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)

“Writing these poems enabled children who knew Spanish to enjoy their knowledge of it and gave those who didn’t a feeling for another language . . . Too often, the non-English language a child knows is regarded in school as something that has to be overcome rather than as an additional source of knowledge and pleasure.” (297).

I love the idea of allowing a language whose rhythms feel natural to one’s ears (whether it is a first or second language) to color and inflect the poetic voice, and so to give it a place in one’s own [English language] writing. A year ago, when I traveled back to my undergraduate institution to co-present a writing workshop at an Asian American activism conference, my collaborators and I tried out Koch’s prompt with the group in attendance, but instead of using Spanish, we challenged ourselves to substitute words from our own families’ native languages. While preparing for this activity, I found myself struggling mightily with the question of authenticity, since my knowledge of Chinese (in either Mandarin or Cantonese) is limited to the names of a few foods and assorted pleasantries like “hello,” “thank you,” “good morning,” “did you sleep well?” “see you tomorrow.”  What right did I have to claim (and was I crazy to even attempt) a language that for all practical purposes, is really not mine?  But as I began to think about it more, I realized that I do feel a type of rootedness in the Chinese language, and specifically in the Cantonese dialect — but this sense is grounded in sound rather than in meaning.  I grew up in a house in which Cantonese was spoken among the adults of the family, but because I never understood what my parents and grandparents were saying to one another, the musicality of the dialect’s tonal cadences and phrasal inflections are what have stayed with me.  I associate Cantonese with home, with the smells and tastes of food, with dinner table conversation, with family rituals like going to Philadelphia Chinatown on Saturdays to buy our groceries and eat dim sum.  With words that held meaning and shape for me only in childhood [there was a time at which I knew only the Chinese names for certain actions, body parts, foods, but those resonances have since slipped away as medical terms and American slang have come to fill their places].  And so I tried to engage with the prompt by using what words remain with me to form a kind of sound portrait of a place. I ended up being quite surprised by how easily the words seemed to come once I’d started.  It was as if my brain had already clustered those words in with the part of it that stored my early memories.  And I began to feel a little homesick.  I still do, a little, each time I encounter Cantonese.  Whether in a half-empty restaurant in South Bend, IN; a TV switched on in the back of a corner store; someone talking on their cell phone in the subway of an unfamiliar city, a part of my aural knowledge flashes on for a brief instant, and pulls me into a place of deep longing.  I still feel a bit awkward and self-conscious whenever I read the poem I wrote from Kenneth Koch’s prompt (knowing that my pronunciation is awful and that I barely understand the words that I’m repeating, myself), but the simple act of working on the poem enabled me to lay claim to a kind of heart knowledge which I’d always felt too timid to access before.

Prompt: Write a poem that incorporates non-English words.

Here’s a draft of my own non-English-words poem:

Philadelphia

I know you – not for your big Ben Franklin bells

or your liberty towers at screaming heights –

but for the gum-choked pavements of 10th

and Market, the smoke-thick corridors of Arch

and Race.  I know you for your Chung May’s

and your Joy Tsin Lau’s, for your bakeries

studded with fruit-glazed sweets, your blue

tilapia tanks, your gleaming racks of char siu

hanging in clouded windows.  I know you for

the smell of oranges on the street, the wail

of engines emerging from the firehouse, the clatter

of pushcarts and plates, the tables we sat at

on Saturday mornings, the din of the dim sum

crowd, tongue against tongue in a language

whose seams still elude me:  Ha gow, siu mai!

(Child, your hands are like ice).  Dan tat!  Ma lai gow!

(Put your gloves on, a draft blows under the door),

Ha cherng!  Lau bok gow!  (Place your palms in mine,

my warmth will feed yours).  Pei dan siau yook jook

ngo jap!   (Let me button your jacket closer to your heart).

As usual, we’d be thrilled, should you care to share an excerpt of any work that this prompt might help generate.  Happy weekend!

Boston

Open Orchestra by the Boston Progress Collective
(Sister program to East Meets Words open mic series)
December 18 | 8 pm
934 Massachusetts Ave.
$3 minimum donation for participants or audience
nobody turned away for lack of funds / all ages welcome

Chicago

Gerber/Hart Library Holidaze Book Sale
(Includes both LGBT & non-LGBT books; Silent Auction)
Dec 18 & 19 from 12-4 pm | Dec 20 from 12 – 6 pm
1127 W. Granville Ave.

