The program website pretty much says it all: “The VONA Voices Workshop is dedicated to nurturing developing writers of color [who] come from around the globe to work with renowned writers of color.”  Essentially, VONA is where you go to work with people like Junot Diaz, Chris Abani, and Suheir Hammad.  Where you discover for yourself that there’s a rich and vibrant tradition of writers of color in the United States and that you can situate yourself in that incredible wealth of a heritage.  It’s where you go to learn that you’re not the only one asking the question, “Where am I from, where are my people from, and why does that matter to my writing?”

Basically, VONA is the place where you walk into a workshop, sit down and your instructor says, “So what are your ancestors telling you today?”  You sit awestruck as your classmates go around the room channeling these incredibly powerful, angry voices from our nation(s)’ untold histories, and what you end up with once everyone has spoken is a room of not just eleven poets, but generations of voices echoed through the sensibilities of your peers.

University of San Francisco

Lone Mountain Campus

I attended VONA’s second session, which meant that I was in LA-based poet Ruth Forman’s poetry workshop, along with ten other women from around the country.  Represented in our class was a wide diversity of cultural, and ethnic, and professional backgrounds — including a med student, an African Diaspora Studies Ph.D candidate, an art therapist, and a non-profit consultant… only to mention a few!  Ruth fostered a warm culture of dialogue and collaboration, while advocating fiercely that we stick to June Jordan’s (one of her mentors) Poetry for the People guidelines for discussing poetry.

I learned so much from Ruth, particularly in our one-on-one conference where she shared with me her understanding of what it means to be an African American poet, following in a tradition that — as she sees it — has sought always to speak against injustice, bring hope to the community, and capture the musicality of spoken (and sung) language.  To hear some of Ruth’s work, watch this clip of the VONA faculty reading, where she read several poems from her most recent collection, Prayers Like Shoes (Whit Press, 2009).  You can also hear her on NPR, talking about her children’s book Young Cornrows Callin out the Moon (Children’s Book Press, 2007).

Each of VONA’s two sessions featured a mid-week faculty reading.  Ours was sensational – we heard from Diem Jones with musician Len Wood, Tananarive Due, Ruth Forman, M. Evelina Galang, Chris Abani, Andrew X. Pham, Willie Perdomo, and Elmaz Abinader, each of whom are incredibly accomplished artists and writers.  The auditorium was packed, and because so many in the audience were VONA participants, cries of “Hey, that’s my teacher!” echoed continually throughout the hall.  For many of us, this was the first time we’d heard our instructors read — and the effect was magical.  There they were, our workshop leaders — enacting, performing, embodying all they had been talking about in class.

Tananarive Due reading at the VONA faculty event

On the final evening of the workshop, every VONA participant (about 80 poets and writers in all) shared 300 words of their writing.  Some of it was newly written, read right off of people’s laptops – or Blackberrys.  Some of it was freshly revised after workshop that afternoon.  All of it was raw, real, and bore witness to the tremendous weight of cultural Story represented in the room.  Cave Canem fellow Tara Betts finished the evening off with a powerful, lyrical response to Wallace Stevens’ infamous comment, “Who let the coon in?” when Gwendolyn Brooks arrived at the 1950 Drew-Phalen Awards banquet.

The title of Betts’ poem?  ”Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Woman.”  Rock on, Tara.

VONA 2010

To Consider…

For a complete list of VONA 2010 faculty, click here.  Read these writers’ books, follow their blogs and, if you can, by all means study with them – or at least hear them read.

Apply to next year’s Voices Workshop!  The application probably won’t be open for another few months, but check the website periodically if this is something you think you may enjoy participating in.

Lastly, the workshop offers limited scholarships to seminar participants, which is made possible only through the generosity of its donors.  If you’d like to help support this initiative, consider donating through the program website.

Barbara Jane Reyes

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her B.A. in Ethnic Studies at U.C. Berkeley and her M.F.A. at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Her third book, entitled Diwata, is forthcoming from BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2010.

Her chapbooks, Easter Sunday (2008), Cherry (2008), and West Oakland Sutra for the AK-47 Shooter at 3:00 AM and other Oakland poems (2008) are published by Ypolita Press, Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, and Deep Oakland Editions, respectively. Her poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in Latino Poetry Review, New American Writing, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, among others.

She has taught Creative Writing at Mills College, and Philippine Studies at University of San Francisco. She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland.

***

LR: I wanted to start by talking about history, which is something that figures strongly in your poetry—for example in Poeta en San Francisco we see historical references mixed in with local references to San Francisco (SF) and the Beat Movement. Can you start by talking about how both history and geography are incorporated into your work?

BJR: I grew up on the periphery of SF, meaning that I lived in the East Bay for most of my life in this country. The more I came to see other parts of the country, I realized that there’s something interesting about SF and its history of people coming from so many different places and colliding with one another. I know this happens in every major American city, but for me SF has this unique place on the cusp of the Pacific Rim […] When the westward movement got to the Pacific Ocean, it just kept going into the Pacific. Just think about major American wars in Asia in the 20^th century, and SF being a very important strategic point, and then Honolulu, and then Manila. What that means for all those people that get cast aside and spit out of that system is that they all end up with this baggage that they’re aiming at one another. That’s SF for me.

