Friday, November 1, 2024, 6 to 9pm Ritz-Carlton, 600 Stockton Street San Francisco, CA
On Friday, November 1, 2024, over 300 guests gathered at The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco to honor four alumni (Stephen Gillett, Genny Lim, Evan Kidera and Patrick Makuakāne) for their outstanding achievements.
President Lynn Mahoney and Ben Fong-Torres (’66) served as hosts as the University community honored the newest inductees, celebrating their accomplishments as they were inducted into SF State’s Alumni Hall of Fame. Stephen Gillett, Evan Kidera. Patrick Makuakāne and Genny Lim join a prestigious group of over 150 accomplished graduates who have made a positive impact in their communities and industries.
Pictured from left to right: Ben Fong-Torres, Evan Kidera, Genny Lim, Patrick Makuakāne and San Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney.
Genny was introduced with a special video created for the induction celebration to honor her many wonderful accomplishments.
“Education, I’ve always believed, is the most important pathway to social change.”
GENNY LIM, 2024 SFSU Alumni Hall of Fame Inductee
Genny’s remarks upon being inducted to the SFSU Alumni Hall of Fame.
Genny’s acceptance speech concluded with a powerful reading of two poems, I Am American and The Journey, which elicited a standing ovation from the attendees.
October 5, 2024, Noon to 4:30pm, Civic Center Park, Berkeley, CA – FREE!
Celebrate Writers, Nature & Community
Saturday, October 5, 2024, 10:00 a.m., free Strawberry Creek Walk:
Poetry, talk, and an easy walk along beautiful Strawberry Creek through UC Berkeley and its underground path across downtown Berkeley to the Watershed Festival at Civic Center Park. Chris Olander, River Light, leads the Creek Walk and performs his poetry, with nature commentary by Elizabeth Dougherty, Ph.D, founder/director of Wholly H20, and poets Claire Blotter, Expanding. Water. Ways, Gabriel Cortez, Ecology Center Poet-in- Residence, poet and spoken word artist Mario Ellis Hill, Emilie Lygren, What We Were Born For, and more. Meet at the southeast corner of Oxford at Center, near the large, round sphere sculpture, on the edge of UC Berkeley campus.
Saturday, October 5, 2024 Noon to 4:30 p.m. • Free Festival Main Stage • Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park • Berkeley
Poets and writers, including Genny Lim, San Francisco Poet Laureate 2024 James Cagney, Martian: The Saint of Loneliness, James Laughlin Award-winner, Academy of American Poets
Jane Hirshfield, Northern California Book Awards Fred Cody recipient for Lifetime Achievement and Service, “one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for the biosphere,” The Asking: New and Selected Poems Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate, In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected
Marsha de la O, Creature, Pitt Poetry Series, Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, The New Yorker John Shoptaw, Near-Earth Object, Northern California Book Award-winner for Times Beach
Cintia Santana, The Disordered Alphabet, Northern California Book Award-winner 2024 Ellery Akers, poet, visual artist, and naturalist, A Door Into the Wild: Poetry and Art, Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance
California Poets in the Schools students with poet-teachers Tureeda Mikell, The Body: Oracle of Memory, and Brennan DeFrisco
WE ARE NATURE OPEN MIC, 8 three-minute spots, 12:20 pm, enter the drawing before then, onsite at the Info Tent
Chris Olander, River Light, Nevada County Poet Laureate 2019-2021, performs his poetry with dancers Sharon Coleman and Ranko Ogura accompanied by jazz guitarist Barry Finnerty
Appearing again on the Main Stage: Claire Blotter, Expanding. Water. Ways Gabriel Cortez, Ecology Center Poet-in-Residence Mario Ellis Hill, poet and spoken word artist Emilie Lygren, What We Were Born For
World-class jazz played throughout by The Barry Finnerty Trio, acclaimed jazz guitarist Barry Finnerty, who has toured and played with Miles Davis, The Crusaders, and Hubert Laws, with PETER BARSHAY on bass
Hosts: JOYCE JENKINS, KIRK LUMPKIN, and RICHARD SILBERG Books and Book Signing at the PEGASUS BOOK TENT
Check back for updates! For more information: info@poetryflash.org, (510) 525-5476, cell (510) 612-3958
BART to Downtown Berkeley! Civic Center Park is next to the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, MLK Jr. Way at Center Street, one block west of downtown Berkeley BART. Chairs and tent shade for seating provided. Pick up your lunch at the Farmers’ Market, or bring a blanket and picnic!
