Molly Gaudry reads during the Poetry Showcase at the AAWW's 2011 Page Turner Festival

This week’s prompt is inspired by the Asian American Writers Workshop’s 2011 Page Turner Festival, which I attended two weekends ago in Brooklyn, NY.

An unexpected winter storm swept into town on the morning of the festival, pummeling Brooklyn with high winds and dumping snow and sleet all over the streets, but despite the merciless weather, a surprisingly large crowd of attendees bundled up and came out to watch panel after panel of writers light up the interiors of Powerhouse Arena and Melville House.  All through the morning and afternoon, each event was packed; by the time I arrived at Melville House to catch the Poetry Showcase (my favorite, and last event of the day before I had to rush home to snow-covered NJ), the colorful, cozy performance space was standing-room only.

I’ve been to plenty of readings and conferences before, but never to a literary festival that felt this driven by a searingly-clear, single vision.  Throughout the day, the one theme that continued to impress itself upon me again and again was the AAWW’s deep, active commitment to the political—from the reflections of the poets on the Occupy Wall Street panel about the critical and aesthetic possibilities of poetry shared by “human mic”  to the powerful photographs and testimonies shared by the CultureStrike participants who visited Arizona in the wake of  SB 1070—I was continually struck by AAWW’s unique vision for how the work of the artist can simultaneously inhabit the page and reach beyond it into world in a very physical, practical way.

Today’s prompt comes from that same sense of vision, and invites you to play with figurations of craft that “break” from the construct of the page-bound poem in order to tangibly evoke discussion and action within your immediate community.

Prompt: Construct, organize, present, and/or distribute a political “act of poetry” whose craft and form reaches beyond the written page to invite others to physically and verbally interact with, respond to, and share in its promulgation and completion.

2011 Kundiman Faculty Jon Pineda, Kimiko Hahn, and Karen An-hwei Lee

From June 15th-19th, two Lantern Review staff members (Editor Iris A. Law and Staff Writer Henry W. Leung) attended the 2011 Kundiman Poetry Retreat at Fordham University in New York City.  What follows are our reflections on our experiences there.

* * *

I. Iris

A few weeks ago, I stepped out of a D train in the Bronx and trundled my suitcase up the hill toward my very first Kundiman Retreat. Fordham Road greeted me with its jumble and racket: taxis honked their way down the street; motorcycles revved; teenagers laughed over the tinkling of a Mr. Softee van; shop owners shouted from behind racks of merchandise that spilled colorfully onto the sidewalk; a child descended uneasily from a bus and promptly vomited on the pavement. It felt strange to enter the gated, manicured space of the Rose Hill campus—ostrich-like; irresponsible, almost. But once swaddled into this beautifully (even eerily) verdant setting, it was also difficult not to feel that this was a space that in some way enacted the purpose of Kundiman: a place in which the creative soul could clear space within itself so that new patches of greenness could be sown and take root—not in isolation from the world, but in juxtaposition with, and in the context of, the world. I was reminded of something that I’d read in an interview Sarah Gambito gave to The Fordham Observer. In order to write in New York, she remarks, she tries “to be as still as [she] can in the city.” Indeed, to be a writer is to live in a position of simultaneous privilege and responsibility. As participants in social communities, we hold a responsibility to live fully in the world, so that we can write into, for, and from those communities. But at the same time, the work of the writer cannot be completed without the ability to occasionally take a step back: to be a still, small, open receptacle to the world, but a simultaneous processor of that world. And the lens with which we process—with which we must enact our craft—requires, from time to time, the ability to allow ourselves space to wrestle with the work itself, and with the world surrounding the work.

Fellows Jane Wong, Tarfia Faizullah, and Cathy Linh Che

I shared during Closing Circle (the final, reflective gathering of the weekend) that—as cliché as it may sound—the retreat felt like a gift to me. I came to New York expecting to take a step back from the world in order to write and to be in the presence of other writers; to expend great swaths of time developing projects; to workshop; and to make some engaging new friendships with other Asian American poets. But my experience of the retreat was, in fact, more like a step deeper into the experience of being a writer in the world—of being a poet in context.

Kundiman felt like a gift to me—as a writer, and as an Asian American-identified poet—not solely because of the writing I was able to do and the people that I met, but because I came away from the weekend feeling deeply nourished. Throughout the weekend, I was constantly being given small treasures—little tokens of wisdom, practical help, assurance, goodwill—by the faculty, by the staff, by the other fellows. Timothy Yu offered his advice and his ear (and gave up the chance to eat his dinner in peace) one evening when he allowed me to grill him about PhD programs in literature; Karen An-hwei Lee listened to me and offered me wisdom about faith and writing; Jon Pineda shared insights about envisioning pause and pacing in a manuscript; Kimiko Hahn opened the weekend with the invitation to “give ourselves permission” and encouraged us to make our writing time precious, even if that time was limited to ten minutes in the parking lot every morning; Sarah Gambito shared earnestly and encouragingly about the struggles she’d gone through while adjuncting; Oliver de la Paz offered advice about setting priorities in teaching and writing, and helped me to shape the jumble of vaguely-related poems that had grown out of my thesis into a new vision for a manuscript. There were practical gifts: a submissions spreadsheet model from Oliver de la Paz; leads on job opportunities from several of the fellows; the suite of prompts that Kimiko Hahn led us in creating and sharing during my last workshop; the insightful, concrete feedback that my home group gave me; the exquisite corpse poem the fellows secretly created as a thank-you for the staff. And there were immaterial gifts, too: the courage of the poems shared during salon; the river song that Misha Chowdhury sang to open the reading; the warmth, generosity and humility present amongst the members of my workshop group as they carefully critiqued each fellow’s work.

