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Posted by HAKEN
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 7:15 PM
Listed are the Hawaii Book and Music Festival Word Bag winners.
First Place Winner
I will liftoff into the sunny literature
--Dionael Distajo
Second Place Winner
I peeked at the magazine my father carried as we sat down for dinner; it was open to a page of poetry.
--Nicole Hori
Third Place Winner
To all savvy people, if can-can…if no can still can!
--Joshua Dawson
Fourth Place Winner
You see vanity skydiving smooth off the tips of people’s tongues taking a plunge into conceitment.
--Serena Simmons
Honorable Mentions
Skip July I belong to August.
--Courtney Barry
I’m afraid the camera will capture my experience.
--Alice Kim
Celebrate the silence between the lines as you step through the Bamboo Ridge.
--Jana Chang
The world is my residence, but it escapes me.
--Peter Li
Your words are done, please stop talking!!
--Mei Ling Luke-Almony
Experiences are in your future.
--Jemma Stollberg
Sometimes, work is a novel.
--Louelle Saya
Life is like ice cream. Enjoy it before it melts away.
--Kalani Manzo
I saw her smile and it was enough solutions to live.
--Jenna Surwilo
Winners will be contacted by a member of the Bamboo Ridge Press staff.
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Posted by HAKEN
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 9:09 AM
Bamboo Ridge Press’ latest issue (#96) is a collection called No Choice but to Follow. The title is a canny play on the book’s concept: a series of linked poems done in a year’s span by seasoned writers Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, Ann Inoshita and Christy Passion. Each of the Japanese linked-verses (renshi) was originally posted online on a weekly basis in celebration of the publishing house’s 30th anniversary.
Labeled by month, the poems begin as an examination of the writing process but gradually move into the territories of domestic strife, romantic longing and other little moments of living local. All four are equally observant and moving, and they each have their moments in stanza to shine. Toyama: “For make my lips red like strawberry / For cool me off and calm down…” Kono: “Tucking the nitro tablet / under the log of your tongue, / I patted your hand / and released you / to your knot of pain.” Inoshita: “At two o’clock / the wind exhaled / as summer cooled / under the mango tree.” Passion: “green cypress reminding me of / Roman coliseums and grander things.” These are just small examples of the delicate moments between the individual lines.
It is to the writers’ credit that the work doesn’t feel or read like a student exercise but a true demonstration of the poetic form.
The book also comes with a CD of the poets reading all 48 of their poems. The entirety is a spellbinding, illuminating work that deserves to be a local classic.
Source: http://honoluluweekly.com/story-continued/2010/05/writing-as-one/
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Posted by HAKEN
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 9:05 AM
At 2008's Hawaii Book and Music Festival, four poets, brought together by an online project by Bamboo Ridge Press to celebrate its 30th anniversary, met to read their writing aloud for the first time.
This was uncharted waters for them. Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, Ann Inoshita and Christy Passion were only four months into a yearlong project based on the Japanese writing process of linked verse, known as renshi. The tricky part was that their ongoing collaboration, regularly posted on the press' website, needed to be done within a week of the updated posting. It was not the kind of deadline creative writers normally face.
Like the resulting collection's title states, the four had "No Choice but to Follow" one another on this dynamic "train" of poetry.
The book — the publication of which will be celebrated with special events starting Wednesday — was a decision by press founder-editors Eric Chock and Darrel Lum, made after that initial reading.
"There was electricity in the air," remembers Kono, who gathered with her fellow poets last Monday in the Na'ea Courtyard on the grounds of the Queen's Medical Center (Passion works there as an intensive care unit nurse). "It was such a powerful delivery of our voices. Before that we didn't even know each other that well in person."
"It was like we had rehearsed beforehand," said Toyama.
"It felt organic," added Inoshita.
Based on a suggestion by press staffer Wing Tek Lum (who himself participated in a renshi back in the early 1990s), Toyama, a poet/scholar/translator/fiction writer and an emerita professor of French at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, was chosen as the first participant.
"It was up to me to find the other three," she said. "I admit I turned the screws on Juliet to help, and Marie (Hara, a press executive officer) and Darrel knew of Ann's and Christy's work, so we finally we had a set.
"I went into this fearless," Toyama said. "I never doubted we could do this."
Even though the poets could write about anything they wanted — provided they used the previous poem's last line as its title and starting point — Toyama kicked things off with "What Does Bamboo Ridge," an obvious choice in her mind to commemorate the independent press' 30 years of existence.
From there, the 48 linked poems made for a clear and unified flow but still expressed the musings and thoughts of four unique voices.
"Each one of us are very different poets," Kono said. "Her's (Toyama) is strong and very to-the-point. Christy's strength is in narrative and imagery. And Ann's a little more serene, and her use of pidgin (in her 'Without Meaning to Be Cruel' poem) is wonderful."