LR: And in your own personal history when did this dawn come?

BJR: It really did happen in college, as an undergrad at UC Berkeley. I remember reading Frederick Jackson Turner’s “The Frontier Thesis,” where he talks about the American identity—and here he really means the masculine identity created as these men are forging West and dealing with the landscape—that makes the American man different from the English colonial subject. What my professor argued was that the wars in the Pacific, starting with the Spanish American War and the Filipino American War, were an extension of that creation of the masculine American, because there wasn’t anywhere else to go but the ocean. The Philippines were seen in the Filipino American War as the starting point for America to get into China and start its own empire.

When I was hearing these things lectured to me and as I was reading about them, what I was seeing in SF started to really make sense—what I was witnessing and experiencing as a Filipino girl growing up in the Bay Area, not being able to find any evidence of long time Filipino settlement there, even though now I know that there is a much longer history. I always kind of felt like that there had to be some reason why so many of us just kind of got plopped in the city. And a lot of it had really to do with that movement into the Pacific once the frontier ended. 

LR: When you write this poetry, how do you think about how people who are not as deeply entrenched in this history are going to read it and understand it?

BJR: I think that there are enough concrete colors there. I think about this, for example, when I’m in the Mission District walking around the mission. I spent a lot of time there because I had done a presentation for one of my Native American Studies courses on sacred spaces, the idea of the mission and the mission system. We all see these symbols and these landmarks, so there are always these points of geography to grasp onto, whether or not we know the specific history behind them. I think that when folks come to the Bay Area, they may or may not know something, for example, about Angel Island. But it’s a big rock out there in the bay that they can find out about. They may or may not know something about the I-Hotel, but they can go visit it.

I always kind of hope that poetry will make or compel people to research farther or think about these things farther. I hope that maybe deep in their consciousness, it will alter something that they have previously taken for granted or haven’t thought about. I feel like as long as I am not making up any of these historical references and that they are actually there and verifiable, that it will hopefully encourage a reader to stop and think next time he or she is walking up to North Beach to hit one of these nice touristy traps–the I-Hotel is right there! Just stop and look at it.

LR: And so these physical reminders of history are actually very important to you.

BJR: Absolutely. I think a lot of it has to do with monuments and my own search. Like a lot of Filipino Americans I knew growing up in the Bay Area, we were always searching for monuments, and feeling like we weren’t finding them. Monuments to our communities. We didn’t know where to look. And you know, the monuments really are there–we haven’t been completely wiped out. There is evidence of our having been here since the turn of the 19^th-20^th century. I hope part of what my poetry is doing to is to point them out.

LR: I want now to jump to some of the concerns you’ve written about on your blog. Recently you addressed translation, and asked yourself how one can or should critique translated poetry when you don’t know the language yourself. Some have responded by asking how your books, which incorporate Tagalog, should be read by non-speakers. What are your thoughts on that now?

BJR: I think that in my mind there is a difference from, let’s say, the poetry of Lorca or Neruda that was written entirely in native tongue. I guess we can say that Poeta is written in my native tongue, if my native tongue is code switching. My family and I have a very pragmatic system of communication that is mostly in English, or not–it just depends on what is the most efficient way of being understood. So it isn’t quite English and isn’t Tagalong–but what is it? I speak in this code switch language.

Of course I think that the primary text of Poeta is in English, and the Tagalog adds another layer to how we think of English. What is English? You go to any part of United States and a different kind of English is being spoken there, and we shouldn’t be invalidating anybody’s English.  The English of the Bayou and the English of Chinatown and the English of East Oakland are different things altogether, but we find ways of understanding one another because the goal is communication. I think that if the goal is communication and poetry for me is just a form of communication, then we will try to be understood and understand one another but also be true to and honor that language that defines us, or that language that we truly speak.

Ultimately this is about whether as a reader we can trust that the poet is really trying to communicate something to us. I think that there’s a lot of suspicion surrounding hearing a language we do not understand. Can we not step back from that and say that there’s a system of communication happening here that delineates a community, and [if] so how do I expand my community such that someone who has hardly ever experienced Tagalog can possibly find a way in, despite some sections of a 109-page book that may be in a language they’ve never seen before? There’s all this English and all these concrete cultural references that you can anchor yourself to as a reader.

LR: While on the subject of different Englishes, I read this from your recent blog post: “As Filipinos, we have a loaded relationship with the English language, which I believe is why we pun ‘bad’ English, deliberately mispronounce and redefine English words. These are some ways of claiming ownership over the language, and isn’t it great, how we empower ourselves with the ‘master’s’ language.” So bilingualism or pidgins seem more than just by-products of the need to communicate, but can be acts of rebellion or activism. How accidental or deliberate do you really think this is?

BJR: I think initially, a simple acknowledgment of multiple Englishes, hybrids or pidgin can be considered some kind of rebellion or even activism in that it decenters standard or proper, English or institutional English. Lee Tonouchi’s work, Living Pidgin (Tinfish Press, 2002), is a pretty comprehensive volume on the matter of pidgin and activism. I do think we should consider that activism is involved in fulfilling the need to communicate by creating a new or hybrid language and system of code switching. It isn’t just a by-product. As well, I think recognizing the need to communicate and understand one another across multiple communities is pretty important. This is how we begin building coalitions.

