Readings & Workshops Blog

P&W–supported poet Joseph O. Legaspi blogs about literary gatherings in his home borough Queens, New York. He cofounded Kundiman, a nonprofit organization that serves Asian American poetry. The author of Imago (CavanKerry Press) and the forthcoming chapbook Subways (Thrush Press), he works at Columbia University.

Three years ago I moved to Queens because I fell in love. With a man, who is now my adorable, kind-hearted husband. The only person who could’ve taken me out of Manhattan, where I've resided since moving to New York in the mid-nineties to pursue a creative writing degree at New York University. Just as I had emigrated from Manila where I was born, then left Los Angeles to come to New York, I uprooted myself. You can say I moved because of family, a search for my own. An important part of the move was finding vital communities, creative and otherwise.

Gradually, I’ve found my footing as a poet in Queens, the literary underdog borough, the one noted for being the most ethnically diverse. Take a quick stroll and you’ll hear dozens of languages and you'll discover blocks of Turkish, Korean, Colombian, Irish, Indian, Nepalese, and Filipino establishments, restaurants, and groceries. Local libraries are stocked with books and movies in Hindi, Spanish, Urdu, Arabic, and Mandarin.

Queens is rife with inspiration. My upcoming publication, a chapbook of prose poems, was primarily inspired by the 7 train, which takes me away and returns me home. With its large immigrant population, Queens is a place of transition, fueled by hard work, aspirations and hard knock realness. People are so alive here with their plethora of cultural expressions.

And yet Queens is the forgotten borough. But literature happens here. Here is where Jack Kerouac, Mary Gordon, and even Walt Whitman once lived. Writing communities are thriving. Literary gatherings—public and private—occur. Three popular reading series quickly come to mind: First Tuesday at Terraza 7 in Elmhurst, hosted by P&W–supported Richard Jeffrey Newman; Oh! Bernice Writers Collective at Café Marlene in Sunnyside; and Boundless Tale Reading Series at the Waltz-Astoria.

Newtown Literary, a semi-annual journal, prides itself in publishing Queens writers. They also sponsor events such as QueensWrites! Weekend, a fundraiser, which main goal is to get borough residents writing.

Two weeks ago I found myself reading at a poetry salon in someone else’s living room. The talented P&W–supported poet Ocean Vuong has been hosting intimate, low-key salons in his Astoria apartment. Guests have consisted of local writers, though a couple have braved the sojourn from Brooklyn. (We’re very welcoming in Queens.) It was such an enjoyable and stimulating evening, punctuated with easy camaraderie and dialogue about my poems, poetics, and art. The salon engendered sharing, storytelling, and openness.

I envision such a congregation happening all over the borough, at all times. Alas, Queens has ways to go before being a literary mecca with its working class citizens trying to make ends meet and English being a second language to many. What we do have, we appreciate. This borough possesses such a hearty, pluralistic, down-to-earth character, and a hunger closer to purity. To me, Queens is home, where I love.

Photo: Joseph O. Legaspi (front) at a poetry salon in Queens. Credit: Peter Bienkowski.

Support for Readings/Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Abbey K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Jade Foster is the founder of the salon styled poetry tour THE REVIVAL, which has connected over two thousand women across the United States and abroad. The third annual tour in 2012, funded via a successful Kickstarter campaign and supported in part by P&W, featured a troupe of queer women artists in D.C., Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Durham. Foster continues to use poetry as a tool in redefining American arts. To stay informed visit Cereus Arts. Her own literary work has been published in magazines, including online at Clutch Magazine and Elixher.

What are your reading dos?
I teach poetry to high school students, and we were just discussing what to do when you have a feature. First things first: Be prepared. Look like something. And definitely have options when it comes to your poems because you never know how large, small, or diverse your audience is going to be.

...and don’ts?
Never leave a reading early, or after you read. With the queer-women-led poetry tour THE REVIVAL, I share my work, but I also do a lot of the planning and set up, so I'm the last to leave. It's important to stay because you never know who you may meet or what kind of feedback you'll get on your process.

