I also understand now that when I write about adoption, I write about trauma. Yes, I write too of beauty. But this is about trauma.
...
Being in Korea felt like coming full circle. Some poems cannot contain emotions so expansive. What can? Perhaps close friends and family? So perhaps my experience is just another circle – how I notice here in the United States when there are Koreans around me or when my beautiful Korean adoptee friends and I gather for a Hite or noraebang or barbecue, how my laugh echoes my father’s, how my daughter giggles when I make a certain face, or how she pretended to grab the moon one day when she was three years old and then pretended to hand it to me, saying "Here Daddy, the moon is for you."
'There is a bit of sideboob shown here but not much and the intent of this video is for fun and to celebrate good writing and not to titillate. Also my face is bright red and splotchy because of the hot bath. And because at one point in the beginning I start blushing uncontrollably.'
Authors have a special kind of relationship with their readers. As creators, they have a tiny sort of godhood: a reader of stories usually never sees the writer’s face, or speaks with him or her, except maybe through letters. Likewise the author’s fate is led by a faceless mass of unknown number, sometimes buoying their spirits with letters and pictures. There is love between these two halves of the equation, a kind of devotion or loyalty that I feel doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the world.
"A career as a writer or a poet is certainly a viable option to those who can compete where few paying opportunities exist. Is there a future in poetry? The world would be a far, far lesser place without it."
The response has been wonderful! The enthusiasm with which pedestrians agree to read for me is astonishing. I would say that out of every ten people I ask to read a poem, nine say yes. When I started, I never expected a 90% response rate, which speaks of my own misperceptions about the way the Canadian public views poetry. People are willing and curious, they just might not be inspired to seek it out on their own – they need a push. Many of my readers want to discuss the poem or poet with me after they read, and almost all are fascinated by the project. Of course, certain contexts and/or groups of people are not as easy; the day I filmed the video for Haiku and High Finance week in the financial district, for example, I probably only had about a 40 percent success rate. Everyone was simply too busy. Nevertheless, getting hurried business types to read poetry during lunch hour was an immensely rewarding experience.
'The Great Sendai Earthquake of March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m., in northeastern Japan, started the same way. Seven days ago I sat at the living room table, working away at my blog design, atypically outside of my studio, lounging back against the sofa, sipping Prince of Wales tea from a mug.'
Collected Works Bookshop survives & thrives today as the expression of an idea articulated in the early 1980s, by a group of Melbourne writers, editors & small publishers, on behalf of & enrolling the support of the writing community, to establish a bookshop which would stock local Melbourne & Australian literature (especially poetry) in a context of world literature
Official Verse Culture
By time zone. If you know a poetry blog that isn't on this list (especially your own -- don't be shy), send one of us the link and the geography: we are people in places.
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