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.
To support Ina Coolbrith Circle, please send a check to
Gayle Eleanor, Treasurer
1245 Pine Creek Way, #J
Concord, CA 94520
(please indicate “Albion Poetry” on check)
Note: Parking is very difficult, we recommend ridesharing or public transit. 16th Street/Mission is the nearest BART station.
Featured Poets
Genny Lim was born in San Francisco, and she earned a BA and an MA from San Francisco State University. Lim earned a certificate in broadcast journalism from Columbia University and later worked as a reporter, producer, and commentator for CBS News. Lim is the author of the poetry collections Winter Place (1989), Child of War (2003), and Paper Gods and Rebels (2013). Her work appears in the Oxford Book of Women’s Writing in the United States (1995), and Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island (1980). Lim is the winner of the 1981 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. In 1982, she founded a theater company, Paper Angels Productions, now known as Theatre XX, a company that performs experimental theater. Lim has taught at the New College of California, and her papers are held at UC Santa Barbara. She was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco’s in August 2024.
David Gorin is the author of To a Distant Country, selected by Jennifer Chang for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and forthcoming in 2024. His writing received the 2023 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA, MA, and MPhil in English Literature from Yale University. He has taught creative writing and literature at Deep Springs College, Stanford Continuing Studies, the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution (via the Yale Prison Education Initiative), Eastern Correctional Facility (via the Bard Prison Initiative), and Yale.
Kim Shuck is a poet, visual artist, and educator. She is solo author of eleven books, part of editing another eleven. Shuck served as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco.
Deborah Bachels Schmidt has published five chapbooks, including Stumbling into Grace, published by Orchard Street Press. She is co-author of Love’s Meditation from Random Lane Press). Her work has appeared in journals including Blue Unicorn,California Quarterly, The Exacting Clam, and The MacGuffin, as well as in numerous anthologies. She has earned awards from the Coolbrith Circle, the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and Orchard Street Press. This year her poems won grand prizes in the Poets’ Dinner and the Dancing Poetry Festival.
NSAA (Lawrence Dinkins, Jr.) was born in Detroit and moved to California in the 1990s. He studied writing at Sacramento City College and has been writing and performing his poetry for over twenty years. Lawrence served on the board of the Sacramento Poetry Center, and he has hosted dozens of Sacramento poetry events at both Mahogany Urban Poetry and Luna’s Café. Lawrence published Open Mic Sketchbook and And It Is Beautiful with little m press, and his selected poems, Warrior Poet, was published by Random Lane Press in 2019.
Giovanna Lomanto is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and dog costume contest judge (ask her about it), who has published 3 poetry collections, 2 chapbooks, and an art book with various small presses. A recent MFA graduate from NYU, she currently serves as the co-publisher of the indie press Game Over Books and the lead curator of LitQuake’s QTBIPOC event series. Her work can be found in the SFMOMA, KQED, and the bookshelves of her friend’s homes.
Rebecca Lee Whiting has published her poetry in many independent literary magazines and presses including Prometheus Dreaming, Colossus: Freedom, and Colossus:Body.. She has served as an editor for Colossus Press, an Oakland-based literary nonprofit press that funds good works with good art. Rebecca studied creative writing at Bennington College and has a BA from Yale, an MA from the Courtauld Institute, and a JD from UC Berkeley. A Los Angeles native, these days she splits her time between Sea Ranch and San Francisco with her partner and their goldendoodle, Justice.
Bob Stanley has published two books from CW Press, Miracle Shine (2012), and Language Barrier (2024). He has organized poetry events in Northern California for over 40 years, and he served as Sacramento’s fifth Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2012. With his wife Joyce Hsiao, Bob leads online poetry classes and manages Random Lane Press, a small publisher, from their home in Sacramento.
Mike Shea, bass, has played in numerous jazz groups over the years, including a duo with vocalist Michelle Abby, and both a trio and a quintet featuring vocalist Mike Biber. Mr. Shea has performed with poets Lawrence Dinkins and Bob Stanley at the Sacramento Poetry Center, and he played bass in the group that provided accompaniment for a 12-hour performance of Homer’s Iliad at Grace Cathedral in 2023.