How do you prepare for a reading?
On the 2012 tour, we took the time to check in with each other and dedicated our performances to our ancestors at each and every show. It was the first time we did this, but I believe it really made a difference in our delivery, and helped us focus on our purpose as poets and conduits for the word.

What’s your crowd-pleaser, and why does it work?
I don't want to please a crowd. Never! I want someone to get upset, to get outraged, to feel challenged to do more. There's so much we can do just by taking a small step toward our own selves.

What’s the inspiration behind THE REVIVAL poetry tour?
THE REVIVAL started because I didn't fit in. I'm not a slam poet, I'm not an academic poet, and the open mics were boring me. Luckily, there were a few other women poets who felt the same way. A poem isn't finished until it's heard, so we all pooled our resources, reached out to friends and family to open their homes, and made it happen.

What do you consider to be the value of literary programs in the community?
We're in a peculiar place, on our own cliff...

I say it's time to jump. If folks are reading on Kindles, let's follow suit. If publishing houses are printing less, then let's print or come together to distribute our own work. Poetry is low-key in a vacuum right now—in a MFA middle-of-nowhere vacuum—and that's dangerous. It belongs to the people. THE REVIVAL is taking that jump and, like The Road Runner in those old cartoons, we hit the ground running.

Photo: Jade Foster. Credit: Anna Barsan.
Support for Readings/Workshops events in Washington, D.C., is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Barbara Crooker’s books of poetry are Radiance, winner of the Word Press First Book Award and finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize; Line Dance, winner of the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence; and More. She is the recipient of the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in Literature, has had her poems read many times on The Writer’s Almanac, and is represented in The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Her newest book, Gold, is forthcoming this year from Cascade Books. Barbara blogs about her P&W-supported reading at the Long Island Violin Shop.

This past October, String Poets hosted a Poets & Writers reading in the Long Island Violin Shop in Huntington, Long Island. This was a unique venue for a poetry reading, part of a series that blends both poetry and music. I was paired with Shem Guibbory a member of the First Violin section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra who has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, among other places. He has embarked on what he calls the “Journey of 100,” one hundred performances in a row of J. S. Bach’s Chaconne, a piece that he says “suggests endless depth and profundity.” That night was Number 7 in this string of performances, during which he hopes to discover how his understanding of the work changes through the course of these performances (the first was at Lincoln Center). On his website, he states that “a performer and a listener in live performance have the potential to form a powerful bond: a link between themselves and the music.” And this is the hope of the poet, too, that a bond will form, that an electrical current will arise. In his blog, Mr. Guibbory felt that he was merely operating at 80 percent that night, but I felt the hairs on my head rise ala Emily Dickinson, in the presence of true poetry (in music).

This was an interesting and intimate performance spot, a small room in the middle of a violin shop. Every seat was taken, and I felt a real connection with the audience. Because the space was small, I was able to speak to just about every person present, and I sold a number of books, every poet’s dream. One of the poems that I read was called “Ode to Chocolate.” I’ve made a practice of bringing small squares of dark chocolate to hand out after my readings. This night, it felt very much like communion...

But this was the reading that very nearly didn’t happen. It had originally been scheduled the year before, when a nor’easter suddenly morphed into “Snowtober” or “White Halloween.” This was the only time in my writing life when I had to cancel a performance. I got halfway across New Jersey (I live in eastern Pennsylvania) when I had to pull over and call to say that the number of cars off the road and the lack of visibility made me too frightened to continue. We had over a foot of the heaviest, wettest snow I’ve ever seen, and 250,000 people were without power in my area for over a week. The organizer of the event, Annabelle Moseley, couldn’t have been more gracious, and she rescheduled me a year later. Some bit of insight or foreshadowing made her pick the week before, a gorgeous blue and gold fall weekend. The next week, a year to the day later, a storm called Sandy arrived...

Photos: (Top) Barbara Crooker. (Bottom) "Snowtober." Credit: Kathy Morris.

