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).

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.

DEADLINE EXTENDED! Submit to the 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize!

The deadline to submit your manuscript has been  EXTENDED to March 15, 2013! 

The Kundiman Poetry Prize is dedicated to publishing exceptional work by Asian American poets.  

Winner receives $1,000, book publication with Alice James Books and a New York City feature reading.

Alice James Books is a cooperative poetry press with a mission is to seek out and publish the best contemporary poetry by both established and beginning poets, with particular emphasis on involving poets in the publishing process.

For guidelines, please visit http://www.kundiman.org/prize/

Eugenia Leigh's poem "Destination: Beautiful" is the 2013 Neil Postman Award winner!

Congrats, dear Eugenia!

I’ve come to hunt a time capsule at the west end
of Sunset Boulevard. To rummage the beach for remnants
of old friends who’ve abandoned themselves to sprout
new families.

Read the rest of her poem here: http://www.rattle.com/poetry/2013/02/destination-beautiful-by-eugenia-leigh/

Eugenia Leigh is the author of a forthcoming collection of poetry, Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014), which was a finalist for both the National Poetry Series and the Yale Series of Younger Poets. A Korean American poet and Kundiman fellow, she holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and has taught writing workshops for high school students and incarcerated youths. Her poems have appeared in several publications including North American Review, The Collagist, Rattle and the Best New Poets anthology. Born in Chicago and raised in southern California, Eugenia currently lives in New York City, where she believes in miracles.

Congrats to Sally Wen Mao, whose poem "XX" was selected by Denise Duhamel for The Best American Poetry 2013!

Congrats, dear Sally!

Here's the beginning of her self-interview on her forthcoming book of poetry:

What is the working title of the book?
Mad Honey Symposium.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
Poetry books usually come from entire constellations of ideas. Here are some of the most pervasive ones, for me:

1. When researching names for an angry third world feminist girl band in 2007, I stumbled upon the fact that honey badgers aim for the scrotums when attacking larger animals. 

2. Honey badgers pretend to be immortal when they are not. They may have thick skin and fierce claws but they do get hurt. Poetry is feral. So is desire. The honey badger denotes a feral desire. More so, it denotes a female, vulnerable desire. The honey badger exemplifies marginalized bodies. Such is the paradox of poetry: it’s vulnerable, yet attempts to be brave. We do not know whether to call it stupid, or admirable, or both.

3. Mad honey makes people go crazy. They eat it in a state of wonder or fit of hunger or desire. They experience hallucinations after eating it. They get drunk on this honey and vomit and tremble and cry. They suffer for their desires.

 Read the rest of her interview here: http://indianareview.org/2013/02/13/the-next-big-thing-sally-wen-mao/

Cynthia Arrieu-King's "Manifest," winner of the Gateway Prize by Switchback Books, (selected by Harryette Mullen), will be out in February!

Congrats, dear Cynthia!

You can read her The Next Big Thing self-interview up here: http://cynthiaarrieuking.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-next-big-thing.html

Cynthia Arrieu-King works as an associate professor of creative writing at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and a former Kundiman fellow. She is the author of two collections of poetry, People are Tiny in Paintings of China (2010) and Manifest (2013). She also co-wrote a chapbook with Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis By a Year Lousy with Meteors (2012). Her first book appeared on The Believer’s Reader’s Choice Poetry List in 2011 and was mentioned on Seth Abramson’s list of best contemporary works of poetry in The Huffington Post. She runs a radio show through WLFR (wlfr.fm) about writers and writing in South Jersey and the tri-state called The Last Word.

Purvi Shah's article "The Hazards of an Inauguration Sans Poetry" is now up at the Huffington Post!

"With inaugural poetry, we need not read between the lines. What we must do is act after the lines, be the kind of engaged citizen Walt Whitman imagined in his 19th century renditions of a new America."

Read the rest of her article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/purvi-shah/poetry-in-politics_b_2617790.html

Purvi Shah seeks to inspire change through her work as a non-profit consultant, anti-violence advocate and writer. Her work fighting violence against women earned the inaugural SONY South Asian Social Services Award. Terrain Tracks, her poetry collection, delves migration, belonging, and loss. Follow her work at purvipoets.net or @PurviPoets.

Available now! Soham Patel's chapbook "and nevermind the storm" by Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs

Congrats to our amazing Soham! Pick up your copy here: http://yoyolabs.com/patel.html.

Soham Patel’s poems and essays have been included in Copper Nickel, Denver Quarterly, XCP (Cross Cultural Poetics), Anti-, The Cortland Review, SHAMPOO, Foursquare and elsewhere.  She is a Kundiman fellow, and and nevermind the storm is her first chapbook.

Janine Joseph has two poems up at La Fovea!

Congrats, Janine!