Fellows Annie Won, Kristine Uyeda, and Hong-Thao Nguyen

I left the weekend feeling full: with a renewed sense of purpose both for myself as an artist, and for the editorial vision of LR. Over and over again, I was reminded of our self-imposed imperative to curate a publication space in which the crazy, slippery thing that we call “Asian American poetry” can be simultaneously performed and interrogated. As Kimiko Hahn remarked during Timothy Yu’s presentation on the literary history of Asian American poetry, when we try to talk about what Asian American poetry is, we often end up “finding more of a description than a definition.“

Tim Yu, Monica Ong, Matthew Olzmann, Jane Wong, and Oliver de la Paz at the final Salon of the retreat

Indeed, that is exactly what Mia and I constantly wrestle with whenever we vision for LR. How, we ask ourselves, can we provide a space that is descriptive rather than prescriptive, messy rather than precise, illuminative rather than obscurative? A space that, in other words, enables the playing-out of central questions about the relationship between poetry and community.  As Sarah Gambito remarked during Closing Circle, “The poet needs to be able to see and write what our communities can’t say or do. How can a community see if the poets don’t?”

But the call to transformative illumination extends far beyond the work of the individual poet, or even the work of the editor. To quote Sarah once again: “Illuminative living, clear-sighted living, joyful living. That’s what a poem is.”

“Take the light back,” she urged us. And so that’s what I’m doing here.

* * *

II. Henry

Kundiman means “love song.” Joseph Legaspi noted in an assignment to my workshop home group: “They say every poem is a love poem. Is it? Kundiman is a love poem. It is.” Sarah Gambito said at our Lincoln Center reading, “What is the truth? Our story, on our terms.” Jennifer Chang sent us a letter for Opening Circle that included this exhortation and reminder: “Be the poem you want to write. Then write it.” I was reminded of Jacqueline Woodson who wrote some years ago, “Name all the people / You’re always thinking about / People are poems.” And of an old friend arguing with pre-med students that medicine only delays death, but poetry—“Poetry saves lives.”

How far we’ve come from T.S. Eliot’s occlusive “Tradition” and from self-denying High Modernism! Wordsworth, I have read, tried for a while to speak in verse, grafting poetic form onto his conversations throughout the day. It was a failed, pretentious experiment. What if, instead, he had met this year’s Kundiman Fellows and understood that one need only live in verse? That, in the end, poetry’s bottom line is not adroitness but acquaintance?

Fellows Matthew Olzmann, Duy Ba Doan, and Sonia Mukherji

When we gathered in the lounge of O’Hare Hall, the usually softspoken Karen An-hwei Lee shouted that we were “Hot lava!” It’s no wonder the themes arising from this Kundiman Retreat melted a boundary between the poet and the poem—that estrangement we effect when we’re afraid to invest and represent ourselves in language. We spoke endlessly of permissions and fearlessness. The honey badger, which suffers bee stings and snake bites even as it chews its meals, was a kind of mascot. In our poems and conversations, we shared intimacies in a spirit that “confessional” poetry today often lacks in its sensationalism: a spirit of sanctity, of trust in the listener, of trust in the absolution. Graduating Fellow Helene Achanzar told us that she couldn’t sleep at night—she felt so known, so filled with joy, she didn’t want that vitality to end. I felt the same way, and as the Kundiman Retreat capped off a year of many transitions for me, I thought: We frequently change (Miles Davis: “I have to change, it’s like a curse”) but how often do we get to awaken?

It was a privilege to work with instructors Kimiko Hahn, Karen An-hwei Lee, and Jon Pineda. A privilege to workshop with Matthew Olzmann, graduating Fellow and winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, whose humor and wisdom were equally instructive. A surprise and privilege to meet Esther Lee, whose book I’d reviewed before I knew I’d meet her, and to see her process. A privilege to learn from all the adjuncts and professionals who are making it in the “real world,” and from Fulbright scholar-poets Misha Chowdhury, Tarfia Faizullah, and Jane Wong. A blessing to workshop with Carolyn Ho, who read my poems with more acuity than anyone I’ve known.

Henry with Helene Achanzar, Sandra Yee, and Vikas Menon

But illuminated craft was the least of the gifts I received from Kundiman; casting beyond it, Oliver de la Paz completely reframed my perspective on publication. (In fact, I was sketching Keating Hall from a park bench as I waited for our meeting, and when he called me over to his bench, I noted how different the building looked after a walk of just thirty feet). For the longest time I’ve been angry and anxious about the system in place, the way that submitting work to journals and contests can be a sordid rolling of the bones. I was worried about making a living out of my writing; he taught me instead to make a life out of it. He described publication as a part of the writing process, a way to find out if your work is ready—and if so, ready for whom, for what audience? In other words, what homes will you find for your poems and for yourself?

I have never felt so grounded as a writer, so sure of my place. I no longer need to identify as a writer of Asian American background in protest of being misunderstood; I can now identify as such knowing I have been understood, and can again, and because I have a love song to write. Once community has been found, the pressure of the citizen-poet seems to change from filling in negative or margin space to celebrating an open space. Since before Romanticism, our culture has been obsessed with the figure of the individual genius. But, in language, how much can we claim belongs to the individual? I place myself in a larger Asian American neighborhood believing that brilliance is a collaborative, fortunate, even miraculous, lifelong accumulation of words and their joy, of words and their grotesqueness.