Support for Readings/Workshops in New York is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with additional support from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Poet Joseph O. Legaspi cofounded P&W–supported Kundiman, a nonprofit organization that serves Asian American poetry. He blogs about Kundiman's beginnings and this year's ten-year anniversary celebrations. The author of Imago (CavanKerry Press) and the forthcoming chapbook Subways (Thrush Press), he lives in Queens, New York, and works at Columbia University.

In summer 2002, Sarah Gambito and I were swaying on a hammock at a backyard BBQ in Westchester. Watching the mostly Filipino crowd—families and community—playing games, eating, totally at ease with one another, we were mesmerized and even envious. As recent MFA graduates and young Filipino American poets trying to patch together literary lives in New York City, we felt alone and lost. We wanted to recreate the joyful and safe space that we witnessed in Westchester, but for Asian American artists. I then told Sarah about P&W–supported Cave Canem, a premiere literary organization that hosts a retreat for black poets. Two close friends, January Gill O’Neil and the late Phebus Etienne, attended the Cave Canem Retreat and raved about it. Why not? we asked ourselves, as there was already an impressive model, and in our hearts, we knew there was a void to fill. The rest, as they say, is history.

Kundiman now celebrates its ten-year anniversary! The sole organization of its kind, Kundiman remains dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American writing. In summer 2013, we are hosting our tenth Kundiman Poetry Retreat with faculty members Li-Young Lee, Srikanth Reddy, and Lee Ann Roripaugh teaching workshops to our fellows. Over 120 fellows have attended the annual retreats under the tutelage of such renowned Asian and Asian American poets as Lawson Inada, Bei Dao, Myung Mi Kim, Marilyn Chin, Arthur Sze, Truong Tran, Paisley Rekdal, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Rick Barot, and Tan Lin—many of whom have been supported by P&W over the years. Award-winning Kundiman fellows have published twenty books thus far with more titles forthcoming in 2014, in addition to over twenty chapbooks, and numerous print and online publications. Cofounder Sarah Gambito received the 2009 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. In partnership with Alice James Books, the Kundiman Poetry Prize is set to select its fourth winner this June. P&W–supported Matthew Olzmann’s Mezzanines, the second selection, was released in April 2013.

So, what’s in store for Kundiman’s tenth year? There will be a fundraising campaign with a target goal of $10,000. There will be exciting “10 for 10” events across the country, an NYC gala in the planning stages. Our website has already undergone a redesign. Kundiman’s oral history program, Kavad, will roll out fellow-driven projects that will provide new platforms to present and amplify Asian American voices. Kundiman remains strongly committed to fostering Asian American writing, which, in turn, empowers our marginalized, diasporic communities. Kundiman strives to transform the American literary landscape. Please come celebrate with us.

Photo: (Top) Joseph O. Legaspi. Credit: Emmy Cateral. (Bottom) Kundiman staff, faculty, and fellows. Credit: Dustin Parsons.

Support for Readings/Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Abbey K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Poet Joseph O. Legaspi cofounded Kundiman, a nonprofit organization that serves Asian American poets. He blogs about curating P&W–supported Kundiman & Verlaine, a New York City–based reading series that has been running for ten years. The author of Imago (CavanKerry Press) and the forthcoming chapbook Subways (Thrush Press), he lives in Queens, New York, and works at Columbia University.

It started with an experiment. Before the poet Sarah Gambito and I fully conceived of Kundiman, the nonprofit we founded to serve Asian American poetry, there were the poems. At the time, in 2003, we were interested in the idea of poems as physical objects, as solid and tangible art pieces. We were also regulars imbibing lychee martinis at Verlaine, a bar on the lower east side of Manhattan where we befriended Gary Weingarten, a photographer and one of the owners of Verlaine. Presented with our idea, he provided us with the blank canvases: the walls inside Verlaine onto which we hung blown-up prints of poems. Words against a sheer white backdrop loomed large: our poems, as well as others by Prageeta Sharma and Li-Young Lee. Like a gallery, we hosted an opening with an amazing turnout.

