Writing Race & Belonging: A Live Monument

On June 15th, 2013, as part of Writing on it All, Kundiman enacted a live monument for Writing Race & Belonging on Governor's Island.  This undertaking was framed by the fact that the New World's first lawful expression of religious tolerance ("Toleration") took place in 1624 on Governors Island.  That jurisprudence was the basis for religious and ethnic diversity and was applied to the region that is now referred to as the New York Tri-State.  Together we wrote a real-time virtual 19 page poem, painted on the walls of a house and upheld the stories of migration and belonging of our families.  

 

Congratulations to Lo Kwa Mei-en, Winner of the 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize!

 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize Announcement

Congratulations to Lo Kwa Mei-en, winner of the 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize. The Alice James Books Board along with members of the Kundiman Board selected her manuscript, “Yearling.” Along with book publication, she will also receive $1,000 and a feature reading in New York City. 

Lo Kwa Mei-en's poems have appeared in Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, West Branch, and other journals. She earned her MFA from Ohio State University and continues to live and work in Columbus, Ohio.

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The 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize finalists were: Awake, Location by Mary-Kim Arnold, The Cumulus Effect by J. Mae Barizo, Extended Stay by Janine Joseph, This is How the Bones Sings by W. Todd Kaneko, Day of Clean Brightness by Jane Lin, In the Quiet After by Mia Malhotra, and Autumn Troupe by Miho Nonaka

Congratulations to the winner and finalists!

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Li-Young Lee, Srikanth Reddy, and Lee Ann Roripaugh Read at Fordham Lincoln Center

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Come and celebrate as Kundiman's 2013 Faculty and Fellows read at Lincoln Center during Kundiman's 10th Annual Poetry Retreat. 

Friday, June 21st
7:00 pm
Fordham Lincoln Center 113 W. 60th Street (at Columbus Avenue)
12th Floor Lounge

Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/607583239253868/

Directions
Take A, B, C, D & 1 trains to Columbus Circle.
Exit at 60th Street & Broadway. Go west of Columbus Avenue. Upon entering the glass doors inform the security desk that you are attending the Asian American Poetry event.  Take escalators up 1 floor to Plaza level.  Take elevator up to the 11th floor.  Take stairs 1 flight up to the 12th Floor.  Enter 12th Floor Lounge

 

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Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry, his most recent being Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton, 2008). His earlier collections are Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001); Rose (BOA, 1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University; The City in Which I Love You (BOA, 1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and a memoir entitled The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and will be reissued by BOA Editions in 2012. Lee's honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 1988 he received the Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. He is also featured in Katja Esson's documentary, Poetry of Resilience.

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Srikanth Reddy is the author of two books of poetry -- Facts for Visitors, which received the 2005 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry, and Voyager -- both published by the University of California Press.  His scholarly study of 20th Century American poetry, titled Changing Subjects, was published by Oxford University Press in 2011.  A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the doctoral program in English at Harvard University, Reddy has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the NEA, and the Creative Capital Foundation.  He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago.

 

 

 

 

 

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Lee Ann Roripaugh’s most recent volume of poetry,Dandarians, is forthcoming from Milkweed Press in 2014.  Her third volume of poetry, On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year, was released by Southern Illinois University Press in 2009.  A second volume, Year of the Snake, also published by Southern Illinois University Press, was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004.  Her first book, Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin Books, 1999), was a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series, and was selected as a finalist for the 2000 Asian American Literary Awards.  The recipient of a 2003 Archibald Bush Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship, she was also named the 2004 winner of the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, the 2001 winner of the Frederick Manfred Award for Best Creative Writing awarded by the Western Literature Association, and the 1995 winner of the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize.  Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.  Roripaugh is currently a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Director of Creative Writing and Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review.

Co-sponsored with Fordham University.

 
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Writing Race & Belonging: A Live Monument

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As part of Writing On It All, Kundiman is sponsoring a creative enactment of tolerance and belonging for poets of color.  In this live "monument," one group of poets will write a collaborative poem centering on their experience of racism which will alternate between an exquisite corpse (poets writing in succession) and an exploded poem (poets writing at the same time) on a projected new media space.  A second group of poets will select portions of the projected new media poem to act as first lines for their own pieces which will be centered on their and their families' experience of making a home in America.  This second group of poets will write their poems in paint on wall paper that has been hung around the perimeter of the space.  What we aim to create is the sensation that acts of violence and racism figured through new media are absorbed through the more physicalized poems of home and belonging that are painted throughout the space.  Throughout this staged writing, there will be readings from the books of Asian American poets and writers.  

Saturday, June 15
12 - 3 pm
Governor's Island

For more information, go here:  http://writingonitall.com/