Welcome to Historic Joy Kogawa House

Click here to view Dr. John Asfour's co-edited book of poems and prose from the Carnegie Centre. On page 32, you'll find a link to a YouTube video of Asfour reading at the June 2009 launch. On May 9, 2009, Dr. John Asfour enjoyed an intense and rewarding collaboration with the Thursdays writing classes at the Carnegie Community Centre in Vancouver. Led by Elee Kraljii Gardiner of Simon Fraser University’s Writers’ Studio, these writing classes turn a third-floor classroom in a building at Hastings and Main into a playground where writers from the Downtown Eastside give voice to issues that range from class struggle to child abuse to mental instability and addiction. Several authors commented that their time in the classroom with Dr. Asfour “unleashed a beast in me,” “jumpstarted my creativity,” “made something click after writing on my own for 20 years on the streets.” The Thursday writing classes have had close to 50 participants since they began in September 2008. They offer writing support via workshops, editing consults and discussion to writers of the Downtown Eastside. For information please contact the Carnegie Centre at 604-665-2220 or email Elee Kraljii Gardiner at thursdayseditor(a)telus.net.

Another Magical Evening for final event of Historic Joy Kogawa House's inaugural writer-in-residence program with John Asfour, Gary Geddes and Ann Erikson. Old friends and new friends, friends now forever at Historic Joy Kogawa House. Gary Geddes, John Asfour, "Joy Kogawa" life size photo, and Ann-Eriksson on the final event for John Asfour's inaugural writer-in-residence program. "John Asfour was the perfect choice to be the inaugural writer-in-residence for Kogawa House" said Richard Hopkins, board member of the Historic Joy Kogawa House Society. Asfour, a Montreal poet, blind since the age of 13 because of the injuries from the Lebanese civil war, hosted an over-flowing audience on May 30th for a final event reading with special guests Gary Geddes and Ann Eriksson. Shelagh Rogers was a surprise guest emcee for this event which took place on a beautiful late spring evening in the backyard of author Joy Kogawa's childhood home. "It was another magical evening" said Shelagh Rogers who had previously hosted the "Al Purdy Party" at Kogawa House on April 20th. Shelagh had initially planned to come to the event as a guest, partially because "Falsework" by Gary Geddes, was one of Shelagh's favorite books of 2008. She gladly accepted the invitation to host from John Asfour. Ann Eriksson read from her new novel "In the Hands of Anubis" beneath the cherry and apple trees in the back yard of Historic Joy Kogawa House. Gary read from his many works, and shared stories of travelling in the Middle East with John Asfour, describing the incident as "the lame leading the blind" because Gary had hurt his leg, and John would have his hand on Gary's arm, as they walked. Two old chums shared a smile and a glass of wine.

John Asfour strums his oud (arabic lute), while Neworld Theatre's Marcus Youssef and Adrienne Wong read his poems - photo Todd Wong

Tuesday night was wonderful.  Marcus and Adrienne dimmed the lights to create an intimate setting.  Kirsty set up the book table.  I put out copies of Ricepaper beside them...  I made the official VPL announcements because VPL Community Librarian Sophie Middleton called me at 4pm, asking  me, because she had an allergy issue.

Richard Hopkins corrected me on my announcement of the June 9th event for VPL when the George Woodcock Award will be presented to W.P. Kinsella (I had said Patrick Kinsella)... and I did say that last year the award went to Joy Kogawa.

I gave brief intros and welcomes to John, Adrienne and Marcus and Sahaib.  Acknowledging their upcoming events...  such as May 30th at Kogawa House, Mixie & the Halfbreeds, as well as to Ariadne Sawyer of World Poetry, with her Gala anniversary at the Roundhouse next Monday,

Joh Asfour makes a brief introduction and acknowledges Neworld Theatre, Historic Joy Kogawa House Society, Vancouver Public Library and Sahaib - photo Todd Wong

John gave a short introduction, and explained how the evening would work.  First the translations read in English by Marcus and Adrienne, then in Arabic by Sahaib.  Then followed by John's works.

We actually started at 7:40, and continued non-stop to 8:40.

It was a special magical evening.

The audience paid rapt attention.

The "performance" flowed.... without the usual interruptions, explanations, flippings of pages... etc that are at most poetry readings.

Sahaib reads the original poems in Arabic language, while translator John Asfour plays his oud - photo Todd Wong

The readings were all well done.  Marcus and Adrienne brought life and drama to the words, as did Sahaib.  I didn't understand Arabic words, but the rhythm, the rhyme, the meaning, and the presence were all projected strongly.  The audience listened.  The audience paid attention listening to words they didn't understand... listening to sounds they understood... like music.