When such a partnership presents itself, you run with it. The March 17, 2013, P&W–supported reading marked the tenth year of Kundiman & Verlaine, the only reading series that highlights Asian American poets. Over 130 readers have graced our stage, among them luminaries like Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, John Yau, Kimiko Hahn, Vijay Seshadri, Patrick Rosal, and Cathy Park Hong, along with emerging Asian American talents. In the spirit of community building, we have also invited poets from other literary circles like Cave Canem, LouderArts, and Acentos. Through the years, the series has exemplified the multiplicity and vitality of voices within the Asian American (and greater) literary community. At the March reading alone, for instance, were the following participants: Mandy Gor, a poet, painter, seamstress, and banker raised in Texas; Seni Seneviratne, a Sri Lankan living in England; and Kit Yan, a transgender spoken word phenomenon. The audience, from seemingly divergent backgrounds, were brought together by poetry. The Kundiman & Verlaine reading series embodies this spirit: big-hearted and celebratory. The lounge atmosphere helps, as well as the hour-long open bar before each reading.

The bottom line is that for a literary series to thrive, much generosity is needed: a place for gathering, a co-host/co-sponsor who shares your vision, an open-minded audience, and kind readers. Recently, another act of generosity: Poets & Writers, through its Readings/Workshops Program, has been able to provide honoraria to qualified readers. How lovely it’s been to compensate poets for their time and craft. Kundiman believes in paying poets, but because of our limited funds, we’ve been unable to do so—beyond the gift bags we give to readers as a token of our appreciation. Because of such patronage and generosity, the Kundiman & Verlaine reading series continues to be a welcoming, warm environment, full of heart.

Photo: (Top) Joseph O. Legaspi. Credit: Emmy Cateral. (Bottom, from left to right) Vikas Menon, Kit Yan, Seni Seneviratne, Mandy Gor, and Joseph O. Legaspi. Credit: JP Sevillano

Support for Readings/Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Abbey K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

P&W-funded Regie Cabico blogs about his latest readings and workshops. He is the coeditor, with poet and novelist Brittany Fonte, of the recently published anthology of queer poetry and spoken word, Flicker and Spark (Lowbrow Press). His own work has appeared in over thirty anthologies, including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Spoken Word Revolution, and Chorus & The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He received the 2006 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers for his work teaching at-risk youth at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He is a former Artist in Residence at NYU's Asian Pacific American Studies Program and has served as faculty at Banff's Spoken Word Program. He resides in Washington, D.C.

March had me climbing from The University of Northern Alabama conducting poetry and performance workshops with Andy Thigpen and Chelsea Root, the codirectors of Boxcar Voices: a Poetry and Storytelling Series in Florence, Alabama. I would know nothing of the south if it weren't for JT Bullock, a slam poet and registered nurse who grew up performing poetry and organizing poetry readings with heralded slam poets. The workshops I conducted drew twenty students and the performance drew a hundred or so enthusiastic audience members. JT and I are a two-person poetry group called Dirty Rice. The name reflects my Asian and JT's Southern Roots. The “dirty” stands for our lascivious poems and stories of political gay identity.

Florence is magical: the people, the shrimp and grits and muffins. I left wanting to curate a queer arts festival this year. Why? Because I'm insane. But also because the community is so friendly and warm and I know that the impact of a queer spoken word gathering would forever affect the 40,000-person population of Florence. Thigpen is a born and bred resident of Florence; he loves words, is an incredible writer, and his running of series in a small town creates an incredible impact. Chelsea Root is an up-and-coming writer with an intense delivery and shares Thigpen's enthusiasm for the word.

The open mic is its own church and community. The Sparkle Series (which occurs on the fourth Wednesday of each month at Busboys and Poets at 5th & K) is my way of combating homophobia and misogyny in the Washington, D.C. open mic scene. In its five-year history, Danielle Evennou and I have brought emerging and established queer poets to D.C. to share their work. Denise Jolly, recently ranked number five in the 2013 Women of the World Slam, graced us with her newer work. Jolly was joined by Spencer Retelle, a new voice in D.C. Along with Busboys and Poets, Sparkle and Split This Rock will apply for Poets & Writers funding through the Readings/Workshops Program for my performance in mid-June.