 

After the flood

– after Nazim Hikmet

 

I. 

Said my father who dove and rode the sea

        on a turtle, who speared a squid 

and held it up so I could see, my name 

        was Freedom first. What he held

I put my ear to after waking.

 

For the full text, click here: http://www.lafovea.org/La_Fovea/janine_joseph.html

 

A finalist for the 2012 OSU/The Journal Award in Poetry and Alice James Books Beatrice Hawley Award, Janine Joseph’s poems are forthcoming from or have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Asian American Literary Review, Best New Poets 2011, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She also wrote a commissioned libretto, entitled “From My Mother’s Mother,” for the Houston Grand Opera’s “Song of Houston: East + West” series.  Janine is a PhD candidate at the University of Houston.

Brynn Saito's poem "Alma, 1942" and interview are now up at Hyphen Magazine

Congrats, dear Brynn!

Tell me a little bit about what (or who) inspired this poem. Was this based upon an actual experience you had as the invisible "you"?

This poem arrived at one of the oddest moments. I was in a hostel in Seville and I couldn't sleep because of the pressing summer heat. I didn't want to turn on the light and disturb my roommate, so I started writing in the dark. When one is writing in the dark, there's a sense of urgency that keeps the pen moving across the page sightlessly. It's wonderful. There's also an inability to do the thing which can hinder the flow: compulsively re-read every word, tending to the lines like a tireless gardener. I wrote until a story I heard as a child spilled itself sideways across the unlit pages, the story of my Japanese American grandmother, Alma, lying about her race in order to avoid harassment during the war years (before her and my grandfather were eventually interned in Arizona). I recorded the story as it came to me then, in that airless pensione. Then, I wrote: "You never have to lie to survive," as if my tiny, sturdy, white-haired grandmother were standing above me, saying those exact words. "So what will you do with your freedom?"

Read the rest of the interview here.

Brynn Saito is the author of poetry collection The Palace of Contemplating Departure, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award and forthcoming from Red Hen Press in March 2013.  Her poem, “Alma, 1942” is featured in Hyphen Issue 26. We asked her to record a reading of her poem, and then talked to her a little bit about the poem, her forthcoming book, and her thoughts on the direction of Asian American poetry.

Eugenia Leigh's poem "Sustenance" published at Berfrois Review

Congrats, dear Eugenia!

Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet and Kundiman fellow who holds an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poetry manuscript was a finalist for the 2011 National Poetry Series, and her poems have appeared in North American Review, The Collagist, Lantern Reviewand PANK Magazine, among other publications. Born in Chicago and raised in Los Angeles, Eugenia currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

To read her poem, please visit: http://www.berfrois.com/2013/01/sustenance-eugenia-leigh/

Henry W. Leung is interviewed in the Michigan Quarterly Review

"You’re not writing poetry if you’re not being honest (which isn’t the same as being confessional)."

Congrats, dear Henry!

Henry W. Leung was born in a village in Guangdong, China. He spent his childhood in Honolulu before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently completing his MFA in Fiction at the University of Michigan. Paradise Hunger – the winner of the 2012 Swan Scythe Press Poetry Chapbook Contest – is his first chapbook. He writes a bimonthly column on Asian American poetry for the Lantern Review.

To read more of the interview, visit: http://www.michiganquarterlyreview.com/2013/01/paradise-hunger-interview-with-henry-w-leung/

Read Purvi Shah's powerful article "The Value of Vigil(ance) in Ending Sexual Violence" up at Huffington Post

The Value of Vigil(ance) in Ending Sexual Violence

 

What do we here in the U.S. take away from the brutal gang-rape and death of Jyoti Singh Pandey? 

Across our world, miles away from the original site of violence in Delhi, India, a wave of protests and vigils have honored Jyoti and demanded an end to sexual violence. Leading the wave, thousands of protesters in Delhi have faced tear gas, water cannons and otherpolice force in order to say India needs stronger laws against sexual assault while fostering a society that does not condone gender violence -- so that it is no longer themost dangerous place to be born a girl child.

In the United States too, with our own sobering rate of sexual assaults faced by one in six women and one in 33 men, a number of vigils for Jyoti have marked local calls for community response to sexual violence.

At a recent vigil last Tuesday evening, where I contributed a poem, hundreds of community members gathered in Union Square, New York City to honor Jyoti and offer support to stop sexual violence around the world and here at home.

Then again, in an article speaking to the spread of U.S. vigils honoring Jyoti, commenter Douting Mind, asserts, "What a waste of time." Indeed, you can't bring a body back, erase suffering, wish away experience. Laws are slow to change. Society, sometimes even slower.

Thank you, Purvi, for writing this beautiful and necessary piece. 

Read the rest of her post here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/purvi-shah/sexual-violence_b_2528787.html