LR: And that brings us to activism and building community, in the more literal sense. Is activism different for us as minority writers? Is it more important? And what about those who want to be seen as writers in their own right, apart from their ethnicity?

BJR: I feel like we just have to do the double work. There might not be any way around it. I really do feel like if community and forwarding our work as a community of artists is important to us, then the concrete work that we do as folks who head community arts organizations–as editors, publishers, and mentors–that work is indeed activist work. And I’ve chosen to do that on top of the fact that I want to continue writing books. I love the idea having a professor contact me out of the blue and say I have X number of students reading your work, can you come in and talk? I want to walk into a classroom where they’ve never read Filipino lit before and have them ask me a million quesitons about my book.

LR: Speaking of that, you recently mentioned in your blog you’ll be teaching yourself in class. Have you thought about already what you’re going to say about yourself?

BJR: I think it will probably be okay … I guess it was different when I walked into Ronald Takaki’s Asian American history class and we read his Strangers from a Different Shore or another classic, like when we read A Different Mirror. It was fine, because he was one of the authorities on Asian American history. So I guess I’ll just have to have that confidence in myself as one of the authorities on Filipino American poetry, and be academic about it.

LR: How does it feel to be considered such an authority?

BJR: I’ve always been in this leadership position just because my name has been out there as an author for a while. But it was even prior to that, really starting with my years with maganda magazine, which was so important for the local community here. It was so important that elder Filipino American poets, really folks I look up to very much, found me and my colleagues. They were so thrilled to see this younger generation.  I started on the local spoken word scene, so I was always visible to some community of Asian American or young poets of color and I was called upon a lot to shout poetry on megaphones at political rallies and that kind of stuff.

LR: Is your role as an authority or a leader in this community different from that of your predecessors?

BJR: I believe in concrete support, as in how can I be concretely supportive of young Filipino poets or young poets in general who are looking at what I’ve done in my career as some sort of blueprint for theirs. What am I going to do as a mentor, somebody who edits publication, somebody who curates a reading series, or somebody who can write letters of recommendation for an MFA program? So I think that’s a lot of it right there.  Two of my poetry mentors, Jaime Jacinto and Eileen Tabios, were hands on. Whereas I consider the monumental community figure like Al Robles to have been inspirational (because of his poems, the subject matter of his poems, and his community work; his poetic and political practice were the same thing), Jaime and Eileen gave me a lot of one-on-one concrete literary advice about where to submit my work, which poets to read; they asked me hard questions about what I wanted my poetry to do, and advised me accordingly. Both have also read my manuscripts in progress and given me feedback on these. These two also brought me into literary reading venues and as editors, into publication.

So, following the lead of these two, as an editor for various poetic projects, I’ve tried my best to open up the publication space to younger API and Pinoy/Pinay poets; in the past I’ve included the poetry of Ching-In Chen, Debbie Yee, and Sasha Pimentel Chacon in OCHO. Yee’s poem, “Cinderella’s Last Will and Testament,” ended up in Best American Poetry 2009. Two of my forthcoming guest editor projects, In the Grove and Blue Fifth Review, will include poems by Niki Escobar, Rachelle Cruz, Sean Labrador y Manzano, Gizelle Gajelonia, Yael Villafranca, and Allison Moreno.

I have a couple more editing projects up my sleeve, in which I plan to continue opening up that publication space to emerging writers or color.

LR: Can you talk about your invovlement with Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA) and Arkipelago, and highlight for us some of the upcoming events?

BJR: My current involvement with PAWA has been as a board member, curating our reading and workshop series with Edwin Lozada. In this capacity, I’ve been trying to provide literary reading space to writers in the community, both established and emerging. I’ve always valued the live reading as a crucible, a place to try out new work in progress, a way to refine the work.

On June 5, we are teaming up with Eth-Noh-Tec for an evening multidisciplinary performance and storytelling. Featured artists are filmmaker Nara Denning, theater performer Sean San Jose of Campo Santo, poet Aileen Ibardaloza, musician Ron Quesada whose Kulintronica is blend of Southern Philippine kulintang and electronica, and theater performer/stand up comedian Allan Manalo of Bindlestiff Studio.

LR: You mention bayanihan in your blog. What does that mean?

BJR: Bayanihan is a Tagalog word that means something to the effect of ‘the spirit of community’. Bayan refers to a nation or community. So bayanihan means the spirit of community to achieve something, like some kind of goal.

LR: And so when you think of bayanihan for the Fil Am or AA poetry community, what might those goals actually be?

BJR: As an author, major goals are publication and book sales, not just for myself individually. I want to see more APIA and Filipino American authors’ books in print, a diversity of voices. I encourage more writers to polish and submit their manuscripts to publishers, and to do so in a focused manner. I’m a strong supporter of independent publishers, because there are many with admirable mission statements about ethnic, political, and aesthetic diversity.

Nick Carbo told me years ago that one of the best way to bolster book sales was through course adoption. Experientially, I agree with him. That said, I want to see our literature taught widely. Outside of academic settings, I haven’t figured out yet how to make our books appealing to the greater APIA community, i.e. those outside of activist, artist, academic communities, or how to effectively bridge that gap. This is a work in progress for me.