Sarah Gambito and Joseph Legaspi, Kundiman Founders

And I hold that poetry is not a duty. Duties are burdens. It’s a commonplace to say that artists and creators are products of their communities. But we are entering an internet eternity of uncertain ownership (in a wireless society, what does it mean to belong or be dispossessed?), and though the universe may be contracting, it is only getting more complex. Today, we get to will our communities into being; we get to nurture our sources of nurture. As Kimiko Hahn said at the reading, “Who says you can’t choose your family?” During the third-year Fellows’ graduation, they were given turtle charms as a symbol, for the turtle carries its home on its back everywhere; and now we, too, have a home to carry forth. I want to end this with love and respect for the Kundiman Fellowship and its community, for Kundiman means “love song,” and fellowship means we are all in this boat together.

Angel Island Immigration Station

Last May, the LR Blog featured the Angel Island poems in our APIA Heritage Month “Poetry in History” series.  In the post, Iris explains:

Often called the “Ellis Island of the West,” Angel Island served as the site for processing as many as 175,000 Chinese immigrants from 1910-1940.

Detainees were separated by gender [and ethnicity!] and locked up in crowded barracks while they awaited questioning, for weeks or months — sometimes, for years — at a time. To pass the time, many immigrants wrote or carved poems into the soft wood of the barrack walls.

The poems vary in theme, form, and in level of polish, and serve as a testimony to the experience of detention, chronicling everything from hope to anger to loneliness, to a sense of adventure.

At the time, I had never visited Angel Island or read any of the poems inscribed on the walls of the immigration station, but last week I made the pilgrimage: flew to San Francisco, drove to Tiburon, took the ferry, made the hike, etc.  It was an odd experience—I arrived at the dock at the same time as two groups of fifth grade history students, meaning that I toured the immigration station with them and heard all sorts of hilarious comments: “Who fought who during the Civil War?  China and America?” as well as some not-so hilarious ones: “Chinese, Japanese, itchy knees, money please…” a sing-song chant I remember hearing about from the mid-twentieth century, around the time the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed.  Amazing, really, what little impact four decades of activism have had on prevailing attitudes about who is/n’t included in “America” and why.

Swatches of paint removed to show the many layers accumulated below

Touring the immigration station barracks, however, was phenomenal.  The ghosted voices inscribed on the walls—some carved deep into the wood, some scrawled in pencil, some inked in pen or merely scratched on the surface—were everywhere, which, along with the milling crowds of fifth-graders, gave an acute sense of claustrophobia.  The air was heavy with history, the weight of all that had transpired within the close quarters of the barracks.

The photo on the left shows a corner of the men’s lodgings where sections of lead paint have been removed to reveal layers of ink below.  A park ranger informed us that at some point they decided not to strip the walls for fear of destroying the layers of poetry below.  Fascinating, the question of how to preserve these delicate poems, covered by layers of putty that have since sunk into the carvings, drawn in by the soft wood.

Bunks in the Immigration Station barracks

In considering how to best respond to these poems in my own work, however, I have found myself caught in the conundrum discussed in Josephine Park’s Apparitions of Asia: Modernist Form and Asian American Poetics (Oxford University Press).  Taking up classical Chinese (or Japanese) forms and responding to these voices in kind can be a risky or at least complicated venture for the Asian American poet whose work can be subjected to criticism for its clumsy importation of Asian forms into an American context.  Work like this, Park points out, can (sometime inadvertently) become aligned with the modernist tradition of American Orientalism, in which Japanese and Chinese forms are first conflated, and then appropriated by Western poets seeking a more authentically American voice.  In short: how to respond to these poems without sounding like a voice lifted out of Pound’s Cathay?

This is an issue taken up not only by Asian American poets and literary critics, but by our counterparts working in other realms of the creative arts as well.  How to respond to Asian heritages and cultural forms which constitute (at least a part of) our artistic lineage, while sidestepping the somewhat uncomfortable legacy of American Orientalism?  A possible model for consideration is the following piece of music composed in response to Poem #38:

Being idle in the wooden building, I opened a window.
The morning breeze and bright moon lingered together.
I reminisce the native village far away, cut off by clouds and mountains.
On the little island the wailing of cold, wild geese can be faintly heard.
The hero who has lost his way can talk meaninglessly of the sword.
The poet at the end of the road can only ascend a tower.
One should know that when the country is weak, the people’s spirit dies.
Why else do we come to this place to be imprisoned?

(as translated in Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1919-1940, University of Washington Press)

The song, written by Paul Sakai and performed by DuckDuckGoose (keyboardist Brian Woolford, guitarist John Broback, and Sakai on drums), is called “Angel Island“—click the link to hear the MP3.  It was featured by the Chinese Expulsion Remembrance Project in Seattle earlier this year, and is of particular interest to me because rather than responding to Poem #38 in a way one might expect, it reaches beyond the conventions of “Asian fusion” for a wholly new form of expression.  In talking about the piece—and his work as an Asian American musician in general–Sakai often expresses the desire to move away from clumsy attempts to “meld” cultures or too overtly juxtapose “Asian” chord progressions against “American” or Western strands.

Prompt:

Listen to “Angel Island” by DuckDuckGoose and respond to Poem #38 (or any of the Angel Island poems, for that matter).  In your drafting process, be aware of how you navigate your engagement with the classical and/or potentially “American Orientalist” sensibility of the poems’ translation.

Allow the spirit of the musical composition to inform your work; consider this a response to a response, yet another contribution to the rich creative conversation first instigated by these historic protest poems.

JoAnn Balingit

It’s been a little over a month now since AWP 2011 in Washington DC — and this post is more than a little overdue!  Nonetheless, here it is: our reflection on the very first gathering of Lantern Review contributors, readers, and editors.  Our off-site reading, co-hosted by Boxcar Poetry Review “in celebration of the little online magazine,” took place on Friday, February 4th at Go Mama Go!, a lovely, eclectic art supply & gift shop (ceramics, antique soda bottles, shot glasses, bright paper umbrellas) whose owner greeted us with a warm, “Are you here for the Chinese poetry?” when we first walked into the door.  ”Well… yes?” we said, though really we were there for so much more.