Join us for an evening of beautiful music and cultural performances as we raise funds for the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.
Today, the situation in Haiti could not be more dire. Government backed paramilitary groups continue to terrorize opposition neighborhoods. Six hundred thousand people have had to flee their homes in the wake of this violence. Food insecurity now threatens nearly 5 million people, including 2.4 million children, in a country of 12 million.
Donations to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund go directly to grassroots organizations in Haiti that are the hope for Haiti’s future. Your funds support internal refugees who have been driven from their homes as well as those fleeing Haiti. They help sustain grassroots women’s organizations, mobile health clinics and literacy programs in Haiti’s poorest communities. Your donations will help support the University of the Dr. Aristide Foundation (UNIFA), which has opened a new teaching hospital under the most challenging conditions. And your funds will aid the growth of independent community-based media, so critical in a society where the rich control almost all sources of information.
In English and Chinese 中英⽂詩會 (A Two Languages/One Community 兩種語⾔/⼀個社群 Project)
Wednesday, September 11, 6-7:30 PM, 447 Minna Street, San Francisco Free – Light Food and Drinks will be served
FEATURING
GENNY LIM, San Francisco’s Poet Laureate (2024- ) TONGO EISEN MARTIN, San Francisco Poet Laureate (2021-2024) CHUN YU, Poet/Editor/Translator, San Francisco Public Library Laureate (2023) MICHAEL WARR, Poet/Editor, San Francisco Public Library Laureate (2017 & 2023)
Each poet will share poems from the anthology manuscript “Together in Poetry,” a project of Two Languages/One Community (TLOC) which was co-founded by Michael Warr and Chun Yu who translated all the poems into Chinese. She will recite select poems by the featured poets in Chinese.
Mayor London Breed invites you to the announcement and celebration of San Francisco’s Ninth Poet Laureate GENNY LIM
Friday, September 6, 4PM; Asian Art Museum, Samsung Hall, San Francisco, CA
Web Gallery
Mayor London Breed and Genny Lim, 9th Poet Laureate of San Francisco
We celebrate a new chapter in our city’s literary legacy by appointing native San Franciscan Genny Lim as our 9th Poet Laureate. Genny is an extraordinary writer, performer, and cultural advocate, and she will be the first Chinese American to hold this esteemed role.
S.F.’s first Chinese American poet laureate is ‘positive’ she won’t be the last – Genny Lim, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, said she wants to make San Francisco the “mecca” of world poetry.
San Francisco Chronicle, August 31, 2024
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle
Following an acclaimed career, Genny Lim, 77, will become San Francisco’s first Chinese American poet laureate during a Sept. 6 ceremony at the Asian Art Museum.
Festeggiamo con gioia l’imminente conferimento del titolo di “poeta laureato” della città di San Francisco alla nostra straordinaria amica Genny Lim. Poetessa cino-inuit-statunitense, figlia di immigrati cinesi che hanno vissuto esclusioni, razzismo e deportazioni, è una delle più belle voci della poesia statunitense e della jazz-poetry. Buddista e profondamente impegnata per i diritti delle donne e delle minoranze, studiosa di tradizioni e mistica orientale, rappresenta un’avvincente incrocio tra culture orientali ed occidentali fuse nella sua storia personale e nella sua poesia…
We celebrate with joy the imminent award of the title of “poeta laureate” of the city of San Francisco to our extraordinary friend Genny Lim. Chinese-Inuit-US poet, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who have experienced exclusions, racism and deportations, is one of the most beautiful voices of American poetry and jazz-poetry. Buddhist and deeply committed to the rights of women and minorities, a scholar of Eastern traditions and mysticism, it represents a compelling cross between Eastern and Western cultures merged in its personal history and poetry…
San Francisco’s newest Poet Laureate Genny Lim stands for a portrait at her daughter’s home in Orinda, California Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. Lim is the first Chinese American to hold the position. Photo by Jessica Christian.
Following an acclaimed career, Genny Lim, 77, will become San Francisco’s first Chinese American poet laureate during a ceremony Friday at the Asian Art Museum.
