Categories
Music Poetry

Genny Lim and Hafez Modirzadeh Perform

5 poems about Palestine with Genny Lim (poet) and Hafez Modirzadeh (saxophone).

These poems were written ten years before Oct. 7, 2023 when the Hamas attacks on Israel triggered a retaliatory siege and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

I wrote the poems at the peak of Palestinian resistance, when peaceful demonstrations were violently met with sniper fire, tear gas and arrests by the IDF. Palestinian children were shot and killed or arrested for throwing stones at IDF and, often, storm troopers barged into Palestinian homes in the middle of the night and dragged family members out to prison, where they were interrogated and often beaten and issued long sentences without legal counsel.

These poems attempt to bear witness to the suffering and pain of the Palestinian people under Occupation.

— GENNY LIM

01 – Fifth Sun.mp3
02 – The Rose.mp3
03 – Koan1.mp3
04 – Gaza.mp3
05 – The Valley1.mp3

Includes “Gaza” which was used on “In Your Ear”, Apex Express and Raza Chronicles on KPFA.

Produced by Freedom Archives, 2013.

Authors: Genny Lim, Hafez Modirzadeh • Year: 2013 • Call Number: CD 931 • Format: CD • Producers: Greg Landau, Claude Marks • Collection: Compact discs representing digitized copies of analog tapes

Categories
Mural Poetry Reading

Manifest Differently

“We the People solemnly swear to Manifest our Common Destiny as a diverse and multicultural global humanity with respect and recognition of the freedom, equality and sovereignty of all nations and peoples on our blessed planet earth, in opposition to the destructive and unsustainable path of war, extraction, over-consumption and imperialism, on which the colonial forefathers have set us on and which continues to harm all life forms on this planet, from the greatest to smallest each and every day.”

— GENNY LIM

✨Poetry Reading✨
W/ poets:
Genny Lim
Kim Shuck
MK Chavez
Tongo Eisen-Martin

Saturday, Sept. 30th, 4:30 pm, Book Castle, 443 Cortland Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110

✨Led by Clarion Alley Mural Project, Manifest Differently is a new project developed and directed by Kim Shuck and Megan Wilson.

✨Over the next year, 2023/24, we’ll be working together with 38 diverse, multigenerational visual/media artists and poets to interrogate the history of Manifest Destiny and its legacies of inherited and perpetuated violence, trauma, and addiction, and the outgrowth of resistance and resilience – giving fire to movements for social/ culture change.

✨The project is supported by independent curator Trisha Lagaso Goldberg, California historian Barbara Berglund Sokolov, humanities advisors Mary Jean Robertson, Kyoko Sato, Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, Anita Chang, and David A. M. Goldberg.

Categories
Performance Poetry

Genny Lim Live at Kahua ‘Elua Theatre

An Afternoon of Poetry & Conversation on Sunday, August 27, 2023 at 4pm

East Hawai’i Cultural Center, 141 Kalākaua St., Hilo, HI 96720

This event is free, but advance reservations are required.

Click HERE to reserve your spot!

For more information, visit the East Hawai’i Cultural Center website https://ehcc.org/

Categories
Poetry

Hechizos: Incantation of Art & Poetry

Sunday, March 26, 6 PM; Medicine for Nightmares, 3036 24th Street, San Francisco, CA

Leticia Hernández (Host), featuring poetry by: Naomi H. Quiñonez, M.K.Chavez, Genny Lim

Categories
Poetry Reading

Poetry in Chinatown

Feb 18, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM; Clarion Performing Arts Center, 2 Waverly Pl, San Francisco, CA 94108, USA

3rd Saturday Poetry in Chinatown is a monthly reading series. It is curated by poet Greg Pond. In this series, each reading will have two featured poets. There will be an open mic before and after each feature. In this inaugural reading we’re honored to present poet, playwright and performer Genny Lim, and San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin. Sign up to read at the open mic at 1 pm. We will accommodate as many participants as we can. 

