May 17: A Celebration of Kundiman at Verlaine

May 17: A Celebration of Kundiman at Verlaine with Aziza Barnes, Cornelius Eady, Shonni Enelow, Rigoberto González, Monica Sok, Christopher Soto, & Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

Join us for a blowout CELEBRATION OF VERLAINE: a cross-cultural, cross-generational poetry carousal featuring:

AZIZA BARNES, CORNELIUS EADY, RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ, MONICA SOK, CHRISTOPHER SOTO, & KELLY ZEN-YIE TSAI 

Sunday, May 17
Verlaine Bar & Lounge
110 Rivington St, New York, NY

Happy hour: 4-5pm
Feature Reading: 5pm
$5 suggested donation


BIOS:

AZIZA BARNES is blk & alive. Born in Los Angeles, she currently lives in Bedstuy, New York. Her first chapbook, me Aunt Jemima and the nailgun, was the first winner of the Exploding Pinecone Prize and published from Button Poetry. You can find her work in PANK, pluck!, Muzzle, Callaloo, Union Station, and other journals. She is a poetry & non-fiction editor at Kinfolks Quarterly, a Callaloo fellow and graduate from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of The Dance Cartel & the divine fabrics collective. She loves a good suit & anything to do with Motown. 
 

CORNELIUS EADY is the author of eight books of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (Putnam, April 2008). His second book, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, won the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1985; in 2001 Brutal Imagination was a finalist for the National Book Award. His work in theater includes the libretto for an opera, “Running Man,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999. His play, “Brutal Imagination,” won Newsday’s Oppenheimer award in 2002. In 1996 Eady co-founded, with writer Toi Derricotte, the Cave Canem summer workshop/retreat for African American poets. More than a decade later, Cave Canem is a thriving national network of black poets, as well as an institution offering regional workshops, readings, a first book prize, and the summer retreat.

SHONNI ENELOW writes for and about theater and performance. She is an assistant professor of English at Fordham University. Her latest work of theater, The Power of Emotion, premiered this January in the Public Theatre's Under the Radar Festival Incoming Series. Her performance lecture, "My Dinner with Bernard Frechtman," was recently published in Aufgabe. Her critical monograph, Method Acting and Its Discontents: On American Psycho-drama, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press. 

RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ is the author 15 books, most recently the poetry collection Unpeopled Eden, which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. A professor of English at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey, he is the recipient of Guggenheim, NEA and USA Rolón fellowships; a NYFA grant in poetry; the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America; The Poetry Center Book Award; the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award; and the 2015 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle.
 

MONICA SOK is a Cambodian poet from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Currently, she is completing an MFA in poetry at New York University. A Kundiman fellow, her poems are forthcoming in Narrative, Crab Orchard Review, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.
 

CHRISTOPHER SOTO (aka LOMA) is a queer latin@ punk poet and prison abolitionist. They are currently curating Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color in collaboration with The Lambda Literary Foundation. They have work published in Columbia: A Journal , MiPOesias, Apogee Journal and more. They are an MFA candidate in Poetry at NYU and the 2014-2015 Intern at Poetry Society of America.
 

KELLY ZEN-YIE TSAI is an award-winning spoken word poet, playwright, and filmmaker whose work has been featured at over 600 venues worldwide including the White House, Apollo Theater in Harlem, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, BAM, Tyra Banks’ Flawsome Ball, & three seasons of “HBO Def Poetry.” Award recipient of the Illinois Arts Council, Asian American Arts Alliance, New York Foundation for the Arts, Asian Women Giving Circle, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Kelly has been profiled on Idealist in NYC’s Top 40 NYC’ers Who Make Positive Social Change, AngryAsianMan.com’s “30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30,” and HBO’s “East of Main Street: Asians Aloud.”


Get there early for drinks, seats, and chat!

March 8: Kundiman & Verlaine ft. Bethany Carlson, W. Todd Kaneko, & Monica Ong

March 8: Kundiman & Verlaine ft. Bethany Carlson, W. Todd Kaneko, & Monica Ong

Join us for a night of words & libation with readings by: BETHANY CARLSON, W. TODD KANEKO, & MONICA ONG

Happy hour: 4-5pm
Open mic: 4:30-5pm
Feature Reading: 5pm
$5 suggested donation

RSVP on Facebook!

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Bethany Carlson is an MDiv candidate at Yale University and holds an MFA from Indiana University. She is interested in how lyricism enhances sacred liturgy, invites eschatological imagination, and transcends a Christological understanding of narrative time. Bethany is a Kundiman Fellow and a member of The Lilly Graduate Fellows Program in Humanities & the Arts.

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (Curbside Splendor, 2014). His poems, essays and stories can be seen in Bellingham Review, Los Angeles Review, The Normal School, The Collagist, Blackbird, Third Coast, Song of the Owashtanong: Grand Rapids Poetry in the 21st Century, Bring the Noise: The Best Pop Culture Essays from Barrelhouse Magazine and many other journals and anthologies. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, he lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University.

