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2008-2009 Park University Ethnic Voices Poetry SeriesBooks by all poets are available in the University Book Store  Financial Assistance for this project has been provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency. Victoria ChangOctober 2, 2008 Kansas City, MO Reception at 6:30pm Book signing follows Chang's work has appeared in many literary journals, and she won a Ploughshares Cohen Award for best poem of the year. Her first book of poetry, Circle, won the Crab Orchard Review Award Series in Poetry and the Association of Asian American Book Studies Award and was also a finalist for the 2005 PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award. The University of Georgia has just published her second book, Salvinia Molesta, and she edited the anthology, Asian American Poetry: the Next Generation.
Salvinia Molesta —Known as the world's worst weed, it lives in water and doubles How far will they swim, grappling outward for more?
While in Kansas City, Aimee was interviewed by Robert Stewart for the NPR radio program, New Letters on the Air. Please consult the New Letters Schedule for information regarding the broadcast of that interview. Victoria Chang web siteSean HillNovember 16, 2008 Kansas City Library, Plaza Branch Reception 1:30 Presentation at 2:00 p.m. Book signing follows
A native of Milledgeville, Georgia, Sean Hill has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bush Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, and the University of Wisconsin, and work-study scholarships to Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, Indiana Review, Ploughshares, Pleiades, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Gulf Coast, and other literary journals, and in the anthologies Blues Poems, Gathering Ground, and The Ringing Ear. In March 2008 the University of Georgia Press published his first book, Blood Ties & Brown Liquor. Hill is currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Words Like Rivers from Blood Ties & Brown Liquor ————1. At bars we banter over brown liquor, Whiskeys, brown with undertones— ————All I want is a swallow, ————2. Black men bibulous— stream words like rivers ————My old lady’s yellow ————3. Black men come and go my father has always stayed. ————I say blood ties is ————4. I have an older brother I think Might feel them ————The field’s dry as a bone,
While in Kansas City, Sean was interviewed by Angela Latham for the NPR radio program, New Letters on the Air. Please consult the New Letters Schedule for information regarding the broadcast of that interview. Francisco Aragon with an introduction by The Latino Writers CollectiveDecember 4, 2008 Reception and book signing follows Aragon has authored Puerta Del Sol, served as editor for The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, and published poetry in many anthologies and journals. He serves as the director of Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies (ILS) at the University of Notre Dame where he oversees, among other projects, Momotombo Press, the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and Latino Poetry Review. Love Poem — Francisco Aragon Just let the San Andreas out of it, past Louie's Dim the bay—visible in the distance, crab freshly caught or Jack, strolling out of the tube to Aquatic Park to spread in the bottom of the ninth the pages with his palms seat of his pants for Jack Spicer (1925-1965) The Latino Writers Collective, based in the Kansas City metropolitan
area, organizes and coordinates projects for the larger community, especially
to showcase national and local Latino writers and provide role models and instruction
to Latino youth. Its mission is to foster an environment where the voices of
Latino
Howard Schwartz March 5, 2009 Howard Schwartz teaches in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-St.
Louis and has published three books of poetry, Vessels, Gathering
the Sparks and Sleepwalking Beneath the Stars, and several books
of fiction, including The Four Who Entered Paradise and Adam's Soul.
His 10 children's books have garnered many awards, including the Sydney Taylor
Book Award, 1992; the National Jewish Book Award and the Aesop Award of the
American Fol
Breathing in the Dark - © 2008 by Howard Schwartz
So many months breathing in the dark— the scent of underground springs sustains you, a hidden moon beckons you to grow ripe. While you sleep, an angel whispers the secrets of creation, showing you every branch of the tree of life. Someday you will dimly recall all that she revealed of roots and branches and breath. You wake, a lilac waiting for the wind, a sensual stone, a leaf thirsty for a kiss. From now on you will wake with this thirst every morning and drink in everything until the crickets rub their wings together, singing. Aimee Nezhukumatathil March 26, 2009 Kansas City, MO Reception at 6:00pm Book signing follows Aimee Nezhukumatathil was born in Chicago to a Filipina mother and a South Indian father. She attended Ohio State University where she received her B.A. in English and her M.F.A. in poetry and creative non-fiction. Aimee was the 2000-01 Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing at UW-Madison and is now associate professor of English at State University of New York-Fredonia, where she teaches creative writing and environmental literature. Other awards for her writing include the Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah, The Richard Hugo Prize from Poetry Northwest, an Associated Writing Programs Intro Award in creative non-fiction and the Pushcart Prize. Her poems are anthologized in Language for a New Century (WW Norton); Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (Bedford St. Martin's); 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Everyday (HarperCollins); Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, God, War, Art, Sex, Death, Madness, and Everything Else (Univ. of Georgia); Beacon Best Writing of 2000; Babaylan: Filipina and Filipina-American Writing; Humor Me: An Anthology of Humor Writing; Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation; and Eros Pinoy. Her chapbook, Fishbone, won the Snail's Pace Press Prize and her first full-length collection, Aimee was named the SUNY-Fredonia's Hagan Scholar in 2005 for a junior faculty member with distinguished scholarship-- the 1st time a member of the SUNY-Fredonia English Department has won this award. In April of 2006, she also received the SUNY's Drescher Award and SUNY-wide Chancellor's Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities for excellence in her record of publications, art production and performance.
