Announcements
 This year's nominees for the Sundress's annually published Best of the Net anthology are:
We were very happy that Marty McConnell's poem "the fidelity of epitaphs (20 days later)" was a finalist last year. Please join us in wishing our nominees luck! |
http://www.muzzlemagazine.com/1/post/2012/11/our-best-of-the-net-nominees.html
LR: Speaking from your perspective as a writer, editor, and professor, what are some of the most interesting trends that you’re seeing right now in contemporary Asian American poetry?
LH: I don’t know about trends, and to be honest I have never been that interested in following them—but I know what you mean here and I appreciate the chance to say what I find interesting and/or valuable in contemporary Asian American poetry. I admire the Hmong American emerging poets like Mai Der Vang and Andre Yang with roots in Fresno, the Berkeley poets like Margaret Rhee and Barbara Jane Reyes (talk about a visionary), the wonderful impact that Kundiman has had on contemporary poets, the wide-reach of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and some of the emerging Hapa voices like Matthew Olzmann. I’m also very happy to see more poets, such as Tina Chang, Sasha Pimentel Chacón, Ken Chen, and Ed Bok Lee, acknowledged with laureateships or major awards. Have you read their books? They’re extraordinary. I had the honor of reading for a national poetry contest recently, and I can also say how impressive other young writers are—two of my many favorites are Leah Silvieus and Eugenia Leigh. And I must mention the work of my fellow adopted Korean poet, Sun Yung Shin, whose groundbreaking new book is Rough, and Savage. Have you read these writers? Their work is stunning.
One “trend” I would like to see develop more is remembering, anthologizing, and respecting some of the poets whose careers were established earlier but remain vital: Amy Uyematsu, Li-Young Lee, Lawson Fusao Inada, and poets of their generation. There are many exciting new voices. But let us enlarge, expand, and remember as we progress, and not let important voices be devalued in the process.
Lee Herrick is the author of This Many Miles from Desire (WordTech Editions). His poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including The Bloomsbury Review, ZYZZYVA, Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California’s Great Central Valley, 2nd edition, and One for the Money: The Sentence as Poetic Form, among others. Born in Daejeon, South Korea and adopted at ten months, he lives in Fresno, California and teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College.
For the rest of the interview, go to http://www.lanternreview.com/blog/2012/11/07/a-conversation-with-lee-herrick/
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/2012/poetry#book/book-5
Congrats to our beloved Paisley!
Aubade Ending with the Death of a Mosquito
Elegy with Her Red-Tipped Fingers
Ramadan Nocturne
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam(Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), winner of the 2012 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry’s First Book Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares,The Missouri Review, Passages North, New Ohio Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Southern Review, Mead, Poetry Daily, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, the 2012 Copper Nickel Poetry Contest, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Margaret Bridgman Scholarship in Poetry, a scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a Fulbright fellowship, and other honors. A Kundiman fellow, she is a graduate of the Virginia Commonwealth University program in creative writing.
Congrats, dear Tarfia!
On Sunday, you can see From My Mother's Mother, the latest effort from Houston Grand Opera's HGOco, a young Korean-American woman goes into the hospital to give birth and is confronted by not only her mother and grandmother but their traditions calling for her to eat seaweed soup. A lot of it. According to Korean custom, a new mother should eat the soup every day for 21 days after her baby is born. Trouble is, the main character in this 30-minute operetta (commissioned as part of HGOco's Song of Houston: East+West Initiative) doesn't like the taste of the soup.
With a libretto by University of Houston PhD candidate Janine Joseph and music by composer Jeeyoung Kim, this is the fifth in a series of compositions attempting to show how immigrants in Houston come to terms with all aspects of their cultural lives. "It is a unique story about the passing down of culture to your own children," says Sandra Bernhard, HGOco's director. Joseph, who specializes in poetry and had never thought of writing an opera libretto before, says she called on her own immigrant experience -- she moved here from the Philippines when she was nine -- to try to understand all the factors going on in the relationship between these three women. "I grew up watching musicals and having an interest in opera, but it was not the kind of writing I was accustomed to doing," Joseph says. "It is rare that something like this comes your way. I knew enough about incorporating music into my own work to take on the task."
Mezzo-soprano Mika Shigematsu plays the mother (Om-Ma), and mezzo-soprano Hyo Na Kim appears as the grandmother (Hal-Mo-Ni). Soprano Hana Park performs as the daughter (Soo-Yun), while baritone -- and Houstonian -- Lee Gregory tackles the role of her husband (Jensen).
After its world premiere during the Korean Festival at 1 p.m. Saturday, November 3, at Discovery Green, From My Mother's Mother, which is sung in English, is also performed at 2 p.m. Sunday, November 4, at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet; 6 p.m. Wednesday, November 7, at the Houston Public Library, 500 McKinney; noon and 7 p.m. on Friday, November 9, at the University of Houston, 4800 Calhoun. For information, visit the HGOco website or call 713-546-0230.
Date: Friday, November 9, 2012
Time: 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Location: NYU's Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House
Description::
VIDA welcomes an array of female writers who, respectively, serve as faculty to local MFA programs and administrate non-profit organizations supporting underrepresented writers. Emerging writers interested in joining in critical discourse that addresses the lack of gender parity in publishing are encouraged to join this conversation. What obstacles do female writers presently face? What opportunities are ours to embrace?