Friends and contributors of LANTERN REVIEW and BOXCAR POETRY REVIEW.

Realizing that a gathering of people interested in Asian American poetry could perhaps be mistaken for enthusiasts of Chinese verse, we decided that this was an appropriate place for our reading to begin: with an assumption that would, as the night progressed, be stretched and proliferated across a variety of subjects, styles, personalities, and identities.  We heard from lovers, from daughters and sons, from fighters and artists, ethnic selves, queer selves, and — at times — just plain selves confronted with the complex reality of living in the twenty-first century.

We had the pleasure of hearing seven different Lantern Review contributors, all of whom read poems published in either Issue 1 or Issue 2 alongside other pieces prepared for the event.  Though most of us had never met before, there was a wonderful camaraderie in the room — after tipping the microphone down a few inches, Issue 2 contributor Kathleen Hellen joked that, being a little-ish person, she loved little-ish poems and planned to share a few with us.

Kathleen Hellen

Contributor Rajiv Mohabir impressed us with his unexplained passion for whales, even pulling off his fleece to show the back of his t-shirt.  Sure enough: whale.

To be perfectly honest, in preparing for this event I had no idea what — or who, rather — to expect.  Sure, we had a list of readers and printed programs, but in curating the poems for our two issues, I’d developed certain notions of “who” our contributors were: Poet X, author of Poem Y, was surely this kind of person, or at least that’s what I thought after spending so much time with their persona on the page.  But would I be proved mistaken when I met them in real life?

Kimberly Alidio

Seeing the men and women “behind the issues,” however, playing the wonderful game of matching poet face to poetic voice, was a fabulous experience.  At this event, a community that had previously existed only as a textual (and virtual!) reality became, for the first time, embodied in flesh: jeans and scarves, breath and lungs and vocal chords.  Hearing these contributors’ voices for the first time, particularly when each poet read their LR piece, was phenomenal.  Personas that previously existed only as textual markings on a computer screen became live presences, embodied on stage before our very eyes.

W. Todd Kaneko

This could be an overreaction — the online magazine, and indeed the publishing world itself, has been around a long time, and “meeting your editor/contributors for the first time” is terribly old news.  For us, however, newly minted and only in our second year, the event was a wonderful success.  A true celebration of the little online magazine.  We’re grateful to our contributors, particularly those who were there with us at Go Mama Go! on the 4th, and to all the other readers and writers who make this virtual and literary community a living network of flesh-and-bone people around the nation.  Thank you for your support, and for joining us in exploring the open-ended question of Asian American poetry.

LR Readers & Editors

Also, thanks to Iris’ foresight and inner documentary filmmaker, you can hear clips of their readings below:

Kimberly Alidio

JoAnn Balingit

Kathleen Hellen

W. Todd Kaneko

Rajiv Mohabir

Angela Veronica Wong

Kristine Uyeda

More . . .

For a complete set of images from the reading, visit our Flickr photostream, which also contains photos of other panels and readings we attended at AWP 2011.  You can also check out our YouTube channel, where all seven videos are posted in chronological order.

Ken Chen speaks at the AAWW's Friday Panel

(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.

Neil Aitken, Jennifer Chang, and Sarah Gambito, who comprised one half of the Kundiman Panel.

This year, we were struck once again with the generosity and warmth of those in the Asian American poetry community—from Neil Aitken of  Boxcar, who allowed us to use almost half of his bookfair table for our materials; to Kaya Press, who made content recommendations and gave us review copies; to Kundiman and the AAWW, who offered us time to introduce ourselves and a shoutout, respectively, at their panels; to all of the many people who came up to us to introduce themselves, to inquire about what we do, or to give us a kind word of encouragement.  It was both gratifying and amazingly thrilling to get to finally meet some of our contributors at our off-site reading, and on the whole, we were struck once again with how humbling and exciting it is to have the chance to do what we do, within the context of the community into which we’ve been carving our niche.

Jennifer Tseng, Kimiko Hahn, and Marie Lee at the AAWW Reading

This year, though, was also different for us—in that we came to the conference with a little more experience under our belts, and hot on the heels of the questions that we wrestled with in the editors’ note of our second issue.  And this year, it seemed that everywhere we went at the conference, those same questions—about definitions and identitarian politics—continued to follow us, throwing out new challenges to consider and  further questions to contemplate at every step.  From the first event we attended (a panel about Catholic identity at which we heard Luisa A. Igloria reflect on the relationship between Church and Philippine history, and how the tension of that balance manifests itself in her writing), to the last (the AAWW’s anniversary reading, at which we heard and were encouraged by well-established Asian American writers who explored subjects that often ranged far and beyond those that have come to be familiar within the Asian American literary canon), we continued to be confronted and struck by the way that contemporary Asian American literature regularly defies and transgresses its own boundaries, manifesting itself in areas where one might not otherwise think it a relevant, and incorporating work, and writers, who might not otherwise fit the categorically ‘orthodox’ definitions that we, or others, have tended to set for it.

Luisa A. Igloria speaks at Thursday's 'The Rosary Effect' panel.

The Asian American Writers’ Workshop was at AWP for the first time this year, and we were particularly struck by something that Ken Chen, its director, said at their Friday “Page Turners” panel.  The AAWW, he said, has occasionally been criticized for getting involved with programming that does not seem to be directly, distinctly, related to Asian American identity (for example, sending people to participate in protests against the recent immigration legislation in Arizona).   But such criticisms, Ken feels, are unfounded;  he sees the mission of the AAWW (to curate literary events and to build coalitions) as one which absolutely necessitates a broad, rather than a narrow, focus.  The act of curating, he said, can be used “like a flashlight on the surface of history,” to contextualize Asian American writers and their work by putting it in conversation, and in context with, broader political issues that apply to people from different eras, and of multiple ethnicities.  An important part of the work that they do at the Workshop thus consists of “curating” people of different ethnicities together around issues of politics and art, in the belief that politics is not something that should be separate from individual identity or expression.  Participating in broader political explorations, he said, allows the AAWW’s work to remain relevant.