Monica Ong is a visual artist and poet whose hybrid image-poems juxtapose diagram and diary. She completed her MFA in Digital Media at the Rhode Island School of Design and is also a Kundiman poetry fellow. Her work has been published in several journals including the Lantern Review, Drunken Boat, Glassworks Magazine, Loaded Bicycle, Tidal Basin Review, and the Seneca Review. She has also been exhibiting artwork for over a decade nationally and internationally. Ms. Ong’s debut collection, Silent Anatomies, was selected by poet Joy Harjo as winner of the Kore Press First Book Award. Silent Anatomies will be released in March 2015.

September 7: Kundiman & Verlaine Reading Series featuring Franny Choi, Sahra Vang Nguyen, Chris Tran, & Paul Tran

September 7: Kundiman & Verlaine Reading Series featuring Franny Choi, Sahra Vang Nguyen, Chris Tran, & Paul Tran

Join us for a night of words & libation with readings by:

FRANNY CHOI, SAHRA VANG NGUYEN, CHRIS TRAN, & PAUL TRAN

Open bar: 4-5pm
Open mic: 4:30-5pm
Feature Reading: 5pm
$5 suggested donation

** This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. **

Franny Choi is a poet, teaching artist, and author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014). Her poems and stories have appeared in Poetry, PANK, Folio, Solstice, Fringe, Apogee, and others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been a finalist at the three largest adult poetry slams in the country. She is a VONA Fellow and a member of the Dark Noise Collective. Through Project V.O.I.C.E. and the Providence Poetry Slam, Franny teaches creative writing in her local community and in classrooms across the country.

Sahra Vang Nguyen is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She has served as the Director of the Writing Success Program at the University of California, Los Angeles where she helped undergraduate students develop their critical thinking, self-confidence and agency through the writing process. Her writing primarily explores themes of identity, race in America, the Vietnamese American experience and the power of human potential. Sahra has self-published an e-book titled, "One Ounce Gold," and she has been published in the print anthology, "Pho For Life." She has toured Universities across the country speaking, performing poetry and facilitating workshops aimed to empower and inspire audiences. In Fall 2013, Sahra was invited to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in a celebration of Asian American artists. More recently, Sahra created a web series about NYC entrepreneurs called, "Maker's Lane," which is co-presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

Chris Tran is an emerging Vietnamese American writer, photographer & media maker from Oklahoma City, OK. He's performed with Sarah Kaye & Hieu Minh Nguyen and was a semifinalist at the 2014 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI). His work interrogates new constructions of race, sexuality & nostalgia. A sophomore at Brown University, Chris constantly yearns for southern fried cooking.

Paul Tran is an Asian American activist, historian & spoken word poet from Providence, RI. He's won "Best Poet" and "Pushing the Art Forward" at the national college poetry slam and fellowships from Kundiman, Coca Cola, the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His work combines oral history and performance to reimagine the violences inherited from the Vietnam War. Paul is also the cofounder of Gravediggers, a workshop for emerging writers of color, and coaches the 2014 Providence youth slam team heading to Brave New Voices.

March 23 Kundiman & Verlaine Reading with J. Mae Barizo, Tina Chang, & Emily Yoon

Kundiman & Verlaine Reading with J. Mae Barizo, Tina Chang, & Emily Yoon

Sunday, March 23rd, 2013, 4pm

Happy spring, everyone! Join us for an evening of poetry & libation at the Lower East Side's Verlaine. Come early for open bar! Stay after for Verlaine's delicious happy hour specials. 

Open bar 4pm-5pm
Open mic 4:30-5pm
Feature reading begins 5pm
$5 suggested donation

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/469897616471950/

J. Mae Barizo, poet and cultural critic, was a Kundiman Prize and Kinereth Gensler award finalist for Alice James Books. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, Hyperallergic, Paris Review Online, Nylon Magazine, Denver Quarterly and many more. She attended Bennington College, where she was awarded the Jane Kenyon Award for poetry. She is a 2014 Poet's House fellow, and her first book, The Cumulus Effect will be published by Four Way Books. A champion of cross-genre works and performatic poetics, J. Mae has collaborated with musicians from the The National, Bon Iver, and the American String Quartet. She lives in New York City.

Emily Yoon is a first-year MFA in Poetry student at New York University. She admires the subtlety in expression and unique intimacy with nature in traditional Korean poetry, and aims to capture such qualities in her own work. Previous honors she has received for poetry include International Merit Award from the Atlanta Review, Poem of Distinction in the Writecorner Press Poetry Awards, 1st Place in the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Contest, and publication on the APIARY magazine online.

Tina Chang is the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn. She is the author of the poetry collections Half-Lit Houses and Of Gods & Strangers (Four Way Books) and co-editor of the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (W.W. Norton, 2008) along with Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar. Her poems have appeared in American Poet, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, The New York Times among others. She currently teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is an international faculty member at the City University at Hong Kong.

