We are a little behind on our news updates, but in case you have not already heard of this amazing project, here’s a little plug for “The 500 Project,” which is being co-sponsored by Bryan Thao Worra and our friends at Kartika Review.
“Can’t we find, among all of those thousands, 10 individuals who are passionate about Asian American literature, writer activists who will express without equivocation that Asian American literature matters?
For each of the 50 states, there must be at least 10 Asian / Pacific Islander Americans that answer yes. And thus Thao Worra, joined by Kartika Review seek out those 500. Why should it be so hard to identify them and build a vibrant, amazing network of readers and writers? How can a canon of contemporary Asian American literature be built if we cannot even find these 500?”
The 500 Project, accordingly, “seeks to profile 10 APIA individuals from each of the 50 States who answer YES.”
To submit your profile, respond to the items in their short questionnaire, and email your answers to 500project [at] kartikareview (dot) com. Include the name of your state, and your own name, in the subject line.
We at LR, of course, heartily encourage you to submit a profile. Take a stand for the importance of APIA lit, and represent your state!
More on the history and inspiration behind The 500 Project can be found here, at Kartika Review‘s web site.
A quick update and reminder to those who either picked up an LR Postcard Project card at AWP or requested one in the mail: please don’t forget to write your response poem and send it back to us! April 15th (the postmark deadline) is fast-approaching, and the sooner you send in your responses, the earlier we’ll be able to feature them on the blog.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns regarding how the project is meant to work, please do not hesitate to send us an email: editors [at] lanternreview (dot) com.
This week in my intro comp class, my students read a chapter from Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones, in which she urges aspiring writers to use specific language in their descriptions, arguing that, just as a person deserves the dignity of being called by the name that is unique to them, an object, an idea, or whatever it is that becomes the subject of one’s writings, also deserves the dignity of specificity (77).
I like this idea—that to write specifically is not only to render a subject more vividly, but it is to render that subject with an ethical hand: truthfully, respectfully, with acknowledgment of its dignity. There is much talk in the arts of how to create ethically, with genuine concern for the dignity and humanity of the subjects that we handle in our work. I like the idea that to write ethically involves more than paying attention to the greater political implications of our words; that such concerns are extremely important, but that as writers, in order to render these themes well, we also have a responsibility to pay close scrutiny to the elements of craft—if we are not paying careful attention to the colors and tonalities of our words, to the very palette with which we wield our art, then we are not honoring the subjects of our writing, either. How that attention to detail pans out, of course, will be very different in every case (there is, in my opinion, no monolithically “correct” definition of, or approach to, solid craft). But the idea that the attention and respect which a writer pays to his or her subject will be conveyed in the detailed inflections of his or her work seems very wise to me, indeed.
(A note: this post is a reflection on some of the on-site events that we attended during AWP this year. Mia will write more about our off-site reading in a later post).
It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly a month since AWP 2011 ended, and here we are—as usual—egregiously late with the update. Nevertheless, this year’s conference was a colorful and thought-provoking experience for us, and we would be amiss if we did not share at least a taste of what we took away from it with you. At last year’s AWP, we got our feet wet, so to speak, meeting and connecting with a host of amazing poets, and soaking in every bit of Asian American poetry that we could. It was an exciting and effervescent time for us—we were just starting to get LR off the ground, and we were looking ahead at how our project might find its space amidst the community that was already out there.
Valentine’s Day, with its often-saccharine greeting card verses and glossy commercial sentiments (not to mention its frequent misquotations of everyone from Shakespeare to Emily Dickinson), is at hand once again, and what better time of year than to give that tricky (and oft-abused) specimen—the love poem—a subversive spin? I’m not talking about writing penny dreadfuls or anguished emo laments (we are not Death Cab for Cutie here). I’m talking about defying expectation completely with regards to what a “love poem” is and/or should be. In a sense, the love poem (as it is known in contemporary popular culture) is very much akin to the ode, in that the tone and subject matter of its address tends to elevate the “you” with the use of high language and often ornate imagery. The purpose of the exercises that follow are to invite you to write against this sense of elevation while still retaining, in some way, at least a loose engagement with the intimacy, tenderness, or intensity of the close gaze in which the speaker of a love poem might hold the object of his or her affection. To, in short, write against and across cliché and into something that is bold, surprising, and new.