Such a position, though, requires that the Workshop envision Asian American identity (and, by association, Asian American literature), as something which is dynamic, rather than fixed.  This view infuses everything that the AAWW does, from the readings and discussions it holds to its newest project—Open City—which sets out to track gentrification throughout New York City, without claiming to limit its focus to Asian American communities exclusively.  [We are, by the way, very intrigued by the work being done on the Open City blog, and hope to write an Editors' Picks post about it at some point, but that is a subject for another occasion].

Patrick Rosal and Ed Lin at Saturday's AAWW Reading

Ken’s words resonated deeply with us.  From an editorial perspective, we often consider how to hold our ‘Asian American’ designation  loosely while still remaining true to our mission of being a space where both poetry by Asian American poets and poetry that engages with questions relevant to the study of the Asian diaspora can be played out.  And we liked Ken’s idea of the literary curator as both a “critic and an anthropologist” of literature.  His comments provided a bit of an ideological lens for us as we continued on through the rest of the conference, and caused us to ask how we might push ourselves further in this respect.

Purvi Shah speaking at the Asian American First (Poetry) Books Panel.

So we return to that nagging question once more: what, then, should an Asian American literary journal publish?  Certainly, we should, and desire to, publish work by poets who identify as Asian American—but we hope to do far more than only that.  None of us write, or exist, in a vacuum.  So why shouldn’t we be a publication that challenges established definitions about whose work, and what kind of poetry, may be considered relevant to this construct that we embrace and call ‘Asian America’?  A space that allows Asian American poets to read their work in a context that, even while celebrating it, refuses to isolate it from the greater conversation?  A magazine that invites both Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans to read, and to find something compelling and relevant, within the work that we’ve curated together under the category of ‘Asian American poetry’?  Why should we not allow ourselves to engage with flux, with disorder, with the complex irreconcilibilities of hybrid identity (‘Asian American’ is, after all, a hybrid designation, as it clumps people of many experiences and ethnic identities together into the same category, and becomes even more complex if we are to define ‘American’ broadly, too, in recognizing that the implications of ‘America’ extend far beyond the 50 US states, and that ‘Asian Americanness’ is, in a way, an inherently transnational condition—such that we already receive, and publish, work by poets who are not based in the US)?

Douglas Kearney blows the audience away with his deliciously bone-rattling performance at the 'New Kind of Hybrid' panel.

Punny as it may sound (given the presence of the light source in our own name) we left the conference thinking hard about how to actively embrace Ken Chen’s metaphor of curation as a flashlight.  How might that look, practically?  We’re not sure yet.  The Postcard Poetry Project (which invites writers of any sort—poet and non-poet, Asian and non-Asian—to read and respond to Asian American poetry), might be one place to start.  And we’d like to continue to push forward the ideal of exploring critical, aesthetic, and political questions, rather than familiar tropes, in our future issues.  Whatever the case, Ken’s thoughts have given us something meaty to chew on for the future.  “We [the Asian American Writers Workshop] are always reinventing Asian American literature,” he said at one point.  It seems to us that in order for LR to remain contemporary and relevant, we need to be able to do the same.

To see the rest of our photos from the AWP Panels we attended this year, visit our Flickr set.

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.

Bollywood, Bullets, and Beyond: The Poetry of South Asian America
[Readings from Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry]

Several of the editors and poets of INDIVISIBLE celebrate its (very!) recent publication.

We were extremely lucky to attend this panel, which featured a stellar lineup of poets published in the brand new anthology of Asian American poetry Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press, 2010).  We were thrilled to learn that the anthology, the first of its kind, had literally just been published and, hot off the press, was ready for purchase at the AWP bookfair.  It was probably because of this that “Bollywood, Bullets, and Beyond” felt a little like a release party: poets gathering to celebrate the publication of this groundbreaking new collection, some of the editors and authors meeting for the very first time, voices coming to life from freshly minted pages .  The presentation of this anthology featured readings by poets like Ravi Shankar and Monica Ferrell, to name just a few.  As mentioned in reviews of the collection, Indivisible showcases “emerging and established poets who can trace their ethnic heritages to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka,” and represents a truly impressive range of voices and aesthetic styles.  Keep an eye out for upcoming reviews!

Transnational Identities: Asian American Writers & Asia

Transnational Identities Panel Participants

Though not all the original panelists were able to make it, at this panel we heard writers David Mura, Wang Ping, and Ed Bok Lee offer their reflections on what it means to engage transnational Asian and Asian American prose/poetry as subjects with complex relationships to both Asia (ie. China, Japan, Korea) and the United States.  Each writer shared not only from their personal experience of navigating the terms of transnational selves, or American ethnic selves, but from their writing as well, which pointed to many of the same questions addressed in their presentations.  Toward the end of the session, we were especially grateful for the intimate feel of the panel as moderator Bao Phi encouraged audience members to actively participate in constructing a conversation around the questions of what it means to be Asian and/or Asian American, and how to explore the linguistic, aesthetic, and cultural complexities of this transnational identity… not to mention this transnational literary identity.