LR: Lastly, can you tell us a bit more about your upcoming book, Diwata? Like your other books, it will be incorporating history and themes of historical dislocation. But in what ways do you think it will depart from your first two books? Perhaps start by telling us about the mythological, creationist (or re-creationist and rebirth, as it were) aspects of the book?

BJR: The way I’ve come to think of Diwata is like this: in my work, there are themes I’ve previously tried to address, for example, as you mention, the recurring theme of dislocation. It’s taken on some mythic qualities in my first two books, but I think only in glimmers, this mythical or mythological tellings and retellings of dislocation. Diwata became the space for me to blow it up.

While wary and critical of contemporary reclaiming of pure indigeneity as appropriation, I am still interested in possible ways indigeneity morphs and endures in our urban, American everyday given Western conquest, diaspora, transnationalism. Does such a thing exist without going native, without forwarding a new noble savage? If so, how? What changes, how does it change?

Scene from the 1977 I-Hotel Eviction (Credit: SF Chronicle)

In celebration of APIA Heritage Month, we’ll be running a special Poetry in History series once a week in lieu of our Friday prompts.  For each post in the series, we’ll highlight an important period in Asian American history and  conclude with an idea that we hope will provoke you to respond. Today’s post is about the fraught history of the International Hotel in San Francisco’s Manilatown.

In 1977, San Francisco’s Manilatown community suffered a huge blow with the final eviction of the mostly Filipino American residents from the International Hotel (or I-Hotel).  This followed  almost a decade’s worth of protest and community struggle in the hopes that the building, which had housed many Filipino immigrants throughout the years, would not become yet another victim of the city’s gentrification projects.   For years after the final residents were removed, the building — and later, the site — stood empty, the hole a yawning reminder of what had been lost.  One of the major voices speaking out against the fall of Hotel belonged to the poet, musician, and activist Al Robles. The I-Hotel was a recurring theme that wove throughout his work and took on breath, shape, and life through his poetry.  Robles’ nephew wrote the following on the recent anniversary of his death:

“In the I-Hotel he [Robles] traveled up the stairs and the doors opened to those small rooms; the smell of rice and adobo and fish was there; the face of the manong was there—he knew the face—it was the face of his father and mother and ninong and ninang. He sat across from the manongs and in their faces he saw the motherland, in their hearts and minds he journeyed and tasted what he described the “thick adobo tales of their lives”. Those elderly men were alive and in Uncle Al’s poetry they became young again.” (Tony Robles, “Still Hanging onto the Carabao’s Tail”)

The I-Hotel was eventually rebuilt into a community center.  The new building, opened in 2005, houses the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and is a hub for political and arts events.  Al Robles passed away in 2009, but his legacy continues to be celebrated.  Other poets have since followed in Robles’ footsteps, writing about their relationship to the city of San Francisco, and to the “ground zero” that was the I-Hotel site.  One such poet is Barbara Jane Reyes, whose poem dedicated to Robles is forthcoming in the first issue of Lantern Review. In her book Poeta en San Francisco, Reyes touches on the shape of this wound, invoking the evicted bodies whose physical rootlessness signifies a history fraught with forced erasures and displacements.  In her poem “calle de sección ocho, casas de abuelos y de abuelas,” her speaker invites us to enter the hole in the ground where the hotel once stood

“the unused hole in the ground located at the corner of kearney and
jackson across from celluloid god’s patina café may one day contain
supportive tenant services and artifacts of blue men’s billy clubs in the
meantime just gawk at it and take polaroids don’t hold your breath
few descend into the hole it’s been 30 years”

Manilatown itself becomes a ghost with a cavity in place of the organ that was the I-Hotel, which by the end of the poem is revealed to be a type of inverted sanctuary, inhabited by “ghosts and discarded things,” made remarkable for its absence — its existence etched out in the negativity of its space, the way that it tunnels into the earth rather than rises up from it.

Vince Gotera has also written of the I-Hotel. In his poem “Madarika,” (which is written in the voice of a resident of the Hotel), he writes:

“Remember everything about this room: the smell
of old linoleum, the faded curtains,
the bugs. And when your grandkids ask about
the O.T.’s, the original manongs,
you tell them how we talked today. Tell them
Francisco Velarde was here. Lolo Panchito was here.”

Like Reyes, Gotera returns to the site of the hotel so that, by the end of the poem (excerpted above), we see that the building frames the speaker’s life.   Gotera, however, not only leads us to excavate the tricky space of memory, but inhabits it, taking on the persona of a manong.  For Gotera’s speaker, the I-Hotel is not simply a building — its shape and height, the textures of its walls and furnishings, the things that gave it physical definition — define him as well: “This room’s all the home / I got,” he says earlier in the poem, and “Look around you. This is all there is.”  The act of remembrance, then, becomes almost sacred in light of this: in choosing to remember the building, its individual rooms, the reader or listener participates in the preservation of a community’s historical narratives, working against the vacuum created by the hotel’s destruction.