Prompt: Write an “unromantic” love poem. Some ideas:
Fill-In Style Postcard for the 2011 LR Postcard Project
A warm welcome to all those who are joining us for the first time after encountering us in D.C.! We are back from AWP, and we’re getting ready to roll once again over here on the blog. The conference and reading went wonderfully (look out for more about our experience in our upcoming post-AWP reflection posts), and we were delighted to be able to hand out 103 postcards as part of our 2011 Postcard Project.
For those of you who are just joining us, or who didn’t catch the explanation that we posted before the conference, the LR Postcard Project is a special venture that we’ve devised in order to encourage creative responses to the poems that we’ve published so far in Issue 1 & Issue 2. We made up a series of 116 uniquely-numbered postcards, featuring either pre-selected “shimmery bits” (quotes, excerpts, lines, images, what have you) from poems that appeared in our first two issues or a blank front (where you could fill in your own favorite “shimmery bit” from an LR poem), and asked people at AWP to take one home, to write a response to their chosen excerpt in the form of a poem on the back, and to mail it back to us by April 15th. The idea here is that we will post the cards that we receive to the blog (as they come in) and that we’ll even choose a few that we particularly like to publish in an upcoming issue.
You can expect to see more about the project—including reminders, and (hopefully!) responses, in upcoming weeks, but for those of you who were not able to make it to the conference, we wanted to offer you the opportunity to participate, as well, and so we are going to give away our 13 remaining postcards (all of which are of the fill-in-yourself variety) to the first 13 commentors on this post. Here are the rules:
Leave a comment on this post with your name, a contact email address, and the title of your favorite poem from Issue 1 or 2 of LR.
We will contact the first 13 (human/non-spam/individual) commentors for their mailing addresses and will send them each a postcard via snail mail.
If you receive a card, all you have to do is to inscribe a short quote or excerpt from a poem in Issue 1 or 2 on the front of the card, write a poem on the back in response to that quote, stick on a postcard stamp, and send it back to us by April 15th.
Yesterday evening, Mia gave you some suggestions of panels that might be of interest to you at AWP 2011. Today, I’ll be giving you a more detailed overview of some of the ways that you can connect with us at this year’s AWP.
We’ve talked about it before, but it deserves another mention here—the best way to show your support for Lantern Review at this year’s conference would be to come out to the joint, off-site reading that we’re hosting with Boxcar Poetry Review on Friday night (the 4th) at 7:30 pm, at Go Mama Go! (1809 14th St. NW). Entrance is pay-as-you-wish ($5 suggested donation, but we won’t turn anyone away for lack of funds). We have a great lineup of about 16 readers (from both journals) planned, and will provide light refreshments afterward. You don’t have to be a registered conference attender to come to this event, so even if you’re not going to AWP but live in the DC area, please consider coming out to show your support. More information, and the option to RSVP (not required, but it helps us to get an approximate headcount) are available at the event’s Facebook invitation page.
2. AWP Bookfair: The LANTERN REVIEW Postcard Project 2011
LR Postcard Project 2011
Last year, we gave out bookmarks and a special edition run of mini-books at the AWP bookfair. This year, we are trying something different—and it requires your participation! We’ve made a set of 116 numbered postcards, each of which displays either a unique quote from a poem that’s appeared in an issue of Lantern Review, or a blank front for you to fill in with your own favorite line from an LR poem, and will be distributing stacks of them between the tables that have kindly agreed to display some of our materials (Boxcar Poetry Review and Notre Dame Review). We would love for you to stop by and sign out a postcard (or postcards) that appeals to you—and then to take your selection(s) home, respond to the content on the front by writing a poem on the reverse side, and mail your creation back to us by April 15, 2011. We’ll post most of the responses on the blog as they come in, and will publish any that we particularly like in a special section of a future issue. Not to fret if you can’t make it to the conference, though; if we have postcards left over after the conference, we’ll be opening up the project to blog readers, too.