The 27th Annual Petaluma Poetry Walk – Sunday, September 15, 2024, 11am – 8pm
The Petaluma Poetry Walk is an annual poetry festival founded in September 1996 by the late poet Geri Digiorno. It features over two dozen poets reading their works at eight venues. The event has grown over the years, attracting notable poets and a diverse audience and includes readings in both English and Spanish.
During this day-long “movable feast,” participants walk to different locations to enjoy a variety of poetic performances. It has become a tradition in Petaluma, reflecting the city’s rich cultural and literary heritage.
Photo: Curtis MesserPhoto: Leon Sun
3pm THE POETS LAUREATE
LEE HERRICK, California Poet Laureate & GENNY LIM, Former San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate
Lee Herrick was born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant. He lives with his family in Fresno, California and served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. He teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role. leeherrick.com
Genny Lim is the recipient of PEN Oakland Reginald Lockett and Berkeley Poetry Lifetime Achievement Awards. A former SFJazz Poet Laureate, her play, Paper Angels, has been produced internationally. She is co-author of Island: Poetry and History of ChineseImmigrants on Angel Island, winner of the American Book Award and several poetry collections, including Child of War, Paper Gods & Rebels and KRA!
Iris Jamahl Dunkle‘s poetry and nonfiction critically engage with the Western myth of progress by exploring the profound impact of agriculture and overpopulation on the North American West, both historically and in contemporary times. Embracing an ecofeminist perspective, her writing challenges the predominantly male-centric narrative of the American West’s recorded history, delving into the often-overlooked lives of women. irisjamahldunkle.com
Petaluma Poetry Walk 2024
The Petaluma Poetry Walk has hosted many notable poets during the years, including Diane DiPrima—a female voice in the Beat poetry movement, Poets Laureate from California, Sonoma County and beyond, award-winning poets of all ages, and emerging poets.
Join Genny Lim, playwright of award winning drama; co-author of Island: Poetry & History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, for a rare archival screening of the 1985 American Playhouse television adaptation of her 1980 play, Paper Angels.
Saturday, Jun 29, 2024, 4:00PM – 6:00PM; Clarion Performing Arts Center, 2 Waverly Place, San Francisco, CA 94108, USA
Web Gallery
Paper Angels: Post-screening Q+A with Genny Lim at Clarion
Web Gallery
Paper Angels (1985) Publicity Still
Directed by John Lone, featuring an all-star cast, with searing performances by Victor Wong, Beulah Quo, James Hong, Joan Chen and Rosalind Chao and others.
“We were invisible on television, in films, and the mass media. Nobody looked like us.”
Paper Angels premiered on September 12, 1980 at the Asian American Theater Company. In 1982, the New Federal Theatre in New York produced the play. That same year, Lim founded her own production company, Paper Angels Productions, and brought the play to the Chinese Cultural Center in San Francisco. A television adaptation of Paper Angels was later filmed and appeared on PBS’s AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE in July of 1985.
The play has been awarded the SF Fringe Festival Award, the Viillager Award from Village Voice, NY, and the James Wong Howe Award from AAPAA, Los Angeles.
The third edition of the Festival, “The Many Languages of Poetry,” takes place on June 14 and 15, 2024 at the Roman Villa and Antiquarium in Desenzano del Garda and the Grottoes of Catullus in Sirmione, in Italy.
The voices of some of the leading contemporary poets, including Genny Lim, will resonate in the museums of the Lombardy Regional Museums Directorate, thanks to the collaboration with the Casa della Poesia in Baronissi (SA).
Launched in 2019, with the first edition of the festival, The Many Languages of Poetry, which saw protagonists of the international literary scene converge at the Villa Romana in Desenzano del Garda. The collaboration between the Lombardy Regional Museums Directorate and the House of Poetry expands for 2024 to include new museums and new appointments. In addition to the Roman Villa in Desenzano del Garda, the historic venue of the Festival, and the Grottoes of Catullus in Sirmione, other museums of the Regional Directorate will also be involved: Palazzo Besta in Teglio, an evocative Renaissance residence in Valtellina, and in Capo di Ponte the MUPRE – National Museum of Prehistory of the Camonica Valley, which tells, through stelae and finds, the daily life of the ancient Camunni.