John Asfour plays oud, while Marcus Youssef and Adrienne Wong read his poetry works - photo Todd Wong

The duo voices of Marcus and Adrienne were matched in perfect timing, with a warm chemistry.  Marcus' reading during "Beirut" emphasized the "drunkeness" of the character, while Adrienne grounded the poem with her narration.  "Gaza" was incredibly timely and insightful.  With recent happenings in Gaza, I wished that we could have sent it out to the media, or asked Adrienne how if felt having played "My Name is Rachel Corrie." 

John Asfour plays oud - photo Todd Wong

John's playing of the oud, was soft or loud, slow or fast... accompanying the poems like a musical soundtrack.  Afterwards, he told me he had played 12 songs, as well as improvisation.

Marcus Youssef lead Q&A with John Asfour - photo Todd Wong

After the reading... Marcus led a Q&A for the final 20 minutes.  But I had to interrupt him briefly just to remind the audience of the May 30th Kogawa House event, and the Mixies event... and to share that Marcus had just been nominated that day for a Jessies Awards... for artistic achievement.  Lots of audience applause.

This successful event reminder me of when we paired actors up to read poetry" similar to our April 25th 2006 "Joy of Canadian Words" event that had featured:

• Joy Coghill reading "Klee Wyck", 
• Bill Dow, Maiko Bae Yamamoto, Manami Hara and Hiro Kanagawa reading Dorothy Livesay's "Call My People Home"
  
• Sheryl Mackay reading "Ann of Green Gables",
• Doris Chilcott reading Alden Nowlan,
• Chief Rhonda Larrabee reading Thomas King's "Coyote and the Enemy Aliens"
• jazz singer Leora Cashe singing Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love."

Wow... definitely a wonderful collaboration of Neworld Theatre and Historic Joy Kogawa House Society...

Kirsty, Marcus, John and Adrienne - photo Todd Wong

Afterwards we went for snacks at Subeez restaurant down the street, where we all joked and told stories, and complimented each other, and deepened our friendships.

It was one of the best poetry performances I have witnessed in years.

Next reading at Kogawa House with Gary Geddes and Ann Eriksson:
By reservation and donation only.

Telephone:  604-263-6586
Email:   kogawahouse@yahoo.ca



 

More Upcoming Events for Kogawa House and with John Asfour

There will be two more events in May with John Asfour at Kogawa House. John has invited authors Gary Geddes and Ann Erikson for an intimate reading at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 30. To reserve a seat, please email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.

Arabic Poetry in Translation
Featuring the work of John Asfour (Montreal), Syrian poet Muhammad al-Maghut and Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s national poet. John Asfour will also play the oud! Neworlders Marcus Youssef and Adrienne Wong will read, with guests.

Tuesday, May 19, 7:30 p.m.

Alma VanDusen and Peter Kaye rooms, Lower Level

Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street

Admission is free. Seating is limited.

For more information about this event, contact Historic Joy Kogawa House at kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

 

Shelagh Rogers (host of "The Next Chapter" on CBC Radio), Jean Baird (organizer of "Save Al Purdy A-Frame"), George Bowering (Jean's husband and first poet laureate of Canada), John Asfour (inaugural writer-in-residence at Kogawa House), George Stanley (BC Book Prize nominatee for poetry) + "Joy Kogawa" - photo Todd Wong

7:30 p.m., Monday, April 20Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver

John Asfour is indeed the perfect choice for our inaugural WIR.  On Monday night, I shared with the group that the connections we have between Roy and Art Miki, George Bowering, Purdy House, are amazing.  How is it that John could have been friends with Art Miki on panel forums, and that Roy was a consultant for Kogawa House... and great friends and an editor with/for George Bowering, and we bring it all together with Daphne Marlatt, who has read for Kogawa House events before, and Shelagh Rogers (2005 former co-host for Gung Haggis Fat Choy Dinner) for an evening of poetry and friendship, and to help save another literary landmark.

Nilofar, Daphne, George and John - photo Todd Wong

The evening started with three BC Book Prize-nominated poets—George Stanley, Nilofar Shidmehr and Daphne Marlatt as part of BC Book and Magazine Week.  Daphne read first, then George, followed by Nilofar.

Jean Baird talks with Shelagh Rogers. - photo Todd Wong

After a brief intermission that allowed people to purchase books and have them signed by the guest poets, the talk turned to Save the Al Purdy A-Frame.  Shelagh Rogers shared her story of doing the last public interview with Al Purdy at the Eden Mills Writers Festival.  Jean Baird is heading up the Save the Purdy A-Frame campaign, and she and her husband George Bowering shared their many stories about Al Purdy and his wife Eurithe.