For this week’s prompt, here are a couple of exercises inspired by the poetry that has been produced as part of the I-Hotel’s legacy:

1. Write  a poem that centers around the negative space of something that has been physically lost — an erasure, an absence, a black hole, a pit, a wound, or scar in a body.  Investigate its textures, making use of the tools of craft (such as form and image).  How might that space be envisioned as a kind of world?  What new iterations of memory and narrative might entering into that space produce?

2. Write a poem that enacts the preservation of an important voice or event by means of revisiting a geographical location or physical structure.  Play with the slipperiness of time: how might that place, as it is remembered, differ from the nature of the place, in the present, and how might the memory of that place have, itself, evolved, over time?

More Resources:

Online

Philippine American Writers & Artists, Inc. (PAWA) Site

Manilatown Heritage Foundation

Manilatown Archival Project

Manong Al Robles [Tribute site run by the Robles Family]

Documentary Film

Choy, Curtis.  The Fall of the I-Hotel.  1983 (revised 1993 and 2005).

Poetry

Returning a Borrowed Tongue: An Anthology of Filipino and Filipino American Poetry.  Ed. Nick Carbo.  Coffee House Press, 1995.

Reyes, Barbara Jane.  Poeta en San Francisco.  Tinfish Press, 2006.

Robles, Al. Rappin’ With Ten Thousand Carabaos in the Dark: Poems. University of California, Los Angeles, 1996.

Fiction

Yamashita, Karen Tei.  I-Hotel. Coffee House Press, 2010.

Historical Print Resources

Habal, Estella. San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement. Temple University Press, 2008.

Children’s Literature

Robles, Anthony D. (Ill. Carl Angel) Lakas and the Makibaka Hotel.  Children’s Book Press, 2006.

Chicagoland

Sandra Lim & Travis Nichols at Danny’s Reading Series
February 24 | 7:30 to 9 pm
Danny’s Tavern
1951 W. Dickens, Chicago

RHINO Reads! Poetry in Translation — Indonesian, Arabic, Tagalog, Chinese
Feburary 26 | 6-8 pm
Bros K, 500 Main St., Evanston, IL
[Open Mic 6:00 - 6:30 | Featured Poets 6:40 - 8:00]

Cleveland

A Reading with Poets Jason Koo, Simone Muench, and Mathias Svalina
February 25 | 7:30 pm
Cleveland State University, Main Classroom134
1899 East 22 Street

New York City

Riggio Forum: Cave Canem’s Poets on Craft
February 25 | 6:30 to 8 pm
The New School
Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
Arnhold Hall
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor

Bowery Books Presents: A Book Party & Reading by Fay Chiang for 7 Continents, 9 Lives
February 27 | 2 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston & Bleeker)

San Francisco

Youth Speaks Poetry Slam Championship
February 26 | 7 pm
San Francisco Public Library
Koret Auditorium
100 Larkin St.
FREE and open to the publoc/

Blaze of Glory [Hyphen #19 "Trailblazing" Release Party]
February 26 | 9 pm-2 am
111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna St.
$10 | $20 includes 1 yr subscription (50% discount)
RSVP on Facebook or Going.com

San Jose, CA

SJSU Center for Literary Arts presents Marilyn Chin
February 25 | In Conversation w/ Sarn Maio @ 1:30 pm, Reading @ 7 pm
Martin Luther King Jr. Library, Rm. 225-229
150 East San Fernando Street

St. Paul, MN

Breathin’: An Evening of Spoken Word and Music with Eddy Zheng and DOSH
February 26 | 7-9 PM
Smail Gallery, Olin-Rice Science Center
Macalester College
[See here for more info about Eddy Zheng]

Washington, D.C.

Community: Chinese, American, and German Poetry (Time Shadows Poetry Reading)
(Poetry highlighting the diversity of DC Chinatown’s immigrant population)
February 7 | 2 to 4 pm
Goethe-Institut Washington, GoetheForum
812 Seventh Street, NW
RSVP to 202-289-1200 ext. 170 or to rsvp[at]washington(dot)goethe(dot)org

New York City

Creativity And Activism: Celebrating the Lives of Mine Okubo and Mishi Nishiura Weglyn
February 19 | 6-8:30 pm
New York University
5 Washington Place, Rm. 101
Please call, email, or use online form to RSVP

Quick Love: A One-Day Workshop on the Heart’s Poetry with Purvi Shah
February 20 | 1-4 pm
Asian American Writers’ Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, Suite 10A
Admission: $40 | $36 for members

Book Party for Jason Koo’s Man on Extremely Small Island
February 20 | 7-9 pm
Asian American Writers’ Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
$5 Suggested donation (open to the public)

SULU Series feat. Hanalei Ramos, Jay Legaspi, Jackie Mariano, Triangle Offense, Napon Pintong
February 21 | 8 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston and Bleeker)
Admission: $8 | $5 for students

Page Meets Stage Presents: Yusef Komunyakaa and Tyehimba Jess
February 24 | 8 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston and Bleeker)

Philadelphia

Family Style Open Mic hosted by Yellow Rage (and feat. Jay Legaspi)
February 19 | 7:30 pm
Asian Arts Initiative
1219 Vine St.
$5-10 sliding scale admission
(advance sign-ups highly recommended for performers)

San Francisco

The Art of Found Objects: A Visual Art Workshop with Truong Tran
February 20 | 10 am – 2 pm
Mina Dresden Gallery
312 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
$40 Registration Fee

Duende Within: Flamenco Inspired Poetry (presented by the PAWA Arkipelago Literary Series)
feat. poets Sandy Mcintosh, Eileen Tabios, Edwin Agustín Lozada, and Michelle Bautista
February 21 | 2 pm
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission Street
FREE

San Jose, CA

Marilyn Chin (presented by the SJSU Center for Literary Arts)
Februrary 24 | 3 pm
Mt. Pleasant High School
1750 South White Rd.

