July 28: Kundiman and Cave Canem at the New York Poetry Festival

July 28, 2013 3:10pm
Kundiman & Cave Canem at the New York Poetry Festival

Kundiman poets Tarfia Faizullah and Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai team up with Cave Canem fellows Angel Nafis and Laura Yes Yes for a reading at the New York Poetry Festival, the Poetry Society of New York's annual, two-day celebration of New York City's vibrant poetry community. The event will feature over 50 poetry organizations and 200 poets on its three stages; local booksellers, artists and craftmakers; food and drink; and poetry-inspired installation art. For a full schedule and line-up, visit poetrysocietyny.org.

Governors Island
Colonel's Row
New York, NY

July 17: Writing Race & Belonging, A Protest Poem for Trayvon Martin

To stand in solidarity with Trayvon Martin and his family and to speak on the national debate on civil rights and racial profiling, Kundiman will be writing a protest poem both virtually and as part of our Writing Race & Belonging presentation at the  Gramsci Monument sponsored by Dia Art Foundation.  Poets of color from around the country will participate in this poetic vigil for Trayvon Martin.  You'll be able to view the virtual poem as it unfolds in real time on this webpage below.  Hit the refresh button on your browser to view the updated content.

Wednesday, July 17
11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Gramsci Monument is located on the grounds of Forest Houses, off Tinton Avenue between 163rd and 165th Streets.

Directions:

• Subway: 2, 5 at Prospect Avenue
• Head north on Prospect Avenue
• Turn left onto 163rd Street
• Pass Union Avenue
• Turn right onto Tinton Avenue
• Take first left onto pedestrian pathway leading into Forest Houses

July 6: Beast Crawl Reading: Kundiman & Manifest

Join the next generation of Kundiman Asian American Poets and Manifest Reading Series Poets who will mix it up for an evening of I Ching, Memory, Cats, Comics, Sex, and Magic poems! Laughs, Tears, Wonder, and Vocal-Visual Fireworks will abound! 

Manifest Reading and Workshop Series seeks to foster a collaborative and experimental community of artists and writers.

Kundiman creates an affirming and rigorous space where Asian American poets can explore, through art, the unique challenges that face the new and ever changing diaspora. 

July 6
5 pm
2300 Telegraph Ave
Oakland, CA

Writing Race & Belonging: A Live Monument

On June 15th, 2013, as part of Writing on it All, Kundiman enacted a live monument for Writing Race & Belonging on Governor's Island.  This undertaking was framed by the fact that the New World's first lawful expression of religious tolerance ("Toleration") took place in 1624 on Governors Island.  That jurisprudence was the basis for religious and ethnic diversity and was applied to the region that is now referred to as the New York Tri-State.  Together we wrote a real-time virtual 19 page poem, painted on the walls of a house and upheld the stories of migration and belonging of our families.  

Congratulations to Lo Kwa Mei-en, Winner of the 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize!

 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize Announcement

Congratulations to Lo Kwa Mei-en, winner of the 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize. The Alice James Books Board along with members of the Kundiman Board selected her manuscript, “Yearling.” Along with book publication, she will also receive $1,000 and a feature reading in New York City. 

Lo Kwa Mei-en's poems have appeared in Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, West Branch, and other journals. She earned her MFA from Ohio State University and continues to live and work in Columbus, Ohio.

The 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize finalists were: Awake, Location by Mary-Kim Arnold, The Cumulus Effect by J. Mae Barizo, Extended Stay by Janine Joseph, This is How the Bones Sings by W. Todd Kaneko, Day of Clean Brightness by Jane Lin, In the Quiet After by Mia Malhotra, and Autumn Troupe by Miho Nonaka

Congratulations to the winner and finalists!

Li-Young Lee, Srikanth Reddy, and Lee Ann Roripaugh Read at Fordham Lincoln Center

Come and celebrate as Kundiman's 2013 Faculty and Fellows read at Lincoln Center during Kundiman's 10th Annual Poetry Retreat. 

Friday, June 21st
7:00 pm
Fordham Lincoln Center 113 W. 60th Street (at Columbus Avenue)
12th Floor Lounge

Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/607583239253868/

Directions
Take A, B, C, D & 1 trains to Columbus Circle.
Exit at 60th Street & Broadway. Go west of Columbus Avenue. Upon entering the glass doors inform the security desk that you are attending the Asian American Poetry event.  Take escalators up 1 floor to Plaza level.  Take elevator up to the 11th floor.  Take stairs 1 flight up to the 12th Floor.  Enter 12th Floor Lounge

Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry, his most recent being Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton, 2008). His earlier collections are Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001); Rose (BOA, 1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University; The City in Which I Love You (BOA, 1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and a memoir entitled The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and will be reissued by BOA Editions in 2012. Lee's honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 1988 he received the Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. He is also featured in Katja Esson's documentary, Poetry of Resilience.

Srikanth Reddy is the author of two books of poetry -- Facts for Visitors, which received the 2005 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry, and Voyager -- both published by the University of California Press.  His scholarly study of 20th Century American poetry, titled Changing Subjects, was published by Oxford University Press in 2011.  A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the doctoral program in English at Harvard University, Reddy has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the NEA, and the Creative Capital Foundation.  He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago.