 

Verlaine

110 Rivington St.
(Ludlow & Essex Sts.)
New York, NY 10012
212-614-2494 
F train to Delancey

This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. 

Interview with Ansley Moon

Ansley Moon was born in New Delhi, India, and has since lived on three continents. Her work has been published in PANK, J Journal, Southern Women's and elsewhere. Her first book of poetry, How to Bury the Dead, was published by Black Coffee Press. She is the recipient of a Kundiman fellowship and works as an editor for Black Lawrence Press. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

You attended your first Kundiman retreat with your fellow readers Wo Chan and Tung-Hui Hu, in 2012. What's one memory or takeaway that you have from that retreat?

The Kundiman retreat is a sacred place. For me, it altered my relationship to poetry and it made me believe that my voice was necessary.  I also remember Wo and Hui-Hui’s transformative reading. I feel privileged to read alongside them at the Kundiman & Verlaine Reading.

You attended the New School for your MFA. How has your writing life changed since then? How has it remained the same?

My MFA program made me a stronger writer by pushing me to take my work seriously. Before my writing program, my writing life was a solitary one. Now, I have a group of friends that inspire and challenge me to be a better writer and person. 

Can you talk a little about how you balance your teaching life and your writing life?

I think that the key to balancing any job and writing is setting strict parameters and differentiating your “work” time from your writing time. I do this by striving to complete all my teaching related tasks at my job so that my evenings and weekends are free to write. Some weeks are better than others, and this is the first year that I feel I am balancing writing and teaching. I write everyday and revise and submit writing on the weekend. While teaching can be a grueling vocation, I am passionate about education. My students inspire me by sharing their poetry.

Kundiman has an ongoing Kavad project this year called Writing Race and Belonging: would you mind spending some time discussing your relationship to writing, race, and belonging? Broad topic, I know, but we're interested in any first memories, thoughts, or impressions you have when you think about those three ideas.

I was born in India and adopted into a white, Southern family. From an early age, I learned that “belonging” meant complicating traditional narratives. For me, being raised in the South was a constant trauma that forever marked me. I am always navigating race and identity. 

In Monique Truong’s book, Bitter in the Mouth, she states: “We all need a story of where we came from and how we got here. Otherwise, how could we ever put down our tender roots and stay.” Writing has always been my way of navigating my place in the world.

What are you working on now?

I am working on a poetry manuscript about adoption, race, and infanticide in India and a long poem about my father.

What are some favorite books (movies or art) that you would recommend?

There are too many books to name! Recently I read Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo and The Father by Sharon Olds. I would recommend both! I am also interested in the way that art, music and dance intersect poetry. Wim Wenders’ film Pina especially comes to mind.

Ansley Moon will be reading with Wo Chan and Tung-Hui Hu at Kundiman & Verlaine on Sunday, November 17th at 4pm.  Check out the Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1375415046033941/?source=1 

Please note that we decided to hold a fundraiser at this event. Proceeds from this reading will benefit Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda Relief in the Philippines. So, please come and open up your hearts as well as your pockets. The Philippines is in dire need. Every bit counts.

Nov. 17 Kundiman & Verlaine featuring Wo Chan, Tung-Hui Hu, & Ansley Moon

November 17

Kundiman & Verlaine Reading

Open Bar from 4-5 pm
Open Mic from 4:30-5pm
Reading beings at 5 pm
$5 donation

Verlaine
110 Rivington St.
(Ludlow & Essex Sts.)
212-614-2494
F train to Delancey

Wo Chan, Tung-Hui Hu, & Ansley Moon read.

Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1375415046033941/?source=1 

Please note that we decided to hold a fundraiser at this event. Proceeds from this reading will benefit Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda Relief in the Philippines. So, please come and open up your hearts as well as your pockets. The Philippines is in dire need. Every bit counts. Thank you.
xox,
Kundiman

Click here to donate directly for Hurricane Relief: www.nafconusa.org 

Wo Chan is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia's Area Program for Poetry Writing where he received the Rachel St. Paul Poetry Award for his work. Wo was a finalist for cream city review's 2013 Poetry Contest and his poems appeared in the journals Spring 2013 issue. Wo is a Kundiman fellow and plans to pursue an MFA in the following year. 

Poet and media scholar Tung-Hui Hu was born in San Francisco and educated at Princeton University, the University of Michigan, and the University of California-Berkeley. His collections of poetry includeThe Book of Motion (2003); Mine (2007), which won the Eisner Prize; and Greenhouses, Lighthouses (2013). He is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

Ansley Moon was born in New Delhi, India, and has since lived on three continents. Her work has been published in PANK, J Journal, Southern Women's and elsewhere. Her first book of poetry, How to Bury the Dead , was published by Black Coffee Press. She is the recipient of a Kundiman fellowship and works as an editor for Black Lawrence Press. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.