Washington, D.C.

Smithsonian Annual Day of Remembrance, feat. Philip Kan Gotanda and Prof. Scott Kurishage
[Marking the 68th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066]
February 20 | 2 pm
Carmichael Auditorium
National Museum of American History
14th Street & Constitution Avenue, NW

*SPARKLE* Open Mic Poetry hosted by Regie Cabico and Danielle Evennou
February 24 | 9 pm
Busboys & Poets (5th & K location)
1025 5th St. NW
Admission: $3 (wristbands sold at Global Exchange store starting 10 am)

Atlanta

Heather Christle (poet) and Oindrila Mukherjee (fiction writer & trans. of Bengali poetry)
Emory Reading Series
February 15 | 6:30 PM
Joseph W. Jones Room, 311 Woodruff Library
Emory University

Boston

East Meets Words Open Mic (feat. Payal Sharma)
Presented by the Boston Progress Arts Collective
February 12 | 8 pm
East Meets West Bookstore
934 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge
Suggested $3 Donation

New York City

Making Friends with Your Writing: Poetry & Fiction Workshop with Ken Chen
Thurs, Feb 11, Tuesdays, Feb 16-Mar 2, 7-8:30pm (4 sessions)
Asian American Writers Workshop
16 West 32nd Street Suite 10A
Between Broadway and Fifth Avenue
$160 General / $140 Members
$40 General Deposit / $36.00 Members
Register here.

Poetry & Prose Reading feat. Kazim Ali, Tao Lin, and Maaza Mengiste
NYU Creative Writing Program Reading Series
February 12 | 5 pm
Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House
58 West 10th St. (btwn. 5th and 6th Ave’s)

“Love, feat. Kelly Tsai” (Open Mic at MOCA)
Feburary 12 | 7 pm to 8:30 pm
Museum of Chinese in America
215 Centre St.
Admission: $7/adult, $4/students & seniors, free for MOCA members and open mic performers.

Mouth-to-Mouth Open Mic (Hosted by Jen Kwok and Ed Lin)
Presented by the AAWW
February 12 | 9 pm
16 W 32nd St, 10th Fl (btwn Bwy & 5th Ave)
$5 suggested donation
Open to the public

Shab-e Sher Featuring Aida Shahghasemi and Shabnam Piryaei
Presented by World of Poetry and PAF
February 17 | 6 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston and Bleeker

San Francisco Bay Area

SFIAAFF DIY Music Video Launch Party
Hosted by Kearny Street Workshop
February 11 | 8 pm to midnight
111 Minna, SF
$10 | FREE for CAAM members
This is a 21+ event only.

2nd Saturday Poetry & Prose (feat. Clara Hsu, Bill Mercer, Richard di Grazia)
February 13 | 7 pm
Frank Bette Center for the Arts
1601 Paru Street, Alameda

Sunset Poetry By the Bay (feat. Lucille Lang Day, Kathryn Takara, Karla Brundage)
At Studio 333
February 17 | 7 to 10 PM
333 Caledonia St., Sausalito

Washington, D.C.

“Call + Response” (16 visual artists & 16 writers – incl. poet Gerald Maa) at the Hamiltonian Gallery
Closes February 13!
Hamiltonian Gallery
1353 U St, NW, Suite 101

Boston

BU Creative Writing Faculty Reading (feat. Ha Jin, Louise Glück, Robert Pinsky, and others)
February 9th | 7:30 pm
BU School of Management Auditorum
Boston University

Chicago

Poetry Cafe at the Chicago Public Library
February 8th | 6:30-7:45 pm
Blackstone
4904 S. Lake Park Avenue
Call (312) 747-0511 to register in advance.

Dallas

Avante! (feat. Shin Yu Pai and Jerry Kelley)
2010 WordSpace Spring Reading Series
February 6th | 8 pm
Paperbacks Plus
6115 La Vista

Los Angeles

Beware of Cupid: A Valentine’s Day Show (dir. Julia Cho & Benjamin Kim)
Opening Feb. 5 (till Feb. 21) | Fridays & Saturdays @ 8 pm, Sundays @ 3 pm
The Actor’s Playpen
1514 N Gardner Street
Tickets: $14-$20

New York City

Artwall Performance (feat. Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai and Greg Tate)
Feburary 6th | 2 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston and Bleeker)

Jazz, the Japanese Connection at Nuyorican Poets Cafe
(Followed by Jazz Jam & Open Mic)
February 6th | 9 pm
Nuyorican Poets Cafe
236 E. 3rd St (btwn B & C Aves)
$15 cover ($10 for jazz jam musicians)
Reservation Recommended; Purchase advance tickets here

Kundiman & Verlaine Reading Series (feat. Vijay Seshadri, Brian Carey Chung, & Alison Roh Park)
February 7th | 5 pm (open bar from 4-5)
Verlaine
110 Rivington St.
(Ludlow & Essex Sts.)
$5 donation

Vincent Who? Documentary Screening (Hosted by the AAWW)
February 10th | 7 to 9 pm
Asian American Writers Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, Suite 10A
Light refreshments served
$5 Suggested Donation (benefits the NY chapter of APA for Progress).