New York City

Ching Chong Chinaman by Lauren Yee (A Staged Reading)
December 18 | 7 pm
The Pan Asian Repertory Theatre
520 Eighth Avenue – between 36th and 37th Streets
3rd Floor – Bruce Mitchell Room
$10 Suggested Donation at the Door

Sweet Karma by Henry Ong, an Immigrant Theatre Project Production
December 19 @ 2 and 8 pm; December 20 @ 3 pm
Queens Theatre in the Park
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Flushing, NY
$20 Regular Admission; student, senior, and multi-show discounts

HAPA-PALOOZA! feat. Koba, Samantha Chase, Michelle Meyers, Jared Rehberg, Una Osata
Presented by The Sulu Series
December 20 | 8 pm
The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston and Bleeker)
Can’t make it to NYC?  Watch it live on the web.

Philadelphia

Family Style Open Mic feat. Thaddeus Rutkowski
Theme: “HAPA HAPPY: Celebrating all that is Mixed and Multi”
December 18 | 7:30 pm
Asian Arts Initiative
1219 Vine Street
Sliding Scale Admission: $5-$10

San Francisco

Kearney Street + Kaya:  SF Thomasson Release & Holiday Party
December 18 | 6 to 9 pm
PariSoma, 1436 Howard St. @ 10th
FREE Admission

5th Annual South Asian Writers Event, feat. Summi Kaipa and Latika Mangrulkar
December 19 | 3 pm
SF Public Library – Main Library Latino/Hispanic B
100 Larkin St. (at Grove)

Chronicle Books Holiday Warehouse Sale (80% everything)
Dec 17 from 5-7 pm | Dec 18 from 9 am – 7 pm | Dec 19 from 10 am – 5 pm
Chronicle Books
680 Second St
Between Townsend and Brannan

Washington, D.C.

American Sign Language Poetry Open Mic
December 18 | 11 pm
Busboys & Poets Restaurant, Langston Room
14th & V Streets NW, historic U Street neighborhood
$3 Admission

Berkeley

Sarita See discusses The Decolonized Eye at Eastwind Books of Berkeley
November 21 | 3 pm
2066 University Ave., Berkeley, CA

Los Angeles

BANANA AsAm Blogger Roundtable
(Hosted by Lac Su, author of I Love Yous Are For White People).
November 21 | 3-6pm
University of Southern California
University Park Campus, Taper Hall, Room 101

New York City

Faces of Tsai Ming-Liang Film Series
Nov. 13-21 | See web site for showing times
Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Ave.

Spoken Word duo Yellow Rage at Columbia’s Culture Shock charity performance
November 21 | 7 pm
Columbia University, NYC
Roone Arledge Auditorium
$10 General Admission

Beau Sia at the Bowery Poetry Club
November 21 | 7:40 pm – 9:30 pm
308 Bowery (btwn. Houston and Bleecker Sts.)
$7 Admission

Philadelphia

Family Style Open Mic Series
November 20 | 7:30 PM (Sign-ups start at 7)
$5-10 sliding scale admission
Asian Arts Initiative
1219 Vine Street

Portland

Eth-Noh-Tec at Portland’s Tapestry of Tales Festival
November 21 | FREE
North Portland Library (11am)
Holgate Library (2pm)
1st Unitarian Church; 1011 SW 12th Ave, Portland (7pm).

Sacramento

Lee Herrick & Michael Medrano read at the Sacramento Poetry Center
November 23 | 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street
FREE + Open Mic

San Francisco

FACINE16: the 16th Annual Filipino American Cinefest
1 pm on November 20 – 5 pm November 21
Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library

Tucson

Myung Mi Kim reads at The Drawing Studio
November 21 | 7 pm
33 S 6th Avenue
Tucson, AZ

Washington, D.C.

D.C. Poetry Tour, just released today by the Poetry Foundation.
Free!  Available Anytime.  (Also check out their Chicago Poetry Tour).
Download the walking audio tours to your mp3 player and print the maps on their web site to experience the nation’s capital in a new way.