Blog Archives
Vanessa Huang, Margaret Rhee and Ronaldo V. Wilson
WEST COAST KUNDIMAN POETRY READING, PART 4
SATURDAY, AUGUST 21
3:30 PM
EASTWIND BOOKS OF BERKELEY
2066 University Ave. Between Shattuck and Milvia
Near Downtown Berkeley BART
Featuring:
VANESSA HUANG
MARGARET RHEE
RONALDO V. WILSON
VANESSA HUANG is a poet, writer and community organizer whose practice feeds the resilience and embodiment of people, campaigns and movement building from the margins. Her work draws on a history of collaboration across the anti-prison, gender liberation, immigrant rights, anti-violence, disability justice and reproductive justice movements. Vanessa’s current poetry manuscript “quiet of chorus” was a finalist for Poets & Writers’ 2010 California Writers Exchange Award. Vanessa lives in Oakland and works as a teaching artist and consultant for social justice organizations.
MARGARET RHEE is a poet, media artist and interdisciplinary scholar. She co-edited the chapbook Here is a Pen: An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press, 2009) and has published poems in Back Room Live and the Berkeley Poetry Review. She attended the inaugural Kundiman poetry retreat and fell in love with poetry & there there.
RONALDO V. WILSON is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, winner of the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), and Poems of the Black Object, winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry (Futurepoem Books, 2009). He is a graduate of the PhD program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and NYU’s Graduate Creative Writing Program. Wilson has won numerous fellowships to include the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem, Kundiman, Djerassi, and Yaddo. A co-founder of the Black Took Collective, he teaches at Mount Holyoke College.
ABOUT KUNDIMAN:
KUNDIMAN is a non-profit organization that fosters emerging Asian American poets with an annual poetry retreat. We are raising funds for a Kundiman West Coast Scholarship Fund, which would support one Kundiman fellow from the West Coast to attend the retreat for free, as well as a community activist/poet. So far, we have raised $300.00 and hope to raise the full $350.00 by the end of summer.
ABOUT EASTWIND BOOKS:
Eastwind Books of Berkeley has been serving the Asian American community since 1982 and welcomes people to attend this wonderful Kundiman event.
phone: 510 548-2350
fax: 510 548-3697
In Solidarity: West Coast Kundiman Poetry Reading
In Solidarity: West Coast Kundiman Poetry Reading, Part 3
Sunday July 11
3:00 PM
Eastwind Books of Berkeley
2066 University Avenue, between Milvia St and Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA
Poetry Read by:
Lee Herrick, author of This Many Miles from Desire
Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, co-editor of Usos On Freeways: An Anthology of
Pacific Islander Writers From/In the Continental United States
Javier O. Huerta, author of Some Clarifications y otros poemas
Ching-In Chen, author of The Heart’s Traffic
Jai Arun Ravine, author of IS THIS JANUARY
Performance by: Jezebel Delilah X
Emceed by: Jai Arun Ravine & Margaret Rhee
This reading is a fundraiser for Kundiman, a non-profit organization
that fosters emerging Asian American poets with an annual poetry
retreat. We are raising funds for a Kundiman West Coast Scholarship
Fund, which would support one Kundiman fellow from the West Coast to
attend the retreat for free, as well as a community activist/poet. So
far, we have raised $90.00 and hope to raise the full $300.00 by the
end of summer.
http://www.kundiman.org/
http://www.kundiman.org/fellows/
Eastwind Books of Berkeley has been serving the Asian American
community since 1982 and welcomes people to attend this wonderful
Kundiman event.
http://www.asiabookcenter.com/
& Special Book Raffle!
Books donated by poets, Joseph O. Legaspi, Oliver de la Paz, Ching-In
Chen, Lee Herrick, & Truong Tran!!! Give from the Heart and Win Big!!!
Delirious Hem: We All Belong to a Love Song Called Kundiman
Ching-In Chen has curated a Kundiman Feminist Poets Feature at Delirious Hem, containing work by so many fabulous Kundiman fellows! I contributed two pieces:
Taken Names: The Poetic Lineage of Jai Arun Ravine
A Moving Vehicle: The Poetry of Margaret Rhee
and Margaret Rhee’s amazing hybrid essay regarding my work!
Our Subversive Anatomies: The Embodied Feminist Poetics of Jai Arun Ravine
Kundiman West Berkeley Reading
KUNDIMAN WEST
invites you to
LOVE & LIBERATION!
A KUNDIMAN READING
Celebrating Asian American Poetry!
