forward Prizes and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and Kundiman. Born in New Jersey, he lives in Brooklyn.
Gein Wong is an interdisciplinary director and writer whose works focus on cultivating magic and collective agency. They opened Ai Wei Wei’s According to What exhibition with a 500 person performance art piece that honored earthquake victims in Sichuan. At World Pride, Gein commemorated the 45th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots with an immersive live art recreation of Stonewall. In the UK, they collectively dug a gigantic crater size hole in the middle of Central London to see what was in Britain’s dirt, which garnered an Off West End Commendation for outstanding production. Gein's play Hiding Words (for you), which delves into a secret language Chinese women created when they were not taught to write, is published by Playwrights Canada Press. They teach public speaking and Theatre at Queensborough College.