Sunday, October 30, 2022, 5pm to 7pm at the new Baobab, 2243 Mission St., between 18th & 19th
Author: hoisanpoet
Sat., October 15, 2022
Noon to 4:30 p.m. • Free
Festival Main Stage • Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park • Berkeley
Genny Lim read poems about Water, Wildfires and War and sang Jim Pepper’s “Witchi-Tai-To” and “Besame Mucho,” accompanied by the Barry Finnerty Trio, featuring Finnerty, Akira Tana on drums, with bassist Peter Borshay, on the Festival Main Stage at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley, California.
 Barry Finnerty, Genny Lim and Akira Tana at the 2022 Watershed Poetry Festival |
Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival is a collaboration of Robert Hass, Poetry Flash, Ecology Center/Berkeley Farmers’ Market, and Ecocity Builders. The Watershed Festival emerged from Robert Hass’s national Watershed initiative during his tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate, 1995-97, which explored connections between environmental awareness and the American literary imagination. The first two Watersheds were held at the Bandshell at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.
Categories
Lewis Jordan & Music at Large
Friday, September 30, 2022
4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.
St. Mary’s College
Cornelius Art Center: Patio, 1928 St. Marys Road, Moraga, CA 94575
On Critical Mass, Lewis Jordan (alto, baritone and poetry), Sandi Poindexter (violin), Bruce Ackley (soprano and tenor), Ollen Erich Hunt (bass), and Jimmy Biala (drums/percussion) use improvisation and poetry to access a space of sincerity, engagement, and free expression. They are joined by Genny Lim on the title track.
With a unique interdisciplinary approach to poetry and music, this Bay Area musical ensemble brings an open spirit of improvisation to their original compositions. Performances highlight solo instrumental voices (saxophone, violin, bass, and percussion) as well as collective interplay. This year, the group released its fourth CD, Critical Mass (Innova 073).
Thursday, May 12 – 7:30pm
Bird & Beckett Books & Records
653 Chenery Street, San Francisco, CA 94131
With B’kongofonic blood at the saxophonic root, well below surface engraving, resonating within its alloy, sounds are gathering to invoke a heroic people: kongo as “gathering”, a Central African people’s homeland; fon as “sound”, a West African people’s language; B’ referring to all “peoples” along the resistance continuum. Hear ye, the animating force of a strange horn sanctified!
Genny Lim – poetry, invocation
Hafez Modirzadeh – kongofon, assorted winds
Francis Wong – kongofon, assorted winds
John-Carlos Perea – electric bass, cedar flute, vocals
Keshav Batish – drums, tabla
Genny Lim and the ensemble perform Modirzadeh’s epic poem, Ode B’kongofon.
$25 cash cover charge; byob and a mask (optional if vaccinated)
Bobby Bradford, Francis Wong & William Roper with poet Genny Lim celebrate “The Zen of Glenn.”
Three master musicians and an esteemed poet join together in honor of their late colleague and friend Glenn Horiuchi, born February 27, 1955. Horiuchi, who passed on June 3, 2000, was a key figure in the Asian American arts movements & companies that flowered in the San Francisco Bay Area and up and down the West Coast in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.
Find the live stream on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel or Facebook page, and donate if you possibly can to support the musicians, the music and the venue!
Saxophonist Francis Wong, co-founder and creative director of Asian Improv aRts (AIR), notes that Horiuchi
“was a prime mover for Asian Improv aRts from our pre-history in the Asian American Movement until his transition. A role model and mentor for me and so many others, he played such roles as a musician, teacher, community organizer — most notably the redress movement but also in the El Salvador support movement, and of course Jesse Jackson for President — and Zen Buddhist practitioner, all the while being a devoted family man. He continues to inspire us with his life example, artistic work, and abiding spirit.”
Categories
Anglim/Trimble
Please join us next Thursday, Feb. 17 at 5pm for a live poetry reading and music performance with special guests: Genny Lim, Clara Hsu, and David Wong.
The event will take place in the gallery located on the second floor of the Minnesota Street Project
Xiaoze Xie’s “Panorama of Eternal Night”
On view through Feb. 26
with a special poetry reading/music performance happening Thur. Feb. 17th in the gallery at 5pm!
“Looking for art-historical references, Xie has found some of the most powerful expressions of humanity in religious art, and discovered parallels and formal affinities between art of the East and West. He is particularly inspired by the complexity, intensity and drama in the portrayal of human suffering in Dante’s Divine Comedy, which he read over Zoom to his son Victor who was stranded at university during lockdown. He brings the same pathos and gravitas from Dante’s epic narrative to his subject matter through collage combining history and the present, the real with the imaginary.”
Anglim/Trimble
1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, California 94107 [map]
https://www.anglimtrimble.com/exhibitions/xiaoze-xie-panorama-of-eternal-night
Genny Lim was San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate (2016-2018) and a recipient of the PEN Oakland Reginald Lockett and Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Awards. Her award-winning play Paper Angels has been produced throughout the U.S., in Canada and China. She is author of five poetry collections, Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and Rebels, KRA!, La Morte Del Tempo, and co-author of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, winner of the American Book Award. Lim has collaborated with numerous jazz musicians such as Max Roach, Jon Jang, Francis Wong and Del Sol String Quartet.
Clara Hsu is a Chinese American immigrant from Hong Kong. She is a mother, piano teacher, traveler, actor, translator, poet, playwright, a BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) artist and a recipient of the Jefferson Award for public service in 2021. Clara’s children’s play, The Piano, a Play-Movie was selected to screen at the 2021 International Children’s Film Festival Seattle. Gai Mou Sou Rap is Clara’s best known work. Written in 2021 during the height of hate crimes against Asians, the rap has received over a quarter of a million views on the internet and the Palm Beach International Music Award
David Wong, Executive Director of Tranquil Resonance Studio, brings his passion for the ancient traditions of China to every note he plays on both guqin and guzheng and every cup of tea he brews. Studying music, arts, and pursuing his graduate studies with masters both here and abroad in China, he actively teaches, lectures, and performs around the San Francisco bay area, always enthusiastic to share all that he has learned and showcase the deep-rooted traditions and music of China.