Sacramento

Yuyutsu RD Sharma Reads at the Sacramento Poetry Center
February 8th | 7:30 PM
Sacramento Poetry Center
1719 25th St.

San Francisco Bay Area

Opening Reception: “The Lost and Found” Solo Exhibit (the visual art of poet Truong Tran)
Presented by Kearny Street Workshop & Mina Dresden Gallery
February 5th | 7 to 9 pm
Mina Dresden Gallery
312 Valencia Street
San Francisco

GO!STYLE 2010
(feat. poets Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu and Loa Niumeitolu, alongside other top artists)
February 5th | 8 pm
Palace of Fine Arts Theater
3301 Lyon St., San Francisco
Preordered tickets: $40 General, $36 Family & Friends Discount, $15 Student
$10 Preorder Discounts available with code (Tickets $40 at the door)

American Chinatown Book Reading
February 9th | 6 pm
CHSA Museum & Learning Center
965 Clay St
San Francisco

Seattle

W.S. Merwin & Friends – A Benefit for Copper Canyon Press
February 4 | 7 to 9 pm
Town Hall
1119 Eighth Ave.
Tickets start at $10

Washington, DC

“Call + Response” (16 visual artists & 16 writers – incl. poet Gerald Maa) at the Hamiltonian Gallery
Until February 13
Hamiltonian Gallery
1353 U St, NW, Suite 101

Chicago

“Time Goes On” Release Party (presented by the Neighborhood Writing Alliance)
February 1 | 6-8 pm
St. Andrews Church (upstairs)
48 N. Hoyne

Hanover, NH

Poets Michael Leong & Nomi Stone at Dartmouth College
January 28 | 4 pm
Wren Room/Sanborn Library
Dartmouth College

Los Angeles

Refugee Nation (written and performed by Leilani Chan and Ova Saopeng)
presented by the Laotion American Organization at UCLA
February 1 | 7:30 PM (Doors open at 7 PM)
Ackerman Grand Ballroom, UCLA
FREE and Open to the Public

New York City

ASL Poetry Slam Presents: Mark Mayo – $3
January 28 | 6 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston and Bleeker)
Admission: $3

92nd St. Y Presents: “The Immigrant Experience” Reading & Panel [Becoming Americans anthology event]
feat. Jessica Hagedorn, Jamaica Kincaid, Norman Manea, Gary Shteyngart
February 1 | 8 pm
Kauffmann Concert Hall
Lexington Ave. at 92nd St.
Tickets: $27 (general), $10 (age 35 and under)

Asian American Arts Alliance Town Hall Meeting
February 2 | 10 am – 12 pm
Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI – CUNY)
25 West 43rd Street, 18th Fl (between 5th & 6th Avenues)
FREE and Open to the Public

San Francisco

Kent Wong presents An Evening of Stories on Asian and Latino Labor Organizing
January 28 | 6-8PM
International Hotel Manilatown Center
868 Kearny St (at Jackson)
FREE

Beautiful as Yesterday Reading & Discussion (Fan Wu)
January 30 | 2:30 – 4 pm
Chinatown Meeting Room (San Francisco Public Library)
1135 Powell St. (near Jackson)

SF Poet Laureate Inaugural Address (Diane DiPrima)
February 2 | 5-8 pm
San Francisco Public Library
Koret Auditorium (Main Library)
100 Larkin St. (at Grove)

Washington, D.C.

ASL Open Mic Poetry
January 29 | 11pm
Busboys & Poets
14th and V
Admission: $5

* * *

KSW's Intergenerational Writers Lab

What: Kearny Street Workshop’s 7th Annual Intergenerational Writers Lab
When: April 3 – May 22, 2010
Where: San Francisco, CA
Seeking: Emerging SF Bay Area writers
Application Deadline: Received by 5 pm on February 19, 2010 (Note: NOT a postmark deadline)

The Kearny Street Workshop’s Intergenerational Writers Lab is, according to the KSW’s web site,

“A unique program with three of SF’s community-based interdisciplinary arts organizations designed to thoroughly explore and develop your writing. Accepted applicants will participate in eight workshops led by accomplished writers and artists, engage in and be inspired by other artistic genres, perform their work at a public event, be published in online anthology, and have the opportunity to develop a communal network of writing peers.”

This year’s program will feature Lorna Dee Cervantes, Letitia Hernandez, Ben Fong-Torres, and Genny Lim as instructors.  Applications can be found on KSW’s web site.  For those accepted, the workshop carries a tuition fee of $425, but a few scholarships are available. KSW has an eye to supporting artists of all aesthetic stripes (from spoken word to lyric verse to avant-garde), but specifically emphasizes that the ideal applicant for their Writers Lab should “demonstrate a consistent pursuit of the arts and a deep interest in participating in an experimental writing program.”  If you are a young SF Bay Area writer looking to explore new forms and techniques under the guidance of older, more established local artists, we highly recommend that you consider taking advantage of this opportunity.