3. Panels and Readings (Follow us on Twitter)
As Mia mentioned yesterday, we plan to be at the Kundiman panel and would love for you to look us up there. But we’ll be also attending other panels and events sporadically throughout the conference and will try to Tweet about our plans for the next day each evening before we go to bed. So if you’re not already following us on Twitter (@LanternReview), please do so!
This tighter, more-streamlined volume contains 60 pages of extraordinary poetry and visual art, and features, for the first time, not only a page-bound sample of performance poetry (as part of our Community Voices feature), but also a special audio performance of that poem, which the artists recorded especially for LR. Contributions to this issue include poetry by W. Todd Kaneko, Kenji C. Liu, Kathleen Hellen, Aryanil Mukherjee, Lek Borja, Wendi Lee, Aimee Suzara, Michelle Peñaloza, Rajiv Mohabir, JoAnn Balingit, Kimberly Alidio, and Marc Vincenz; as well as a range of beautiful photographic work, including a diptych of layered portraits by Bethany Hana Fong and the striking image of a blackbird by Anannya Dasgupta that appears on the cover. Additionally, our Community Voices section in this issue features a profile of Sulu DC, as well as the collaborative poem mentioned above, which was created and is performed, in this issue, by three of the organization’s featured poets.
Before entering the issue, you might want to take a moment to check out our recommendations for optimum viewing, located here. To listen to the audio in the issue, you’ll also need to have an updated version of the Adobe Flash player plugin installed, and will need to have Javascript enabled (more details and troubleshooting suggestions can be found on the issue’s masthead). If you want to proceed to the issue right away, click here or on the cover image at the top left of this post. Issue 1 can now be accessed via the new “Archives” page on our main site.
We hope that you enjoy Issue 2! As usual, we would love to hear any feedback that you might have regarding either its content or the [technical] navigability. Please feel free to drop us a line any time at editors[at]lanternreview.com.
For your edification: two new releases from the world of Asian American small press / journal publishing! Please help support the good work that our friends at these magazines do:
The Asian American Literary Review has released its second issue, featuring, among other goodies, an interview with Arthur Sze and poetry by Ray Hsu, Kimiko Hahn, Rick Barot, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Jose Watanabe (as translated by Michelle Har Kim), Adrienne Su, Prageeta Sharma, Ching-In Chen, Pimone Triplett, and Jeffrey Yang. Subscriptions are available for purchase via their web site — and at the moment, they’re being offered at a special discount (shipping and handling charges waived) for a limited time, so order your copy soon if you can.
On the digital magazine front, Kartika Review has just announced the release of its second [print] anthology, featuring work from their 5th-8th issues. You can purchase a copy online through Lulu.
It’s that time of year again. Our friends at Kundiman and Alice James Books are accepting submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts for their annual book prize. This is a unique opportunity for Asian American poets of all stripes (they accept entries from both emerging and established poets), and we highly encourage you to consider submitting your work. (Not to mention that this year they are accepting electronic submissions in addition to traditional paper sub’s—a plus for both the environment, and for the money saved on postage!)
Kundiman and Alice James Books are accepting submissions of poetry manuscripts for The Kundiman Poetry Prize electronically and by regular mail through February 11, 2011. The Kundiman Poetry Prize welcomes submissions from emerging as well as established Asian American poets. Entrants must reside in the United States.
The winner receives $1000, book publication and a New York City feature reading.
Kudos to Kundiman and Alice James for continuing this tradition of helping Asian American poets to get their work out into the world. More information about the prize and its submission guidelines can be found on Kundiman’s web site. Or see our Issue 1 Community Voices feature on Kundiman for more about the organization itself.