Before, After, Under, Over, Inside, and Beyond the Anti-War Poem

Easily one of my favorite panels at AWP this year, this discussion of the “Anti-War Poem” was moderated by Fred Marchant and featured poets Brenda Hillman, Nick Flynn, and Shanee Stepakoff, each of whom chose a different preposition (“inside,” “under,” “before,” or “after”), which they used to focus their reflections on the anti-war poem.  Their high level of engagement—artistically, personally, and professionally—in examining issues of violence, torture, and the wide-ranging effects of the American war on terror led me to reconsider the role of the contemporary poet in what I now understand to be an America-at-war.  Nick Flynn in particular drove home the point that because we are now writing in a nation at war, we are all writing war poems, whether we are aware of it or not, and are all affected by our country’s involvement in international warfare.  What I most appreciated was the breadth of the conversation that took place at this panel; in addition to discussing the larger trends and exigencies of anti-war poetry today, the panelists also took time to reflect on salient features of their craft: techniques of redaction, the use of repetition and ordering in the amplification of found texts (ie. courtroom transcripts and the narratives of torture victims), the ethics of using testimonials and court transcripts as the raw material for poetry.

Morning in Denver from our hotel window

Waking up to bright sun and brisk, springy weather every morning was just one of the many small points of brilliance that characterized AWP for Mia and me this year.  Having just come off winter (we both live in places that are not known for their sunshine during the first few months of the year), it was a treat to look outside our hotel room in the morning and see sun, blue skies, and mountains in the distance.  Denver was beautiful.  Even the snow that had been forecast for Wednesday held off for us.  But not even the gorgeous weather or the lure of spring fever proved powerful enough to distract us from the activity going on inside the harshly-lit interior of the Convention Center this weekend.  When I say that it was a wonderful AWP, I really mean it.  After last year’s conference in Chicago (I met Nick Flynn!  I heard Sun Yung Shin read! Lan Samantha Chang complimented my sweater! Poetry played in the elevators all day!) I was prepared for this year to be pretty darn awesome.  But my experience this year totally blew me away.  Part of it was the fantastic panels and readings that I attended.  Part of it was the excitement of walking around the bookfair and getting to talk about LR and hand out our bookmarks and mini-books. Part of it was the great hotel, great food, and Mia’s great company (I’ll admit that we took at least one night off towards the end of the conference just to spend some catching up and discussing each other’s poems over styrofoam cups of Ramen).  But a large part of what made the experience so great was the amazing generosity of the people that we met there, and the passion with which we heard them speak of their work and their involvement with communities of other writers.

Over the course of the four days, Mia and I went to panels and readings galore and spent lots of time in the bookfair.  In this two-part series, we’ll be reflecting on just a few of our favorite events.  For my post, I’ll be focusing on one off-site reading and three panels/readings that I particularly enjoyed.  For more about our experience, look through our Flickr gallery of photos from the weekend, and check back here at the blog for Mia’s followup later this week.

Follow the jump below to read my reflections on the Kundiman/Cave Canem Joint Reading on Wednesday, Thursday’s Kundiman Panel, Friday’s From the Fishouse reading, and Saturday’s Split This Rock’s panel.

Kundiman/Cave Canem Joint Reading

Ching-In Chen emcees at the Mercury Cafe

The Kundiman/Cave Canem off-site reading (on Wednesday night) was a truly rocking way to start off my weekend.  The event was held on the second floor of the Mercury Cafe — an awesomely eclectic venue (think: Vaudevillian with a homey twist) complete with a blue-lit stage, shiny red curtains, strings upon strings of Christmas lights, hand-painted signs, and plastic chairs and tables that had been set up dinner theater-style. The format of the night, moderated by emcees Ching-In Chen of Kundiman and Tara Betts of Cave Canem, began with a wildly diverse lineup of readings by notable Kundiman and Cave Canem fellows and faculty, and concluded with an open mic showcasing the work of other fellows who were in attendance.  The event (as most readings I’ve been to have tended to do) started late, and as my friend Sami and I were jetlagged and exhausted from traveling all day, we left before the open mic began, but the setlist of readings that we were able to catch was fabulous.  Notable moments included Tara Betts giving tribute to all of the Cave Canem fellows who had passed away through the years, Ching-In Chen telling the story of, and reading poetry by, Melissa Rojas (a Kundiman fellow who was kidnapped and tortured while doing community work in the Philippines), Kazim Ali’s sassy/quirky tribute to Lucille Clifton (which eventually went on so long the emcees had to cut him off!), Oliver de la Paz’s reading of a wonderful poem that described his teenage years as a punk, and Cornelius Eady’s fabulous performances of “Emmett Till’s Glass-Topped Casket” and “Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Hat” (his delivery always resonates just so in the room and gives me the chills).  Several of the readers also made some very thought-provoking statements about the important work that Cave Canem and Kundiman had been doing in terms of creating a space for writers of color within the writing world.  I believe it was Toi Derrecotte who noted, at some point, that the face of AWP had changed dramatically during her career — to have a room full of writers of color listening to other writers of color read would have been unheard of years ago.  So what these two groups have been able to do is incredibly remarkable. And yet, there is still much work to be done (even looking at the demographic of the reading going on downstairs – which Sami and I nearly walked into by mistake at first – one could tell that AWP outside of the panels dealing with race is still in some ways quite homogenous). Indeed, the need for community spaces became a theme that we heard repeated again and again throughout the weekend.  The deep sense of loneliness that can be felt by writers of color who are operating in an environment where they feel that they are the only one: at some point one writer (I cannot remember who, unfortunately) likened it to writing in the dark and thinking they were writing all alone, and then it was as if suddenly Cave Canem switched on a light and they realized that there were others all around them, doing the same thing.