VIDA Members & Guests to be present:
· Cate Marvin (Co-Founder, VIDA)
· Amy King (The Count, VIDA)
· Rosebud Ben-Oni (HER KIND, VIDA)
· Becca Klaver (Events, VIDA)
· Rebecca Godfrey (Columbia)
· Lucie Brock-Broido (Columbia)
· Deborah Landau (NYU)
· Helen Schulman (New School)
· Melissa Febos (Sarah Lawrence)
· Elizabeth Hornig (Brooklyn)
· Camille Rankine (Mahattanville)
· Jan Heller-Levi (Hunter)
· Sarah Gambito (Kundiman)
· Alison Meyers and Hafizah Geter (Cave Canem)
Brief presentations from VIDA’s guests along with a Q & A will be followed by informal conversation and merriment among those who actively desire to create a literary climate more inclusive of work by female writers.
Kundiman & Verlaine present
a night of poetry & libation with
Cathy Park Hong, Muriel Leung,
& Natalie Jiwon Park
Sunday, Nov. 11, 2012
Reading begins at 5 pm
Open Bar, 4 - 5 pm
$5 suggested donation
http://www.kundiman.org/reading-series/
Verlaine
110 Rivington Street
b/w Ludlow & Essex Sts.
[ directions: F to Delancey or V to 2nd Ave. ]
This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, the Manhattan Borough President's Office, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/events/449681851734033/?fref=ts
Readers' Bios:
Cathy Park Hong's first book, Translating Mo'um was published in 2002 by Hanging Loose Press. Her second collection, Dance Dance Revolution, was chosen for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was published in 2007 by WW Norton. Her third book of poems, Engine Empire, was published in May 2012 by WW Norton. Hong is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Village Voice Fellowship for Minority Reporters. Her poems have been published in A Public Space, Poetry, Paris Review, Conjunctions,McSweeney's, Harvard Review, Boston Review, The Nation, American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, and other journals. She is an Assistant Professor at Sarah Lawrence College and is regular faculty at the Queens MFA program in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Muriel Leung is a poet from and currently residing in Queens, NY. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College where she graduated with the Lori Hertzberg Prize for Creativity. Her poems and essay have appeared or are forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, Dark Phrases, and RE/VISIONIST. She is a recent Kundiman fellow. With the support of the Engage, Learn, Lead, Act (ELLA) Fellowship and a commitment to social justice based arts education, she has led Write to Resist, a creative writing and zine making workshop series on race, gender, and violence for high school aged Asian American young women. Currently, she is an arts administrator with Elders Share the Arts and a teaching artist with Community-Word Project.
NatalieJiwonPark's most recent chapbook was entitled Dream Farm, which explored the mythical nature of family narratives. She is the author of two other collections, and the proud recipient of the Stanley and Evelyn Lipkin poetry prize. Originally from Woodside, Queens, Natalie also grew up in Albany, NY. She attended Sarah Lawrence College where her poems were given a warm place to grow. A lifelong writer, she also aspires to become a psychiatric nurse practitioner someday.
MISSION STATEMENT
Kundiman is dedicated to the creation, cultivation and promotion of Asian American poetry.
Congrats, dear Monica!
To view her art and poetry, please visit their summer issue, which also features work by Henry W. Leung and Joseph O. Legaspi.
http://issuu.com/tidalbasin/docs/tidalbasinreviewsummer2012?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage
Congrats, dear Henry!
“Exquisitely structured in elegiac lyric tapestries, Paradise Hunger ferries us into a luminous underworld filled with messages of grief and the promise of renewal. From Hawai‘i to Guangdong, Castro Valley to the Gobi Desert, Paradise Hunger maps the intricate geography of mourning, dazzling in its juxtaposition of sorrow and resilience.”
— Stephen Hong Sohn
“Abounding with melodious examples of the lyric narrative poem, Henry W. Leung’s chapbook traverses the experiences of immigration, seasons of loss and grief, and permutations of hunger. From classical mythology to Hawaiian legends, the languages and voices of “talkstory” in Paradise Hunger serve as a locus or guide across displacements of revolution, history, and memory. This is a rich collection to savor, line by line, as Leung muses on questions of home in stanzas eloquently laden with image and allusion: “You gave us peaches, our golden apples of Hera, our home myth. Peaches blooming only once each three thousand years.”
— Karen An-hwei Lee
“Paradise Hunger is a sweet peach that I don’t want to end, so I return to it over and over again. Each reading offers something new: sometimes I read it as an immigration story, then as a multigenerational narrative in which “The generations of migration flit / like hungry ghosts in search of graves…” Other times I read it as a chronicle of the Chinese experience in California. Then it becomes a ghost story, an elegy, a mythology, and an odyssey. Taking cues from masters as recent as Walcott and as far back as Milton and Homer, Henry W. Leung’s compact and multilayered collection—written to make language appear like new again—feels like an epic. I don’t know any other poet as young as Leung that has this level of skill and craft.”
— John Olivares Espinoza
Henry W. Leung was born in a village in Guangdong, China, and grew up in Honolulu and later in the San Francisco Bay Area. He earned his BA from Stanford and studied abroad at Peking, Cambridge, and Oxford Universities. Now he is a Kundiman Fellow and a Soros Fellow completing his MFA in Fiction at the University of Michigan, where he’ll continue as a Helen Zell Fellow. He has been a teacher in Hong Kong, a mentor/assistant at the Prague Summer Program, and a panelist at AWP. His prose and poetry have recently appeared in Boxcar, Cerise Press, CURA, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Memoir (and), and ZYZZYVA. He has served as an editor for the Best American Nonrequired Reading and as a columnist for the Lantern Review.
http://www.swanscythe.com/books/paradise_hunger.html
More on Henry: http://stateofthebook.com/?p=562