"Taking part in the renshi took me out of my element," said Inoshita, a published writer and professor at Kapiolani Community College. "I felt I was being thrown into the unknown, addressing topics I usually don't write about, so there was a need to be more creative."
Although all concerned are pleased with the resulting book, Passion, an award winner as both a writer and a nurse, said that "if I know something of mine is being published, I would polish it and belabor any choice of words. So had I known beforehand our online poems were going to be published, I probably would've been more manic about the whole process."
"It was odd to see the final result," said Kono said, whose laudable work has been published by Bamboo Ridge over the years. "You realize that this is your writing, but you're more self-conscious of it because it's part of a group effort."
"I was trying to strike my own voice," said Passion. "I admit there were times that I tried to resist the flow of tone and subject the other three had established — like a shopping cart with that one uncooperative wheel. But since I'm more of a novice in comparison to the others, I felt I had to step up my writing and not to emulate, but to find my own voice in this project."
Source: http://www.starbulletin.com/features/20100425_Poets_unite_in_differences.html
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Posted by HAKEN
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 9:03 AM
The voices of four O'ahu poets who spent a year penning a chain of interlocking verses fill "No Choice but to Follow," a collection slated for release this month by Bamboo Press.
In the centuries-old Japanese "renshi" tradition of linked verse, Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, Ann Inoshita and Christy Passion took turns writing a poem by using the last line of the previous poet's poem as the basis for the title or first line for her new poem.
The collaborative poetry touches on subjects ranging from "growing up local" and death of loved ones to Native Hawaiian issues and friction-filled relationships.
The book's title comes from the last line of Passion's poem, "Into the Wild," which is about a Maori dancer's connection to hula: "My feet have always known, / they are closest to our ancestors. / My body has no choice but to follow."
Passion is a critical care nurse at The Queen's Medical Center whose poetry has won local and national awards.
Yamasaki Toyama, who served as lead poet and project coordinator for the group effort, is an emerita professor of French at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.
Kono, also an award-winning author, teaches at Leeward Community College.
Inoshita teaches at Kapi'olani Community College. Her short play, "Wea I Stay: A Play in Hawai'i," was included in "The Statehood Project."
"No Choice but to Follow" comes with a compact disc featuring the poets reading their work. Advance copies of the book will be sold at Wednesday's pre-launch party.
Source: Honolulu Advertiser
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Posted by NICOLE
Sunday, December 13, 2009 9:37 PM
New book offers rich stories of life
by Lee Cataluna, Advertiser Columnist
Friday, December 4, 2009
Late one night, Michelle Cruz Skinner wrote about a guy she didn't actually know but could imagine speaking his manifesto. His funny, pointed, self-involved rant came to her whole. The piece "Ten-Fold Path," where a young man talks about race, culture, desire and identity in such a pitch-perfect voice, is one of 16 stories in her new book, "In the Company of Strangers."
"So, you two wander around the booths, eventually buying a Coke each and stopping at a few booths selling "Born-Again Pinoy" and "100% Filipino" T-shirts, genuine-made-in-the-Philippines woven bracelets, and wood carvings of carabaos and gigantic fork and spoon sets. You vowed years ago that someday, when you had your own house, you would sure as hell not mount some gigantic fork and spoon set on the wall of your dining room. No carabaos either."
"One of my students asked if I listen to guys talk," Skinner said. "I said a lot of them talk loudly, oblivious to everyone around them, so I can't help but hear what they say."
Skinner, a teacher at Punahou, was born in Manila and raised primarily in Olongapo City in the Philippines. She has published two other books, "Balikbayan" and "Mango Seasons," which was nominated for the 1996 Philippine National Book Award. Her new book, published by Bamboo Ridge Press (which, to disclose, has published some of my work), contains both fiction and memoir, including a piece called "Paper," where Skinner describes the significance of books and documents in her childhood in the Philippines.
"When I write letters to friends in Olongapo, I never put my name in the place for return address on the envelope. In my files is a birth certificate for a hospital that no longer exists, my medical records from a base that's no longer a base, my parents' marriage certificate although the marriage ended long ago."
The stories are rich and disarming, as in a piece called "Parenting," which describes that middle-age tipping point when your children don't need you as much but your elderly parents need you more.
The book's cover depicts Filipino politicians and popular figures as caricatures on milk-can labels. Skinner met the artist, Dindo Llana, at a book reading last year.
"As soon as I saw the picture with the six cans clustered together, I knew it was what I wanted for the cover. All the faces just looked right for the book. The writing on the pieces also echoed a sense of humor and understanding that appealed to me and which I'd tried to capture in my writing," Skinner said.
A reading and reception for "In the Company of Strangers" will be held at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa Art Auditorium Tuesday at 7 p.m. The reading is free and open to the public.
Reach Lee Cataluna at lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.
Source: Honolulu Advertiser
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