Love Songs and Leaps of Faith [Kundiman Panel]

Vikas Menon introduces the Kundiman panelists

Kundiman’s noontime panel on Thursday was another wonderful testament to the importance of community to the creative life and growth of a vibrant group of writers. Moderator Vikas Menon kicked off the event by describing the mission and history of Kundiman, and then five Kundiman fellows (Janine Joseph, R.A. Villanueva, Matthew Olzmann, Esther Lee, and Rick Barot) read poems and shared their reflections on the impact that Kundiman had had on them.  I was especially moved by Janine Joseph’s description of the moment when she realized that Kundiman was a space that finally felt like family, like home, and by her powerful ghazal describing the dizzying experience of her concussion after a car accident .  Olzmann’s hilarious poem involving large, carnivorous reptiles with magnets taped to their heads (enough said!) and R.A. Villanueva’s deft lyrics dealing with quantum mechanics and frog dissection in Catholic school also stuck with me that afternoon.  The final aspect of this panel that I really appreciated was the way in which one could see community truly being enacted in the ensuing dialogue between the audience and the panelists.  Instead of sitting in uncomfortable silence, audience members (including some very well-known ones, like David Mura) sprang right into the discussion once the Q&A portion of the session was opened, throwing out lots of big questions to which the panelists responded as a collective body, referring to not only their own experiences, but also to one another, and to other people in the audience.  And the conversation did not end with the end of the panel — it continued on in the hallway long after we had to vacate the room.

From the Fishouse: A Reading of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great

Oliver de la Paz reads

I’ll admit that – not being incredibly familiar with most of the poets in the lineup for this reading – I initially went to this event mostly to hear Oliver de la Paz and Major Jackson read. I ended up being very glad that I did, though, because this reading, as a whole, proved to be absolutely fantastic.  I was, of course, duly blown away by de la Paz and Jackson’s performances, but Mia and I also concurred that we loved the vibrancy of Adrian Matejka’s work — the way the room resonated with his voice and the audience was stirred to verbal response.  And when Camille Dungy – who was asked to read her poem “Black Spoon” at the last minute – began to recite it from memory, I was spellbound.  One of the truly lovely aspects of this reading was that each of the poets alternated between reading their own work and reading the work of other poets who were represented in the Fishouse anthology.  I thought this was a great way to represent the contributions of poets who were not included on the panel — and it reminded me of Dana Gioia’s famous protestation in his essay “Can Poetry Matter?” that all readings should include at least some work by other poets.  I don’t always agree with all of Gioia’s views on poetry, but after having sit in on the Fishouse reading, I could see the wisdom of his idea.  It was neat to hear each poem’s work in conversation with the work of other poets whom they admired, and it was also great to get a sense of the rich variety of voices that the anthology contains.  (We definitely recommend checking out this anthology, by the way – it’s set up to be a useful tool for teachers, and is – in an unusual move – organized by poetic device; plus, how can you resist a book that bills itself as “a jamboree of poetry at its acoustic best”?)

Don’t You Hear This Hammer Ring? Socially Engaged Poetry in the Age of Obama [ Split This Rock Panel]

Sarah Browning speaks at the Split This Rock panel

This was the second-to-last panel that I attended during the course of the weekend, and it was a great way to synthesize many of the things I’d heard said about politics and poetry at earlier panels.  It was unfortunate that a fair number of the panelists who were scheduled to present could not make it (I was especially disappointed not to be able to hear Regie Cabico), but moderator Sarah Browning presented a superbly eloquent argument for the necessity of political poetry, and the panelists’ readings illustrated the range of possibilities made available by socially engaged poetics.  It was really compelling to see how deeply invested the organizers of Split This Rock are in the belief that poets cannot responsibly exist in a contemplative little bubble — that they must, in some way, reach out and respond to the injustices in the world around them. Despite the fact that it was an early panel on the last day and everyone was tired, the presenters carried themselves with gravity, grace, and a sense of humor – something that came in handy whenever things (like Melissa Tuckey’s discovery that she was missing half of the poem she’d intended to read) didn’t go exactly as planned!  The poets at this reading also engaged in the reading of other people’s poems (or “OPP”), which was awesome to see.  Their own poetry was great, as well; Mia and I both particularly enjoyed John Murillo’s performance of “Ode to a Crossfader” (“something to wake me up,” he commented by way of introduction),  a wonderfully syncopated piece that perfectly captured the edgy rhythms of scratching, mixing and sampling.

* * *

The panels I attended this weekend formed a powerful illustration of the tapestry of conversations surrounding the work that I — and all of us here at LR – desire to participate in: the work being done by writers of color, work being done with an attention to issues of race, class, and sexuality, the work of communities, and the plain beauty of well-crafted and sonically resonant poetry.  The weekend served as a much-needed reminder of the importance of pushing forward into the things that we as Asian American poets and as lovers of poetry need to survive creatively, of the good work that has been done by older writers in order to pave the way for us, and of the work that we must continue to press into — in making a space for ourselves within the greater conversation of American poetry, but also in engaging with our responsibility to respond to the things that we see going on in our communities.  That we can, and must, be a cluster of voices that speaks earnestly to the luminous qualities of language and to the pain and joy of lived experience, but that we must not forget to remain attuned to the “temperature” of the world around us.

Larissa Min, reading from an account of her family's journey from Korea to Brazil and the United States. Photo courtesy of Maya Li.

I mentioned in my last post that I was planning to check out an event on December 4th called Breaking English, hosted by Korean-Brazilian writer Larissa Min.  Larissa moved to Seattle in 2000, where she got her M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Washington.  Since then, she has taught at local community colleges and begun work on a family history project mapping her parents’ journey from Korea to Brazil, and several decades later, to New York City.  Her research, sponsored by the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, has taken her back to Brazil, down the streets of her hometown, and into the archives of her childhood library.  