The first appointment is on the weekend of May 18th and 19th, for the European Night of Museums, with the reading of the great Spanish poet Juan Carlos Mestre accompanied by accordionist Cuco Pérez “The stars to those who workthem” at the Roman Villa and Antiquarium of Desenzano del Garda and at the MUPRE, National Museum of Prehistory in Capo di Ponte.
Juan Carlos Mestre (Villafranca del Bierzo, 1957), poet and visual artist, is a fundamental voice in the contemporary Spanish poetic scene. A visionary storyteller, he creates images in which reality and invention intertwine in enchanted atmospheres. A voice of unusual depth, guided by the ethical necessity of the last beacon of utopia: poetry.
Cuco Pérez (Segovia, 1959) is a Spanish accordionist, composer and composer known for his collaboration with numerous groups and artists in the Spanish music scene. Cuco Pérez was one of the first to introduce the accordion to flamenco. In the field of composition, he has made numerous works for documentaries and plays.
The program continues on June 14 and 15, 2024 at the Roman Villa and Antiquarium in Desenzano del Garda, for the third edition of the Festival “The Many Languages of Poetry”. Many international guests, many surprises, lots of poetry. Within the Festival there will also be space for a “Poetic Stage”, Saturday morning, June 15, in Sirmione, at the Grottoes of Catullus: the poets invited to the event will visit the archaeological area of Sirmione and will hold, at 12.30 pm, a poetic improvisation in the “Campo delle Noci”.
The program is very full: Francis Combes (France), Roberto Deidier (Italy), Tarek Eltayeb (Sudan/Austria), Sinan Gudžević (Serbia), Barbara Korun (Slovenia), Genny Lim (United States), Ada Salas (Spain). The following will be remembered on video: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Martin Matz, Jack Hirschman and Alfonso Gatto, Leonard Cohen, Mario Benedetti and Daniel Viglietti, Francisca Aguirre, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Smith.
During the event, a remembrance of Domenico Carrara, a young poet who died prematurely (Atripalda 1987 – Val Camonica 2021).
Poets from the Balkans, North Africa, France, the Americas, Spain and the Near East will land in the wonderful scenery of Lake Garda and the Roman Villa of Desenzano, where history and myth intertwine in traces of a millenary culture and here they will read their verses in the original language.
Other events, still to be defined, will follow in the summer months both in Desenzano and Sirmione and at MUPRE and Palazzo Besta.
The intent, the deep meaning that lies at the base of the whole project, is to contribute to building a culture of encounter, relationships, exchange, acceptance. To ensure that diversity can be experienced as the lifeblood for confrontation, which is the basis of the process of peace and cooperation between peoples. The events will therefore be the place of encounter between different people, but also between a real place and a utopia, so that poetry, like a magnificent rainy day, can contribute to reducing the distance between heaven and earth. But it is above all the journey of imagination and desire, the landing not as an end but as the beginning of a new journey, which modern sailors make perhaps no longer on the water, but in the ether, to continue to meet again.
But the collaboration between the Lombardy Regional Directorate of Museums and the House of Poetry does not end here: for some months now, in fact, the Poetry & Archaeology project has also been launched. Poets from various parts of the world have been invited to write a poetic text relating to places, works, views, suggestions of the archaeological areas of Sirmione and Desenzano. To complete the project, the poems will be made available to the public of the Roman Villa and the Grottoes of Catullus with panels placed in the places of inspiration, thanks to which – via QR code – it will be possible to read the poem, the translation and also listen to the voice of the poet who reads it.
Participation in the meetings and readings is included in the entrance ticket, where applicable.
Poets will read in the original language, translations will be available.
May 18th, 2024 at 9.00 pm Juan Carlos Mestre with accordionist Cuco Pérez “Le stelle a chi le lavora“ Roman Villa and Antiquarium in Desenzano del Garda.
