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.

2009 Asian American Literary Awards for Poetry: Winner & Finalists

In anticipation of their annual literary festival, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop has announced the winners of its 2009 Asian American Literary Awards.  In the poetry category, Sesshu Foster’s World Ball Notebook took top honors, while Monica Ferrell’s Beasts for the Chase and Jeffrey Yang’s An Aquarium were named as finalists.  The contest was judged by poet Cathy Park Hong, Stanford professor Stephen H. Sohn, and Williams College professor Dorothy Wang.

It’s always exciting to me when contemporary collections of poetry are given national attention in this way.  And as an MFA student working on my first book-length project, I’m especially encouraged by the selection of Ferrell’s and Yang’s collections as finalists, since they are both first books.  I had the pleasure of reading An Aquarium this past summer and now that these awards have been announced, I’ll definitely be adding World Ball Notebook and Beasts for the Chase to my reading list for the upcoming holidays.  Congratulations to all three poets, and kudos to the AAWW for continuing to perpetuate an image of Asian American literature as a living, evolving body of works rather than as a row of dusty volumes sitting quietly on some library shelf.

The 2009 Asian American Literary Awards will be presented this Saturday at the AAWW’s Page Turner festival.  Tickets start at $5. If you live near NYC or will be in NYC this weekend, we (the editors) highly recommend that you check out at least a few of the events on their exciting roster of panels and readings.