I arrived at the event a little late, but found a great seat as Larissa assured the audience that she was running on “Latino time” and would be ready in a few minutes.  I felt immediately gratified to be in the company of what seemed to me a different crowd than the one that usually frequents Seattle literary events (where I am often the only person of color present!)  The unusual venue, a darkened second-floor dance studio in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district (known for its arts community), was a lovely event space: floor-length mirrors, wood pillars, votive candles flickering on the hardwood, white paper bags glowing luminously along the back wall of the studio…  

Larissa established a wonderful rapport with her audience, at times reading from her manuscript-in progress, at times moving into a more conversational mode and talking through a presentation of images and newspaper clips.  I appreciated the fluidity with which she transitioned from one performance genre to the next; one moment she was crouched on the floor with a Korean drum, and the next she was laughing at a childhood photo of herself making faces at the camera.  All throughout the evening, her wonderful and quirky humor (a photo of a prancing unicorn popped on the screen when she described her surprise at finding a fellow Korean during her travels to the southernmost tip of Brazil), moved her audience to laughter and, at more serious moments, tinged some of her family’s most painful experiences with a poignance I found tremendously beautiful.

The selections Larissa shared from her manuscript-in-progress were excerpted from three different periods of her family’s life: first, her parents’ courtship and preparation for their move to Brazil, which they undertook with fifty other Korean families after negotiating an agreement with the Brazilian government.   Next, her family’s settlement in Brazil, and the strangeness of encountering a wholly new terrain and culture that, over time, became home.  In her final selection, she narrated an episode from her family’s first few years in New York, allowing the quality of the reading to take on a more personal tone as she wove story from the conflicted relationships of a family in transition.  I thoroughly appreciated Larissa’s narrative adeptness, evident not only in her written texts, but in the variety of voices, modes, and media she evoked over the course of the evening.  What a fantastic event!

Lily Hoang reads from her forthcoming collection UNFINISHED

Last week, I had the privilege of attending a farewell reading for South Bend, IN based novelist, Lily Hoang.  Lily received her M.F.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 2006, and has since been living in the area, teaching at St. Mary’s College, and furiously turning out new work.  In 2007, her first book, Parabola, which won the Chiasmus Undoing the Novel Contest, was published, and in 2008, her novel Changing came out from Fairy Tale Review Press.  She also has a chapbook (Mockery of a Cat) out with Mud Luscious and has three forthcoming full-length books in the pipeline: The Evolutionary Revolution (Les Figues Press, 2009/2010), Invisible Women (StepSister Press, 2010), and Unfinished (Jaded Ibis Press, 2012).  Lily’s books are incisive, imaginative and form-bending.  She plays with convention and elasticizes the boundaries of narrative and the space of the page in all sorts of ways.  She’s also well-loved among the members of the Notre Dame Creative Writing community, and has served as a kind of de-facto mentor to many of the current M.F.A. students, so when she recently announced that she is moving to Canada at the end of the year, a couple of my cohorts pooled their resources to throw her a lovely goodbye reading.

Reading to a packed room.

The cozy, salon-style event was held in our gracious hostess’s apartment on a quiet Sunday afternoon.  Lily was introduced to a packed-to-the-gills living room by a current ND M.F.A. student, and began the event with an excerpt of Invisible Women that recently appeared in Black Warrior Review.  She then moved on to introduce her second selection by talking about the fascinating premise of her forthcoming short story collection Unfinished, for which she contacted 21 different writers and asked them to send her their abandoned drafts.  “I basically told them, ‘Send me your trash,’” she said, relating the story of her process, “‘and I’ll finish it.’”  The result of her experiment is an interesting study in voice (she attempted to keep her versions true to the style of the original author), and a testament to her versatility as a writer.  The selection that she treated us to, a piece called “Your Ballad of Milt and Stanley” that began with a story remnant of  Brian Evanson‘s, deftly examines questions of narrative agency and complicity.  The entire story is written in the second person, and as readers/audience members, we become caught up in a net of accusations thrown at the “you” as it progressively becomes wider and more ominous. The unnamed narrator accuses the “you” of power-hungriness, of cowardice, of pathetic self-indulgence at the expense of others, and yet we come to see that the narrator himself is becoming caught up in the position of power afforded to him by the act of accusation and by his own narrative authority. At several points, he taunts the “you” by saying that he could effectively to write the story differently, or make the “you” more sympathetic, but that he’s purposely chosen not to do so.  In the end, we are left to wonder which character is the biggest bully, and which the victim — Milt, Stanley, the “you,” the audience/reader, or the narrator himself.

The evening rounded out with a very short Q&A, followed by scrumptious refreshments and socializing.   It occurred to me at some point that I very much enjoy the salon-style setting of an informal reading.  I’m fortunate in that we have a several very active people in the program here at Notre Dame who frequently reach out to poets passing through town,  and so the salon-style reading has become something of a tradition for us.  I wondered, at the end of Lily’s reading, why I have not heard of this being done quite so often in other places.  There is something very lovely about the intimacy of a small reading in a home setting — as an audience member, I feel much more included in the conversation surrounding the work being read.  There seems to be a greater sense of community than what I experience in the traditional reading setting with a podium, mic, and lots of chairs (which feels much more performative, in a way). Don’t get me wrong — there are many occasions in which the podium/chairs/rented hall method are absolutely appropriate — but I think there’s something to be said about the somewhat more conversational experience of the salon reading, as well.

To sum up though, I was very glad to have had the opportunity to hear Lily read again, and from what I observed, it appeared that the rest of the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely, too. Thanks very much to the organizer T.M. for inviting us into her home and supplying us with wonderful refreshments, and thank you to Lily for sharing her work with us one last time.

If you would like to find out more about Lily and her writing, please check out her blog, Lily’s Pad.