Ocean Vuong with a fabulous interview up at Rhino

Congrats, dear Ocean!

VB: We published your poem “Pedicures” in RHINO 2012, so I’d like to begin with a couple of questions about it. We love the sensuous and sensory language in this poem, and the deeply respectful—even reverent—portrait of the speaker’s aunt as she gives yet another pedicure to a perfect stranger: “Her fingers slide along each lathered / and tortured vein. […] She scrubs and scrubs. / She shines—until the foot gleams / immaculate”.

Can you speak a bit about what or who inspired you to write this poem? And about your favorite language used to describe her in the poem?

OV: The speaker’s aunt is my own. But she is also my mother, grandmother, uncle, cousin, and father. For many Vietnamese living in America, the nail salon is often the vital backbone behind each family. Thousands of lawyers, doctors, musicians, scholars, and writers can trace their achievements directly back to the humble little nail salon. However, the salon is also a lifeline for Vietnam as well: many salon workers send money back to the motherland, often supporting multiple families on a salary of as little as $12,000.00 a year.

For the full interview, click here

Matthew Olzmann's first book Mezzanines, winner of the 2011 Kundiman Poetry Prize, is available for pre-sale now

Pre-order Mezzanines at Powells or at Amazon!

"Olzmann’s skilled play, terrific ear, and immense heart make Mezzanines a must-read."

—Pat Rosal

There is no place Matthew Olzmann doesn’t visit in his poignant debut. From underwater to outer space, Mezzanines is a contained universe, constantly shifting through multiple perceptions of the surreal and the real. A lyrical conversation with mortality, Olzmann explores identity, faith, and our sense of place, with an acute awareness of our minute existence.

From "NASA Video Transmission Picked Up By Baby Monitor":

How many shadows are there left to name?
Logophobia is the fear of words. Keraunothnetophobia
is the fear of falling man-made satellites.
Imagine this last one:
you walk outside and look to heaven
expecting a sky lab plunging down on you—wires
everywhere, bolts loosening, metal body in flames.
Instead, you see only blue, endless blue,
the color of a baby’s new blanket, cloaking everything.

Matthew Olzmann is a graduate of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Inch, Gulf Coast, Rattle, and elsewhere. He’s received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kresge Arts Foundation. Currently, he is a writer-in-residence for the InsideOut Literary Arts Project and the poetry editor of The Collagist.

 

Tamiko Beyer's first book We Come Elemental available for pre-order

 

Publication Date: May 14, 2013

Pre-order at Powells or Amazon 

"We Come Elemental introduces us to a poet of uncommon elegance and mystery. These poems act as a tour guide for the human heart, with sparse and fragrant writing. Haunting and full of humanity, these poems lash us to the world underwater and through the body politic with a sizzling ear and eye for what makes the body thrum."—Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Tamiko Beyer spent the first ten years of her life in Tokyo, Japan. She is the author of the chapbook bough breaks (Meritage Press). She received her M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and was awarded a Chancellor’s Fellowship. Beyer is a former Kundiman Fellow, a recipient of a grant from the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and a contributing editor to Drunken Boat. She works as the Advocacy Writer at Corporate Accountability International.

Saturday, 11/17/2012 on the Bloodjet Writing Hour, Rachelle Cruz in conversation with Iris Law

Join Rachelle as she talks with Iris Law, author of PERIODICITY, on Saturday, November 17th at 1:30 PST/ 4:30 pm EST.

 

Click here to listen live.


Iris A. Law is the editor of Lantern Review, a graduate of the M.F.A. program at the University of Notre Dame, and a Kundiman Fellow. Her first chapbook, Periodicity, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in February 2013, and is available for preorder on the publisher’s web site through December 22nd.

http://thebloodjet.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/episode-85-iris-law-author-of-periodicity-on-sat-november-17th-at-130-pm-pst-430-pm-est/

Kundiman alum Melissa Roxas is one of six phenomenal women honored for human rights and women’s activism!

The 10th biennial Phenomenal Woman Reception and Awards Fundraiser celebrated women who have made local and worldwide contributions to women’s equality Saturday.

The event, held in the USU Grand Salon, awarded six women including Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams, human rights activists Melissa Roxas and Chancee Martorell, Lindsey Horvath, West Hollywood City Council Member, and performance artist María Elena Gaitán.

“These women have done a lot, so it’s really exciting to be here and see that the GWS department does such a big event,” said Vike, 24.

Another speaker, Roxas, spoke of her health care work in the Philippines in 2009, a trip during which she was abducted at gunpoint and tortured for six days by the Philippine military. She is one survivor of three women; the two others are still missing.

“Every time it feels nervous to speak in front of a crowd or share my story, I think about not only these two women, but many other women who cannot be here to speak about what they’ve been through,” said Roxas, who was holding back tears. “My voice may be quivering, but my spirit is strong.”

Read the complete story here: http://sundial.csun.edu/2012/11/phenomenal-women-honored-for-human-rights-and-womens-activism/

Eugenia Leigh and Sally Wen Mao Receive Best of the Net Nominations from Muzzle Magazine

Muzzle's Best of the Net Nominees


 
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

Lee Herrick gives Kundiman a shout out on the Lantern Review blog

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/

Tarfia Faizullah has three beautiful poems in the new issue of Blackbird

   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!