Categories
Memory, Meaning and Memoir 2022
January 29, 2022 at 5:00pm – 7pm PST, via Zoom
Registration is FREE and available on Eventbrite.
A presentation of readings by a diverse, intergenerational, cross-section of writers, who include visual artists, educators, activists and professionals from the AAPI community, who will share their stories and poems, ranging from immigration stories and family memoir to gender and racial oppression, anti-Asian hate and police violence, written during the course of a writing workshop conducted by poet-playwright, Genny Lim. The online APICC workshops have met every week, throughout the pandemic. These memoir pieces were written in response to weekly writing prompts provided by Genny Lim. All levels and ages, from emerging to advanced writers, were welcomed and encouraged to explore and develop their individual voices and craft in a safe and communal atmosphere that allowed for constructive critique, dialogue, mutual support and growth.
FEATURED WRITERS
Vickie Chang
Andres Tangalin
madhvi trivedi-pathak
Susan Hayase
Susan Kitazawa
Grace Morizawa
Noah Kawaguchi
Leon Sun
Leslie Yee/Murata
Carole Chinn-Morales
Lynn Huang
Lisa Chiu
Yenkuei Chuang
Sharleen Boumer Ignacio
Mei Lam
Don Tow
For more, visit the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center website.
Categories
Berkeley Poetry Festival 2022
Genny Lim receives the Berkeley Poetry Festival’s 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Poetry & Dance with dNaga Dance Company
Join the Live-streamed Festival via Zoom or on the Bay Area Poetry Festival Facebook page on Saturday, January 22, from 3:00pm-4:00pm, for poetry and dance with dNaga Dance Company, featuring recorded poetry readings by Genny.
Saturday, January 22, 3:00–4:00pm • https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82962508028 • On Facebook Live
With special thanks to Claudine Naganuma, Artistic Director of dNaga Dance Company — a unique ensemble made up of multi-generational dancers including young artists, professionals, and elders. Through workshops, classes, choreography and productions, the dance company explores the nature of our human condition and its relationship to our greater community.
Lifetime Achievement Award and Reading
On Sunday, January 23, from 3:00pm-4:00pm, enjoy readings by poets Maw Shein Win and Minal Hajratwala, and the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Award to Genny by City of Berkeley Councilperson Terry Taplin.
Sunday, January 23, 3:00–4:00pm • https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82344447103 • On Facebook Live
The Berkeley Poetry Festival is funded by the City of Berkeley Civic Arts Commission and Poets & Writers
 In Honor of Genny Lim: City of Berkeley Proclamation, January 23, 2022 |
Categories
PEN Oakland Awards
Genny Lim receives the Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award
Join the 32nd Annual PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Awards. The PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Awards, named for the late poet and professor at the University of California at Berkeley, were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. In addition, there is an Adelle Foley Award, a Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award, a Gary Webb Anti-Censorship award, and a Reginald Martin Award for Excellence in Criticism.
The 2021 PEN Oakland Award winners will be formally recognized on Saturday, December 4, from 2:00-5:00 P.M. PST. This will be a free virtual event, which will be broadcast live on Facebook on the Oakland Public Library Facebook page.
The 2021 PEN Oakland Award Recipients Are:
Josephine Miles Award
Joy Harjo, Leanne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster and Contributing Editors, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (Norton, W.W. & Company, Inc.)
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, The Mountains Sing (Algonquin Press)
Derf Backderf, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio (Abrams Books)
Christopher Bernard, The Socialist’s Garden of Verses (Regent Press)
Daphne Brooks, Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Belknap Press)
Nikki Giovanni, Make Me Rain poems & prose (William Morrow)
Terry McMillan, It’s Not All Downhill From Here: A Novel (Ballantine Books)
Adelle Foley Award
Margaret Porter Troupe
Gavin Newsom
First Annual Reginald Martin Award for Excellence in Criticism
Jerry Ward
Gary Webb Anti-Censorship Award
Roxane Gay
Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award
Genny Lim
SAN FRANCISCO, October 21, 2021 — Poet, playwright, performer, and educator Genny Lim speaks to Jen Shyu and Sumi Tonooka about the evolution of her career as an artist and writer. This is a part of Asia Society’s In the Green Room: Layering Legacies of Women in Jazz.
FULL INTERVIEW (52 min., 26 min.)
https://asiasociety.org/video/green-room-genny-lim
In the Green Room: Layering Legacies of Asian and Black American Women in Jazz comprises performances, a series of video interviews with women in jazz, and interactive workshops with a cohort of millennial musicians. Harnessing the power of music and storytelling, Jen Shyu and Sumi Tonooka draw upon their own personal stories and those recorded with Toshiko Akyoshi composer/ jazz pianist/big band leader, Genny Lim, poet/playwright/ performer/ educator, Terri Lyne Carrington, drummer/composer and Linda May Han Oh, bassist/composer. The weaving of these extraordinary stories creates an intimate portal into living histories across generations. The project was conceived by composer/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist, Jen Shyu, and composer/pianist, Sumi Tonooka. They were joined in performance by drummer/composer, Terri Lyne Carrington, and bassist/composer, Linda May Han Oh.
Funding for In the Green Room: Layering Legacies of Asian and Black American Women in Jazz is provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional funding has been provided by the Asia Society Performing Arts Fund and Helen and Will Little.