Genny Lim is a recipient of the PEN Oakland Reginald Lockett and Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Awards. She was San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate (2016-2018). 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, including Max Roach, Jon Jang, Francis Wong, Marcus Shelby and Del Sol String Quartet.

Tongo Eisen-Martin is a San Francisco native. He graduated from Columbia University and taught at its Institute for Research in African-American Studies. He created the 2012 curriculum We Charge Genocide Again. Tongo has also taught at detention centers, including San Quentin and Rikers Island. He is the co-founder of Black Freighter Press.

Honors and awards

Eisen-Martin’s 2017 book Heaven Is All Goodbyes, published by City Lights, won a PEN Oakland Award, the 2018 American Book Award, 2018 California Book Award, and 2018 National California Booksellers Association Poetry Book of the Year. His 2020 title, Blood on the Fog, published by City Lights was named a Best Poetry Book of 2021 by Elisa Gabbert of the New York Times

Categories
Poetry Reading

Odd Mondays

Monday, December 5, 7pm to 8pm Bethany Methodist Church

Odd Mondays welcomes authors Peter Kupfer, Genny Lim, and Michael David Lukas on Monday, December 5 from 7pm to 8pm in-person at 1270 Sanchez Street (Bethany Methodist Church) in Noe Valley, San Francisco. Free admission. Masks required by the venue. One block west of the Clipper Street stop on the J MUNI.

Peter will read from his new historical memoir The Glassmaker’s Son, Genny from her poetry collection Child of War, and Michael from his novel The Last Watchman of Old Cairo.

Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event and in-store and online with Folio Books San Francisco, 3957 24th Street in Noe Valley.

About the Authors

Peter Kupfer is a San Francisco-based writer, editor, and photographer. His stories about business and technology, the arts and culture, and other subjects have appeared in major newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Observer, and Metropolis magazine. He was a copy editor at the San Francisco Chronicle for many years. The Glassmaker’s Son is his first book. 

Genny Lim is San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate emeritus. Lim’s award-winning play, Paper Angels, was the first Asian American play aired on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1985 and has been performed throughout the U.S., Canada and China. She is author of five poetry collections, Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and RebelsKRA!La Morte Del Tempo, and co-author, along with the late Him Mark Lai and Judy Yung, of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, which won the American Book Award in 1980. Her recent anthology of Senior Asian American memoirs, Window: Glimpses of Our Storied Past, includes the stories of former World War II Camp survivors. Lim has worked with past Jazz legends, such as Max Roach and long-time collaborators, Jon Jang, John Santos, Francis Wong and Anthony Brown. She is a member of The Last Hoisan Poets with Nellie Wong and Flo Oy Wong, who recently collaborated with Del Sol String Quartet in the United States of Asian America Festival.

Translated into more than a dozen languages, Michael David Lukas‘ first novel The Oracle of Stamboul was a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. His second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, won the Sami Rohr Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, the Prix Interallié for Foreign Fiction, and the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal. A recipient of scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Montalvo Arts Center, William J. Fulbright Foundation, and Elizabeth George Foundation. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland and teaches at San Francisco State University.

Categories
Music Poetry

Corazón del Barrio: Celebrating Our Indigenous Origins

Sunday, October 30, 2022, 5pm to 7pm at the new Baobab, 2243 Mission St., between 18th & 19th

Categories
Music Performance Poetry

27th Annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival

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.

Web Gallery
Barry Finnerty, Genny Lim and Akira Tana at the 2022 Watershed Poetry Festival
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.

https://poetryflash.org/programs/?p=watershed_2022_inperson

Categories
Music Performance Poetry

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

Critical Mass · Lewis Jordan and Music at Large · Bruce Ackley · Sandy Poindexter · Ollen Erich Hunt · Jimmy Biala · Genny Lim

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).

https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/lewis-jordan-music-at-large

Categories
Music Performance Poetry

Ode B’kongofon
Hafez Modirzadeh Ensemble

Thursday, May 12 – 7:30pm

Bird & Beckett Books & Records

653 Chenery Street, San Francisco, CA 94131

Genny Lim. Photo: Bob Hsiang, 2016.

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)

birdbeckett.com

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