May 19th, 2024 at 8.30pm Juan Carlos Mestre with accordionist Cuco Pérez “The stars to those who work them“ MUPRE, National Museum of Prehistory in Capo di Ponte: Booking recommended at the link: https://bit.ly/4a4BftC
14 and 15 June at 9.00 p.m. Villa Romana in Desenzano del Garda International meetings:
Francis Combes (France)
Roberto Deidier (Italy)
Tarek Eltayeb (Egitto-Sudan-Austria)
Sinan Gudžević (Serbia)
Barbara Korun (Slovenia)
Genny Lim (United States)
Ada Salas (Spain)
Biographies of the Poets
Juan Carlos Mestre, poet and visual artist, born in 1957 in Villafranca del Bierzo (Spain) is a fundamental voice of the contemporary Spanish poetic scene. He is the author of Siete poemas escritos junto a la lluvia (1982); La visita de Safo (1983); Antífona del otoño en el Valle del Bierzo (Premio Adonáis, 1985; re-released in 2003 with a CD with Amancio Prada and other musician friends); Las páginas del fuego (1987); La poesía ha caído en desgracia (Jaime Gil de Biedma Prize, 1992); La tumba de Keats (Premio Jaén de Poesía, 1999, written during his stay in Rome); El Universo está en la noche (2006, a singular work in which he recreates Mesoamerican myths and legends); La casa roja (2008, Premio Nacional de Poesía 2009);
La visita de Safo y otros poemas para despedir a Lennon (2011); La bicicleta del panadero (2012, Premio de la Crítica de poesía castellana), Museo de la clase obrera (2018). As a visual artist he has exhibited in many European countries, the United States and Latin America. With Multimedia Edizioni he published the extensive anthology Le stelle a chi le lavora (2012) and Museo della classe operaia (2022).
Francis Combes was born in 1953 in Marvejols, France. After his childhood, he moved with his family to Aubervilliers, in the Parisian suburbs, where he currently lives with his wife, journalist Patricia Latour. He has a degree in Political Science and studied Oriental languages. In 1993, with a collective of writers, he founded the Editions Le Temps des Cerises. He has published about thirty collections of poetry, as well as several anthologies and books of prose. It is translated into several languages and has translated into French Mayakovsky, Heine, Brecht, Attila Joszef, as well as American poets such as Eliot Katz and Jack Hirschman. Together with the poet Gérard Cartier, he promoted the project “poetic billboards” in the Paris metro, launched in 1993, which is still in progress. He has worked with several musicians and has written songs, opera librettos and plays. Engaged in social and political life, he is also a journalist, critic and essayist.
He published in Italy in 2023 Propaganda per la primavera (Multimedia Editions) in the translation by Rossella Nicolò and Giancarlo Cavallo.
Roberto Deidier was born in Rome on 31 August 1965. After high school, he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters at La Sapienza University, where he graduated in 1991. In 1997 he obtained a PhD in Italian Studies at the same university. After a brief collaboration with the universities of Roma Tre, Cassino and the Italian Encyclopedia, in 1999 Deidier moved permanently to the University of Palermo.
Between the end of the Eighties and the beginning of the Nineties, Deidier frequented literary circles between Rome and Milan, becoming friends with some writers and poets, such as Dario Bellezza, Biancamaria Frabotta, Valerio Magrelli, Renzo Paris, Valentino Zeichen, Maurizio Cucchi, Antonio Riccardi, Milo De Angelis and Giovanna Sicari. In 1994 he was invited by Giorgio Manacorda to collaborate on the project of the poetry yearbook, sponsored by the publisher Castelvecchi.
Il passo del giorno, his first book, appeared in 1995 and won the Mondello Prize for his first work. With his friend, publisher and printer Gaetano Bevilacqua, he published his second collection of poems, Libro naturale, enriched by an engraving by Giulia Napoleone, with which he made other plaquettes and art editions. From 2002 to 2017 he moved to Palermo, alternating frequent stays in Rome, where he returned to live the following year. In 2002 he brought together his first two works in the volume Una stagione continua, for the peQuod editions of Ancona and in the autumn of the same year the new book, Il primo orizzonte, was published by the San Marco dei Giustiniani editions of Genoa, with an engraving by Piero Guccione.
In the 2000s Deidier continued to publish poems in magazines, anthologies, periodicals, but only in 2011 did he publish with Empirìa, a singular notebook of translations, Cages for Clouds, without the original texts on the front: a sentimental journey through the poems that were important in his training. In 2014, the long editorial silence was interrupted by Solstizio, which appeared in the series “Lo Specchio” by Mondadori. In 2017 he published an art edition for Il burino by Sergio Pandolfini, Dietro la sera, with watercolors by Giancarlo Limoni. In 2021 the new book for Mondadori, All’altro capo, appears.