Featuring Kundiman Fellows and Friends:
JENNIFER CRYSTAL CHIEN
SUMMI KAIPA and INDIVISIBLE
JAI ARUN RAVINE and IS THIS JANUARY
YAEL VILLAFRANCA
Celebrating INDIVISIBLE: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, edited by Neelanjana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa and Pireeni Sundaralingam, and IS THIS JANUARY by Jai Arun Ravine, from Corollary Press.
MC-ed by MARGARET RHEE and JAI ARUN RAVINE
SATURDAY, MAY 29
8:00 – 10:00 PM
UC BERKELEY CAMPUS
BARBARA CHRISTIAN ROOM, 554 BARROWS HALL, 5TH FLOOR
* Barrows Hall is located just due east of the Telegraph and Bancroft Way intersection.
* From Downtown Berkeley BART, walk south on Shattuck, then east up
Bancroft Way, crossing Fulton, crossing Telegraph Ave. Take a left
down Barrows Lane, which is behind Sproul Hall. Barrows Hall is the second building on your left. (About a 15 minute walk.)
* From Oakland, take the 1 or 1R to Telegraph and Bancroft Way.
* Campus Map: http://berkeley.edu/map/
* Google Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=telegraph+ave+and+bancroft+way&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq&hnear=Telegraph+Ave+%26+Bancroft+Way%2C+Berkeley%2C+CA+94704&gl=us&ei=Adz-S5faJJCGNs_r2Ds&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ8gEwAA
$3 – 10 suggested donation — to benefit Kundiman (no one turned away for lack of funds).
+ SPICY BOOK RAFFLE!
Win a copy of “Here is a Pen: An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets” edited by Ching-In Chen, Margaret Rhee and Debbie Yee; “Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry” edited by Neelanjana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa and Pireeni Sundaralingam; Joseph O. Legaspi’s “Imago;” Eileen Tabios’ “The Thorn Rosary” and more!
About Our Featured Readers and MCs:
Jennifer Crystal Chien is an occasional anarchist whose poems have appeared in over 30 zines and literary journals. Her latest book, transfiguration, is a series of individual portraits on the themes of religion, sex, shadow, faith and transformation.
Summi Kaipa is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, author of three chapbooks and a play, and past editor of Interlope magazine. She is co-editor of the recently released Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry. In addition to being a writer and an editor, Kaipa is currently completing her residency in neuropsychology. She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband.
About Indivisible:
The first anthology of its kind, Indivisible brings together forty-nine American poets who trace their roots to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Featuring award-winning poets including Agha Shahid Ali, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Vijay Seshadri, here are poets who share a long history of grappling with a multiplicity of languages, cultures, and faiths. The poems gathered here take us from basketball courts to Bollywood, from the Grand Canyon to sugar plantations, and from Hindu-Muslim riots in India to anti-immigrant attacks on the streets of post–9/11 America. Showcasing a diversity of forms, from traditional ghazals and sestinas to free verse, experimental writing, and slam poetry, Indivisible presents 141 poems by authors who are rewriting the cultural and literary landscape of their time and their place. (www.indivisibleanthology.com or http://www.uapress.com)
Jai Arun Ravine is a poet who works in dance, film and other visual and performance-related mediums. Jai’s first chapbook, IS THIS JANUARY, has just been released from Corollary Press, thanks to Sueyeun Juliette Lee. Kundiman has empowered Jai to create a space inclusive of Thai American poetics and trans-masculinity. Jai hopes to return to Thailand in the next couple of years to write the experiences of trans-masculine-identified Thais and Thai Americans. http://jaiarunravine.wordpress.com/
Margaret Rhee is a poet, media artist and interdisciplinary scholar. She co-edited the chapbook ‘Here is a Pen: An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets’ (Achiote Press, 2009) and has published poems in ‘Back Room Live’ and the ‘Berkeley Poetry Review.’ She attended the inaugural Kundiman poetry retreat and fell in love with poetry & there there.
Yael Villafranca is a poet. She is a Kundiman fellow, an organizer with Babae San Francisco/GABRIELA-USA and a student at the University of San Francisco. She has work appearing in Bindlestiff Studio’s upcoming Bakla Show 2010, running the first two weekends of June at the Thick House in San Francisco. You can find more information at https://sites.google.com/site/thebaklashow2010/
About Kundiman:
Kundiman is an organization dedicated to the creation, cultivation and promotion of Asian American poetry by creating an affirming and rigorous space where Asian American poets can explore, through art, the unique challenges that face the new and ever changing diaspora. In order to help mentor the next generation of Asian-American poets, Kundiman sponsors an annual Poetry Retreat for emerging Asian American poets. http://www.kundiman.org/