Lee Ann Roripaugh’s most recent volume of poetry,Dandarians, is forthcoming from Milkweed Press in 2014.  Her third volume of poetry, On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year, was released by Southern Illinois University Press in 2009.  A second volume, Year of the Snake, also published by Southern Illinois University Press, was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004.  Her first book, Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin Books, 1999), was a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series, and was selected as a finalist for the 2000 Asian American Literary Awards.  The recipient of a 2003 Archibald Bush Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship, she was also named the 2004 winner of the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, the 2001 winner of the Frederick Manfred Award for Best Creative Writing awarded by the Western Literature Association, and the 1995 winner of the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize.  Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.  Roripaugh is currently a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Director of Creative Writing and Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review.

Co-sponsored with Fordham University.

 

Writing Race & Belonging: A Live Monument

As part of Writing On It All, Kundiman is sponsoring a creative enactment of tolerance and belonging for poets of color.  In this live "monument," one group of poets will write a collaborative poem centering on their experience of racism which will alternate between an exquisite corpse (poets writing in succession) and an exploded poem (poets writing at the same time) on a projected new media space.  A second group of poets will select portions of the projected new media poem to act as first lines for their own pieces which will be centered on their and their families' experience of making a home in America.  This second group of poets will write their poems in paint on wall paper that has been hung around the perimeter of the space.  What we aim to create is the sensation that acts of violence and racism figured through new media are absorbed through the more physicalized poems of home and belonging that are painted throughout the space.  Throughout this staged writing, there will be readings from the books of Asian American poets and writers.  

Saturday, June 15
12 - 3 pm
Governor's Island

For more information, go here:  http://writingonitall.com/

Kundiman 10 Year Anniversary Indiegogo Fundraiser

Donate today!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-build-kundiman/x/3164615?c=home

 A message from Kundiman Co-Founder Sarah Gambito

​Kundiman Co-Founders Sarah Gambito and Joseph O. Legaspi with Poets & Writers' Jackson Prize Honoree and Kundiman Faculty Arthur Sze (center).

Dear and dear family and friends,

I write with my heart on my sleeve. I think many of you know that, with Joseph O. Legaspi, I co-founded a literary non-profit company called Kundiman. 

In the past 10 years, Kundiman fellows have gone on to publish 25 books and 26 chapbooks. Book by book, this is a literal transformation of American letters. 

Kundiman is a collective of leaders, writers and readers that believe that the Asian American story must be told by its own sons and daughters. 

We are looking for partners to take us to the next level sustainability and success. We’re raising money to support our programs and to enable full-time staff that can prioritize Kundiman’s goals and project initiatives. With your help, Kundiman can ensure the mentorship of generations of Asian American writers to come. With your help, we’ll be able to build a legacy of belonging and expansiveness for Asian American writers. Our story on our terms for our generations is being written. Join us. 

Please give as generously as you can. For every donation made, a group of anonymous angel donors will match the contribution—up to $10,000. So for every dollar that you give, your impact is doubled.

Click on this link for more: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-build-kundiman/x/3164615?c=home

And check out our Fellows Fundraising video here:

Kundiman Prize Reading: Matthew Olzmann's Mezzanines

Join us as we come together to celebrate Matthew Olzmann's Mezzanines, recently published by Alice James Books!

• Thursday, May 9, 2013
• 7:00pm – 8:30pm

• Fordham University (map)
• 113 W. 60th Street, South Lounge
• New York, NY

 Facebook event page here: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/453993521349198/

“Olzmann’s masterful debut heralds the arrival of a delightful and daring poetry that scorches and coils its way through galaxies, strip malls, and the intricacies of the human body. With a wickedly delightful wisdom at its core, Mezzanines practices the most graceful kind of alchemy—its greatest strength is how it turns tiny heartbreaks into a bright and satisfying beauty.”

—Aimee Nezhukumatathil

“Olzmann has an outsider’s wit and a border crosser’s slick vision. From seam, threshold, and cut, these poems navigate the galactic and the aquatic, the immediate and the imaginary, the reasonable and the American. He’s amused by his own bewilderment. What’s more, he manages to never abandon love. Olzmann’s skilled play, terrific ear, and immense heart make Mezzanines a must-read.”

—Patrick Rosal

“With Mezzanines Matthew Olzmann has given us a vibrant new poetry, as soulful as it is funny. Sci-fi and snake charms, love poems, ship wrecks, and a dash of artful self-parody—the materials of his narratives come from all over the cosmos to find, in this wonderful poet’s hands, a shape crackling with power that’s connective, convincing, and true.”

—David Baker

 

Join us for Poets & Writers' Connecting Cultures Reading with Muriel Leung, Alison Roh Park, and Kit Yan

Join us at La Casa Azul Bookstore on April 20, 2013 for Poets & Writers' Fourth Annual Connecting Cultures reading, presenting: Cheryl Boyce-Taylor Diana Marie Delgado Benjamin Garcia Muriel Leung Charan Morris Alison Roh Park Idrissa Simmonds Ekere Tallie Ed Toney Tishon Woolcock Kit Yan Javier Zamora Saturday, April 20 – 6PM La Casa Azul Bookstore 143 East 103rd Street New York, NY 10029 http://www.lacasaazulbookstore.com/ Free and open to the public. RSVP here. Reception to follow. Poets & Writers will also be raffling off free subscriptions to the magazine! This year's reading will feature writers who have participated in events through organizations funded by Poets & Writers' Readings/Workshops program, including: Calypso Muse, CantoMundo, Cave Canem Foundation, and Kundiman. For more about the Readings/Workshops Program, please visit us here: www.pw.org/funding.