He has edited works and correspondence of twentieth-century authors such as Eugenio Montale, Sandro Penna, Umberto Saba, Giorgio Manganelli, Giovanna Sicari, Dario Bellezza.
Tarek Eltayeb was born in Cairo in 1959 to Sudanese parents. He studied Business Administration at Ain Shams University in Cairo. He has lived in Vienna since 1984 where he attended the University of Economics and Business Administration. His dissertation, written at the Institute for Economic Philosophy, was entitled “The Shift of Ethics Through Technology in the Struggle Between Identity and Profit.” He is currently a professor at the International Management Center / University of Applied Sciences, in Krems, Austria, as well as at the University of Graz. In addition to seven books published in Arabic, it has also been translated into German, English, Italian, Macedonian, Bosnian, French and Ukrainian. He has been awarded numerous scholarships, such as the Elias Canetti Scholarship of the City of Vienna in 2005, and the International Grand Prize for Poetry in 2007 at the Curtea Des Arge International Festival in Romania. In Italy, his novel “A city without palm trees” was published in 2009 by Poiesis (Alberobello) and in 2024 “Parole di piombo”, curated by the International Poetry Festival, “Parole spalancate” in Genoa.
Sinan Gudžević was born in Serbia in Grab in 1953, in Sandžak, from a Muslim family, lives in Zagreb, married to a Catholic, fully representing the cultural mix that was Yugoslavia’s great wealth. He studied classical and ancient metrical philology at the University of Belgrade and Düsseldorf (Germany). His collection Roman Epigrams, which includes more than 100 texts, all written in elegiac couplets, the result of his stays in Rome, was published in translation in 2006 by Multimedia Edizioni. “My epigrams do not bring and offer nothing new. Everything that is in them has always been in the epigrams: some tomb inscription, some Coptic composition, some witty and melancholic couplet, self-deprecating or pungent. For me, writing verses is a strictly intimate activity, more of a time-waster looking for truth. Truth is a privilege of philosophers, poetry deals with the fog and sadness in which truth and man are shrouded respectively.” (Sinan Gudžević interviewed by Manuela Palchetti). He translates classical Greek and Latin poetry into Serbo-Croatian (Anthologia Palatina, Theognides, Callimachus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ovid, Martial, Propertius), Latin poetry and prose of the Renaissance (Petrarch, Vives, Janus Pannonio, Pico della Mirandola, etc.) and Germanic epigrammatists (Opitz, Logau, Czepko, Goethe, Schiller, and others). He translated from Portuguese a collection of epigrams by Fernando Pessoa. He has written a series of texts on Serbo-Croatian language warfare. Together with Raffaella Marzano, he has translated into Italian Izet Sarajlić’s books Someone Played (Moravia Prize 2001), Libro degli addii and many poets from the former Yugoslavia for international meetings and festivals. A great poet and intellectual, a true “bridge” between Italy and the Balkans.
Barbara Korun was born in 1963 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she still lives. Graduated in Slavic Studies and Comparative Literature, teacher of literature in various gymnasiums in the Slovenian capital, she is an essayist, literary and theatrical critic, but above all a poet.
Sensuality, irony, passion, femininity, compassion, these are the elements of the poetry of Barbara Korun, one of the great talents of Slovenian and European poetry. She has published many books of poetry and is present in numerous national and international anthologies, translated into twenty-four languages. She is considered one of the most important poets of her generation. In 2013 she published her first Italian book, I want to talk about you night. Monologues, while Odore umano is from 2021, both translated by Jolka Milič and published by Multimedia Edizioni. In 2016 she received the Casa della poesia – Regina Coppola International Prize.