Asfour, a Montreal poet, is the first writer-in-residence at Kogawa House and will present poetry readings to a variety of audiences, in collaboration with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio, Christianne’s Lyceum of Literature and Art and the Vancouver Public Library.

See more pictures on Flickr:

Kogawa House Purdy Party

Award-winning novelist Katherine Govier will wait until her new novel is publishined in the spring of 2010 by HarperCollins before joining us at Kogawa house to discuss the life of Katsushika Hokusai, the Ukiyo-e artist who created The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, and his daughter Oi.

One of the most widely recognized woodblock prints of the 19th-century, The Great Wave established Hokusai’s reputation around the world. But who was Hokusai? Very little documentation remains about the life of this eccentric artist—who lived 90 years, double the life expectancy at the time—and in 93 “temporary lodgings” with his devoted daughter.

Is it possible that he created the roughly 10,000 very disparate works of art that are credited to him? Oi was a great painter in her own right but seldom signed her work. She was at his side from his mid-sixties (her mid-twenties) until his death.  Was she the “Ghost Painter”?

Govier explores this question in her ninth novel, to be published next spring by HarperCollins. Govier demonstrates Oi’s contributions to her father’s art through slides and discussion.

Please watch this website next spring for details of this postponed event.

When: 5 p.m., Friday, April 17Where: 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver

Admission by donation. Space is limited. To reserve a seat, please RSVP kogawahouse@yahoo.ca

Writer-in-residence John Asfour welcomes Judy Rebick to Historic Joy Kogawa House on Friday, April 17. Rebick is a veteran activist, former host of CBC Newsworld, chair of Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University and former publisher of www.rabble.ca. Come join us on Friday, April 17, as Judy Rebick speaks about her new book Transforming Power.

One reader commented that Transforming Power "[is] a powerful, inspiring treatise on a paradigm shift in social action that is taking place from around the world. It offers new pathways to change making that are critically needed in this time of crisis, and is an exciting window into stories of hope and possibility around the world." To attend this event, please RSVP kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.

 

Shelagh Rogers, host of "The Next Chapter" on CBC Radio, to emcee

When: 7:30 p.m., Monday, April 20

Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver

Admission by donation. Space is limited. To secure a seat, please RSVP kogawahouse@yahoo.ca  

Three BC Book Prize-nominated poets—George Stanley, Nilofar Shidmehr and Daphne Marlatt—have accepted an invitation from writer-in-residence John Asfour to read at Historic Joy Kogawa House on Monday, April 20, as part of BC Book and Magazine Week. 

Asfour, a Montreal poet, is the first writer-in-residence at Kogawa House and will present poetry readings to a variety of audiences, in collaboration with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio, Christianne’s Lyceum of Literature and Art and the Vancouver Public Library. 

Asfour is the author of four books of poetry in English and two in Arabic. He translated the poetry of Muhammad al-Maghut into English under the title Joy Is Not My Profession (Véhicule Press), and he selected, edited and introduced the landmark anthology When the Words Burn: An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, 1945–1987 (Cormorant Books). 

CBC Radio host Shelagh Rogers will emcee the event, which is a co-presentation of Historic Joy Kogawa House and the West Coast Book Prize Society. George Stanley (Vancouver: A Poem), Nilofar Shidmehr (Shirin and Salt Man) and Daphne Marlatt (The Given) are finalists for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. 

The event takes place the evening before National Al Purdy Day, and the League of Canadian Poets has invited all Canadian poets and lovers of Canadian poetry to host a Purdy party to raise funds for the Al Purdy A-Frame Project—Purdy’s former home on Roblin Lake, Ontario—and to create a poet-in-residence program there that is similar to the writer-in-residence program now under way in the childhood home of the author Joy Kogawa. 

This poetry reading will be held at 7:30 pm at Historic Joy Kogawa House, located at 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver. Entrance by donation. Space is limited. To secure a seat, please RSVP kogawahouse@yahoo.ca 

Writer-in-residence John Asfour welcomes novelist, playwright, and essayist Ann Diamond to read excerpts from My Cold War, stories from 1950s Montreal

 

Monday, April 6, at 7:30pm, by donation

 

Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver

 

Ann Diamond's best-known work is a long poem, A Nun's Diary (1989), which was adapted for theatre by Robert Lepage and became the subject of a National Film Board documentary, "Breaking a Leg" directed by Donald Winkler. Her first novel, Mona's Dance, was chosen by CBC as the best small press novel of 1988. In 1994, a story collection, Evil Eye, won the Hugh MacLennan Award for fiction. As an experiment, she self-published her novel Static Control after it had been accepted by DC Books and Les Editeurs XYZ.