[note: edited 1/26/10 at 4:17 PM EST, to reflect KSW's announcement of Genny Lim as tbe fourth instructor.]

* * *

Kundiman Summer Retreat

What: Kundiman Annual Poetry Retreat
When: June 22-27, 2010
Where: Fordham University, NYC
Seeking: Asian American poets, nationwide.
Application Deadline: March 1, 2010 (Postmarked)

Writes Kundiman, by way of introduction to its annual retreat program:

In order to help mentor the next generation of Asian-American poets, Kundiman is sponsoring an annual Poetry Retreat at The University of Virginia. During the Retreat, nationally renowned Asian American poets will conduct workshops with fellows. Readings, writing circles and informal social gatherings will also be scheduled. Through this Retreat, Kundiman hopes to provide a safe and instructive environment that identifies and addresses the unique challenges faced by emerging Asian American poets.

Kundiman, modeled after the highly successful organization Cave Canem, is one of the foremost proponents of Asian American poetry in the nation. To be accepted as a Kundiman Fellow (and thus to participate in the retreat) is to be inducted into a highly respected community of talented Asian American poets. Kundiman Fellows speak passionately about the experiences they’ve had at the retreat, and continue to engage with and speak up for one another’s work long after the summer is over. This year’s five-day retreat has places for eight students and will feature faculty members Regie Cabico, Tan Lin, and Paisley Rekdal. Tuition is $350 (room and board free to accepted Fellows). If you are an emerging Asian American poet, this is an opportunity for which you should definitely apply.

* * *

Write to Resist

What: Write to Resist
When: Thursdays, beginning on February 11, 2010, from 4:30-6 pm
Where: Project Reach, 39 Eldridge Street, 4th floor, New York, NY 10002
Seeking: High School aged Asian American women from the NYC area
Application Deadline: None (Rolling)

Write to Resist bills itself as:

“a writing workshop series for high school age Asian American young women who are looking for a space where they can use writing as a tool to talk about issues of violence. It’s an opportunity for those who are interested in both writing and talking about issues of violence to be in a supportive space to write, read, discuss, play, and engage in activities that will open up deep investigations into the role violence plays in our everyday lives, and what we can do to actively challenge it.”

This free workshop series looks to be an incredible opportunity for young women.  According to the Write to Resist web site, participants will work together on creating a zine publication, and will culminate the series with a performance showcase of their work.  If you are a young Asian American woman going to high school in NYC (or know of someone who might be interested), please do consider filling out the application (which is more of a questionnaire).   No prior experience is necessary.  To quote the web site, “All that Write to Resist requires is that you come in with an open mind, a willingness to discuss some hard topics, and a creative spirit that is ready not only to develop one’s own work, but to support others as well!”

Ashland, Oregon

Lawson Inada at William Stafford Celebration [reading his own works and Stafford's]
January 21 | 7 PM
Southern Oregon University
Hannon Library, Meese Meeting Room #305
1250 Siskiyou Blvd
*Updated 1/21; thanks to Jim Beaver for the information!*

Los Angeles

Giant Robot Bienniale 2: 15 Years
Closing reception: January 21 | 5-9 p.m.
Japanese American National Museum
369 East First Street
FREE

Excerpts from Libby Emmons’ “The Girls from Afar” [Staged Reading]
presented by East West Players / Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking
January 21 | 7:30 pm
Tateuchi Democracy Forum in the
National Center for the Preservation of Democracy
111 N. Central Avenue
RSVP on Facebook, or call 213-625-7000

Mount Vernon, Iowa

Patrick Rosal at Cornell College
January 20 | 7:30 PM
Shaw Conference Room
Cornell College Commons
FREE and open to the public

New York City

Monica Ferrell and others at Bowery
Presented by Four Way Books
January 24 | 2 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston and Bleeker)
Admission: $5

SULU Series feat. Kitchen Cabinet, Sahra Nguyen, Maya Hatch, Cynthia Lin, Sheng Wang
Partial proceeds to Haiti
January 24 | 8 pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston and Bleeker)
Admission: $8 General | $5 Student

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle [Multimedia Theatre Production of Haruki Murakami's novel]
[Through January 30] | Wed-Sat @ 8 pm, Sun @ 2 pm
Ohio Theatre
66 Wooster St.
Tickets: $18

San Francisco Bay Area

KSW/Kaya’s SF Thomassons Performance Tour
January 23 | 12 noon to 2 pm
Tour begins at 953 Mission St. @ 5th St (Mint Mall, lower level)
Tickets:  $10 in advance, $12 at the bus.

Shahid Buttar Workshop: “Breaking the Silence with Performance Poetry”
@ Listen to the Silence (Stanford AASA’s 4th Annual Asian American Issues Conference)
January 23 | 2 to 3:15 pm
Stanford University School of Education / Cubberly Auditorium
485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA
Register online here.

Beautiful as Yesterday: a Novel (book talk and signing by Fan Wu)
January 23 | 2-4 pm
San Francisco Public Library – Main Library (Latino/Hispanic A)
100 Larkin St. (at Grove)