Genny (Genevieve) Lim was born in 1946 in San Francisco. Poet and playwright, she is one of the most beautiful voices in international poetry. A Chinese-Inuit-American, a great interpreter of jazz-poetry, she has collaborated with great jazz musicians (Max Roach, Billy Higgins, Herbie Lewis, in Italy also with Gaspare Di Lieto, Aldo Vigorito, Marco Collazzoni). She is extremely interested in the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures that merge in her personal history and in her poetry, and her attention to migrant cultures is very important. Poetry, singing, jazz music, strength, commitment, improvisation, pleasure in the encounter. She has recorded numerous CDs with her collaborators (Jon Jang, in Immigrant Suite and Francis Wong, in Devotee and Child of Peace). Her play Paper Angels, about the plight of Chinese immigrants detained on Angel Island, San Francisco Bay, has received widespread recognition and has been performed in China, Canada, and throughout the United States. In Italy she published the collection La morte del tempo, with translations by Raffaella Marzano, with Multimedia Edizioni in 2017.
Ada Salas (Cáceres, 1965) is certainly an important and recognized voice of Spanish poetry of the generation born in the sixties. She has published many collections Arte y memoria del inocente (1988), Variaciones en blanco (1994), La sed (1997), Lugar de la derrota (2003), Esto no es el silencio (2008), Limbo y otros poemas (2013), Descendimiento (2018) and Arqueologías (2022), in collaboration with the painter Jesús Placencia, Ashes to ashes (2011) and Diez mandamientos (2016) and in 2021, Criba, with the graphic work of Laura Lio. She has also published the books Alguien aquí (2005), El margen, el error, la tachadura (2011) and Poética y Poesía (2019). In 2016, an anthology of her entire oeuvre was published: Escribir y borrar. Her play Descendimiento was staged and premiered at the Teatro de La Abadía in 2021. She has received the Juan Manuel Rozas (1988), Hiperión (1994), Ricardo Molina (2008) and the Fernando Pérez Essay Prize (2010). In 2019 she received the “Medalla de Extremadura” for her career. Her works have been translated into Swedish, Italian, German, Bosnian. Winner of the “Regina Coppola” International Poetry Prize in 2024, she published the anthology Poesie in Italy in 2015 and in 2024 Archeologie, again with the translation by Raffaella Marzano.
FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAM: Saturday, May 25, 2024, 1 – 11pm. Hosted by Theater for the New City, 155 First Av, New York, NY 10003
LES Lower East Side Festival of the Arts is an annual celebration of the rich artistic culture and ethnic diversity of this area. For three days over Memorial Day Weekend, TNC produces a cabaret-style festival featuring over 100 performing groups from the Lower East Side. This year, the festival is mounted with the theme “Democracy: Use it or Lose it.”
The 2024 Film Program is a 12-hour long film festival of art-house, experimental and independent films, showcasing a diverse selection of films from comedy, documentaries, drama and sci-fi. Join any time between 1pm and 11pm for an unforgettable event filled with captivating storytelling and visual masterpieces.
1.51pm THE ONLY LANGUAGE SHE KNOWS (1992) – short film directed by Carla Blank, produced by Ishmael Reed – 21 min. Starring: Genny Lim, M.J. Lee and Al Young. Filmed by Allen Willis, with music composed by Francis Wong.
A traditional Chinese American mother and her avant-garde daughter have a kitchen fight.
Web Gallery
The first LES Festival of the Arts, presented June 14 to 16, 1996, was a three-day, indoor and outdoor multi-arts festival, organized by TNC and a coalition of civic, cultural and business leaders. The aim was to demonstrate the creative explosion of the Lower East Side and the area’s importance to culture and tourism for New York City. It employed two theater spaces at TNC plus the block of East Tenth Street between First and Second Avenues, featured over 100 attractions, drew favorable press and attracted crowds from all around the City. Its success prompted TNC to continue the festival annually on Memorial Day Weekend. For 28 years it has been presented free each year to an average attendance of 4,000. (In 2020 it was held online due to pandemic concerns).
Ishmael Reed is the winner of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (genius award), the renowned L.A. Times Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer and finalist for two National Book Awards and is Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley; and founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, which promotes multicultural American writing. He also founded PEN Oakland which issues the Josephine Miles Literary Awards. PEN Oakland has been called “The Blue Collar PEN” by The New York Times. Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty titles including the acclaimed novel “Mumbo Jumbo,” as well as essays, plays and poetry. Titles include: “The Freelance Pallbearers;” “The Terrible Threes;” “The Last Days Of Louisiana Red;” “Yellow Back Radio Broke Down;” “Reckless Eyeballing;” “Flight To Canada;” “Japanese By Spring,” and “Juice!.”