 

Since 2002 when Diamond began work on her memoir, My Cold War, she has reincarnated as a researcher and haunter of libraries, fine-tooth-comber of documents and files, and explorer of a forbidden chapter in recent Canadian history. This ongoing project has been, in many ways, about reclaiming her own history as the daughter of a Canadian Air Force intelligence officer, who came to Quebec from Sea Island, BC, in 1943 to "hunt for Nazi spies." Learning of her father's secret activities led her inevitably into a wide-ranging study of the history of that period, some of which remains classified to this day.

 

It has also changed Diamond's relationship to the community she came from--Anglo Montreal. It was a mixed blessing to live in a city with a rich cultural tradition and a multi-layered history. By the mid-1980s, when I began publishing fiction and poetry, Montreal had wandered off the literary map of Canada. Diamond waged a personal campaign to change that, writing for the Gazette, Books in Canada, Canadian Forum, CBC, Montreal Mirror, Room of One's Own, Geist, and so on.

 

Today Diamond continues to study the history of Cold War experiments on children, a secret program that spanned the country. Her birthplace, Montreal, was the epicentre of a project that has altered our future in countless ways which need to be faced. After five years of research and writing, Diamond is pleased to shared those stories with a Vancouver audience at Kogawa house.

 

Join us on Monday, April 6, at 7:30pm at Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue in Vancouver. Admission by donation.

Historic Joy Kogawa House chooses first writer-in-residence 

Historic Joy Kogawa House is pleased to announce our first writer-in-residence, Montreal poet John Asfour. 

Upon arriving in Vancouver, Asfour said: “I am pleased to be chosen as the first writer-in-residence at Kogawa house. I’m here to learn how a community like the Japanese Canadian would turn a part of their historical suffering into something positive by establishing a place where writers can live and work. Japanese Canadians were very supportive of the community of Arab Canadians and what it had to endure after September 11.” 

Asfour is the author of four books of poetry in English and two in Arabic. He translated the poetry of Muhammad al-Maghut into English under the title Joy Is Not My Profession (Véhicule Press), and he selected, edited and introduced the landmark anthology When the Words Burn: An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, 1945–1987 (Cormorant Books). 

The majority of the writer’s time in residence will be devoted to work on a book of poems entitled Blindfold, which exposes the “rich and strange” possibilities of a life that has undergone some frightening transformation and is displaced from its element. The book is partly autobiographical—born in Lebanon, Asfour was blinded in 1958 at age 13 during the Civil War there.

The poems also explore feelings of loss, displacement and disorientation experienced by the disabled and relates them to immigrant themes that Asfour has previously addressed. Asfour suggests that the disabled often feel like foreigners in their own land, hampered by prejudice (sometimes well-meaning), communications barriers and the sense of “limited personality” that characterizes the second-language learner.   

While in Vancouver between now until the end of May, Asfour will present poetry workshops to a variety of audiences, in collaboration with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio and the Vancouver Public Library. Opportunities for consultation on work in development are also available. 

Further information can be found on the website of the Historic Joy Kogawa House Society at www.kogawahouse.com and TLC, The Land Conservancy of BC, at www.conservancy.bc.ca or by calling (604) 263-6586.  

Contacts: Kogawa House Society: Ann-Marie Metten (604) 263-6586 

TLC, The Land Conservancy of BC: Tamsin Baker (604) 733-2313  

Information on Historic Joy Kogawa House Historic Joy Kogawa House is the former home of the Canadian author Joy Kogawa (born 1935). It stands as a cultural and historical reminder of the expropriation of property that all Canadians of Japanese descent experienced after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Between 2003 and 2006, a grassroots committee fundraised in a well-publicized national campaign, and with the help of The Land Conservancy of BC, a non-profit land trust, managed to purchase the house in 2006.  

Together with Joy Kogawa, the various groups decided that the wisest and best use of the property would be to establish it as a place where writers could live and work. Following the models of the writer-in-residence programs in place at the Berton House Writers’ Retreat in Dawson City, Yukon, and Roderick Haig-Brown House in Campbell River, BC, the Historic Joy Kogawa House writer-in-residence program brings well-regarded professional writers in touch with a local community of writers, readers, editors, publishers, booksellers and librarians.

While in residence, the writer works to enrich the literary community around him or her and to foster an appreciation for Canadian writing through programs that involve students, other established and emerging writers and members of the general public.

Beginning in March 2009, as a partner with TLC, the Historic Joy Kogawa Society will begin hosting writers to live and work in the house on a paid basis. Funding is provided through the Michael Audain Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council and through donations from the general public.