While in Kansas City, Aimee was interviewed by Angela Latham for the NPR radio program, New Letters on the Air. Please consult the New Letters Schedule for information regarding the broadcast of that interview. . Aimee Nezhukumatathil website
By the Light of a Single Worm – Aimee Nezhukumatathil KERALA, INDIA
Land snails the size of hockey pucks slime a shimmer along craggy roots. A mantis wipes its eyes with her forelegs like she's taking off a new sweater. A certain earthworm luminesces so strongly here, a zoology professor once wrote a whole lecture by the light of a single worm. My hand washes blue and tiny hairs above the knuckle look electric. Soil becomes glitter, even the flattest stone turns into cabochon. When I bathe, a lizard shaped like a cassava root with blue eyes spies on me from the corner of the ceiling. I've seen them fall on dinner tables, into noodle puddings, the cold ceramic of the kitchen sink, and I just know I will be next. I turn off the light, knowing that in darkness they run along baseboards, savoring picture frames until sunrise. I finish my bath in darkness with only the glow from the garden, listen for any evidence of a tell-tale splash. Craig Santos Perez June 17 , 2009 Kansas City, MO Reception at 6:00pm Book signing follows Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guahan (Guam), is a co-founder of Achiote Press and author of From Unincorporated Territory (Tinfish Press, 2008). His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared (or are forthcoming) in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others. He received an MFA from the University of San Francisco and is currently a PhD candidate in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. from descending plumeria SALMO 1
1 Dichoso y taotao, ni ti mamomocat gui pinagat y manaelaye, ni y ti sumasaga gui chalan manisao, ni y ti matatachong gui siyan ayo sija y manmanmofefea. 2 Lao guiya lay Jeova, ayo y minagofña, ya y layña jajaso, jaane yan puenge. 3 Ya taegüijeja y trongcon jayo ni y matanme gui oriyan sadog, ya guaja tinegchaña gui tiempoña, ya y jagonña ti umalayo; ya todo y finatinasña mumemegae. 4 Lao ti taegüine y manaelaye; lao parejo yan y paja ni y güinaefe ni y manglo. 5 Sa enao na ti mangajujulo y manaelaye gui sentensia; ni y manisao gui y inetnon manunas. 6 Sa si Jeova jatungo y chalan manunas: lao y chalan manaelaye ufanmalingo. PSALM 1 we are cursed, in the path of the ungodly [...] the blessed sinners make counsel their law is our Lord [...] a colony of day and night a tree planted in sand; the river is a military landfill [...] no fruit, withered leaf in the ungodly wind [...] we become wheat to their congress of sinners, judgement, and sentence [...] will the Landlord of our path ever perish?
Purchase these titles in the University Book Store: Salvinia Molesta Puerta Del Sol The Wind Shifts Tree of Souls Leaves from the Garden of Eden At the Drive-In Volcano Financial Assistance for this project has been provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency. --------------------------------- University Resources |
students, blue collar workers, professionals, and homemakers can finally
be heard, sharing their experience and vision with a broad audience. Performing
embers of the Collective include José Faus; Linda Rodriguez; Maria Vazquez
Boyd; Gabriela M. Lemmons; and Gloria Martinez Adams. Work by members of the
Collective appears in the recently published anthology, Primera Pagina.
Miracle Fruit, Poems and essays are published or forthcoming in FIELD, The Antioch Review, New England Review, Black Warrior Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, Chelsea, Mid-American Review, The Southeast Review, River Styx, Beloit Poetry Journal, Quarterly West, Crab Orchard Review, Virginia Quarterly, Slate, and North American Review. 