Finally, I am writing my last blog in Montreal, the gayest city in North America. I am with JT Bullock again and participating in The Mile End Poetry Festival. I conducted a workshop sponsored by the Montreal Slam Team and performed with Jane Gabriels, a poet and theater artist from New York City and Montreal, and other avant garde artists. My work is only made possible by those who have visions of bringing voices together. Ian Ferrier, who curated The Mile End Poetry Festival, is a literary activist galvanizing the best literary talents. Sheri-D Wilson of Calgary, David Bateman from Toronto, and Moe Clark and Kaie Kellough of Montreal inspire me. On the second night of the festival, I participated in the first ever Word Race contest—a competition where people read words as fast as they can, battling each other through speed and acuracy. I came in second place and won a Norwegian Arts Guide Book. C Command, the individual representative for the Canadian Indie Competition, won. He received an American Slang Dictionary. Oh, shucks. I wouldn't have been able to carry it in my bag anyway.

Photo: Regie Cabico. Credit: Carlos Rodriguez.

Support for Readings/Workshops events in Washington, D.C., is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

In March, P&W-supported poet Terrance Hayes read with Red Hen Press at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena, California. P&W staff member Cheryl Klein writes about the evening.

Given that many reading series struggle to draw audiences, it’s somewhat astonishing to consider that Red Hen Press maintains five series—one in New York and four in the Los Angeles area, where the eighteen-year-old press is based. And judging by a mid-March reading by poet Terrance Hayes and several Red Hen authors, sagging attendance is not an issue.

With the sun setting pinkly, poetry fans filed into the Boston Court Performing Arts Center, a large brick theater with a digital marquee, tucked in a leafy residential street in Pasadena, California. A Boston Court representative cheerily informed the audience that, behind the thick black curtain, sets were being built for the center’s next production, about America’s first serial killers. On that note, he turned the mic over to Red Hen Managing Editor Kate Gale.

Gale introduced each of the night’s four poets by reading a few of her favorite lines from their work. Katharine Coles read first, from The Earth is Not Flat, a Red Hen collection comprised of poems she wrote while traveling in Antarctica. The poems reflected her longtime fascination with the intersection of science and literature.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that the travel poems of Alaska’s Peggy Shumaker, who read from her book Toucan Nest later that evening, reveal an obsession with warmer territory. Specifically, she recounted in lyrical form a trip she’d taken to Costa Rica with fellow Red Hen author and new L.A. poet laureate Eloise Klein Healy, whose partner leads eco-tours to tropical environments. Shumaker’s poem about baby howler monkeys reveled in the kind of parent-child push-and-pull that can be found in all climates.

Dan Vera, inaugural winner of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, read striking and funny poems about growing up Cuban in Arizona. In Cuban Spanish, he told the audience, “menudo” is slang for change, the kind you receive from a cashier. In Mexican Spanish, it refers to tripe soup. You can imagine how things unfolded when his father demanded that the owner of a Mexican restaurant put five dollars worth of menudo in his cupped hand.

The evening’s featured reader was Terrance Hayes, who appeared on stage in a gray sweater and a watch on each wrist—apparently he wasn’t going to be one of those features to prattle on. And in fact, he only read two poems—though they were both somewhat epic in nature, folding in flashes of American history, riffing about race, and punning slyly.

The first, “Self Portrait as the Mind of a Camera,” was based on the photographs of Charles Harris, who documented life in the African-American neighborhoods of his native Pittsburgh. Hayes contemplated the various meanings of “black and white” as they pertain to photography and race: “To be black and white is to behold the existential and believe that the colors are conspiring against you.”

His second poem, “Wigphrastic,” was a critique of Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro,” which played with the idea of the “wigger” (a word Hayes said he dislikes, though he’s up for combining “white” and “black” to get “wack”) by naming the many uses for wigs. Protection, façade—“Isis wigs, Cleopatra wigs, Big Booty Judy wigs.” The idea of playing with artifice was clearly as fascinating to Hayes as any icy or tropical landscape.

From left: Terrance Hayes, Monica Copeland, Kate Gale, and Eloise Klein Healy. Credit: Gabriela Morales.

Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by the James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.