This spring, Historic Joy Kogawa House will host a number of exciting events. Thanks for sharing this information with your friends, and for joining us on any or all of these occasions:
Mother’s Day Tea “On Mums and Our Other Mothers”
When: 2 to 4pm, Saturday, May 7
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver
Suggested Donation: $10 (includes tea and goodies)
Mother’s Day is a great time to celebrate your Mum. It’s also a great time to look back and think about all the women who have touched your life, almost like “other mothers.” Readings by Mette Bach, Shana Myara, Maddy Van Beek, Lorrie Miller, Cathleen With, and Fiona Tinwei Lam celebrate women supporting women. To reserve a space for you and your mum or other mother, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.
Jumpstart Your Engines Poetry Workshop with Jericho Brown
When: 11am to 1pm, Sunday, May 15
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver
Cost: $35
In the Jumpstart Your Engines Poetry Workshop, Jericho Brown helps students generate new work through a set of unconventional exercises that keep our ears open and our fingers moving. The workshop engenders new ideas about writing, and as there is a profound relationship between reading poetry and writing it, we participants read, discuss, and even recite the work of several poets whose examples might lead us to a further honing of our craft.
Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown is an Assistant Professor at the University of San Diego. His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies, including 100 Best African American Poems. His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the American Book Award.
Jericho Brown will read from his work at the Cross-Border Pollination Reading Series on Saturday, May 14. Find out more at rachelrose.com.
To register for this workshop, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.
Haiku Myths and Realities Workshop with Michael Dylan Welch
When: 1:30 to 5:30pm, Sunday, May 15
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver
Cost: $45 or $20 for Vancouver Haiku Group members
haiku are easy
but sometimes they don’t make sense
refrigerator
Is this a haiku? Actually, no—not by a long shot. Yet many people think it is. Join Haiku Society of America Vice-President Michael Dylan Welch for an in-depth exploration of the myths and realities of haiku as a literary art, including key techniques such as kigo and kireji (season word and cutting word), objective sensory imagery, and more.
You’ll learn a brief history of Japanese and English-language haiku, hear classic poems by Japanese masters, participate in writing exercises and critique, and receive copious handouts. Come learn the one thing the preceding poem gets right—and no, the 5-7-5 form isn’t one of them!
This hands-on workshop also explores how haiku techniques can help you improve your longer poetry or fiction. We’ll begin by discussing sample poems in English and build a list of characteristics we observe—these are the possible “targets” that haiku can aim for. We’ll also cover organizations and websites, and touch on related Japanese poetic forms, including senryu, haibun, haiga, renga/renku, and tanka. You’ll come away with an enlarged appreciation for the discipline and benefits of haiku writing, learn to make your haiku hit the target, and maybe even develop the haiku habit.
Michael Dylan Welch is vice-president of the Haiku Society of America and director of the Haiku North America conference (coming to Seattle, August 3–7, 2011). He’s published numerous poetry books, including anthologies and translations, and judged and won numerous haiku contests. He also founded NaHaiWriMo (National Haiku Writing Month). His website is graceguts.com.
Michael Dylan Welch will read from his work at the Cross-Border Pollination Reading Series on Saturday, May 14. Find out more at rachelrose.com.
To register for this workshop, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.
Joy Kogawa Remembers
When: 6 to 8pm, Thursday, May 26
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver
Cost: TBD
Joy Kogawa, in conversation with heritage architect Don Luxton, reminisces about her childhood memories of living at 1450 West 64th Avenue. This event is co-presented with Heritage Vancouver and TLC The Land Conservancy of BC, and is a fundraiser for renovations to the house. Find out more at email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.
A Short-Story Writing Workshop with Zsuzsi Gartner:
Inviting the Reader In and the Power of Point of View
When: 10am to 3pm, Sunday, June 5
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver
Cost: $135 (includes lunch)
To register, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.
Short fiction’s possibilities are delightful, startling and seemingly endless. Of the vital mechanics of the form (including structure, timeframe and tense choices, narrative momentum, dialogue, character) the single-most important choice you can make in writing short fiction is deciding on what point of view (or points of view) a story should be told from. Your POV choice (together with the more elusive quality of Voice) will dictate HOW you will write WHAT you want to write.
Beginning and emerging writers often adhere unconsciously to a particular POV ― what I call the default mode (and we all have one). During this workshop you’ll discover a multiplicity of POV choices and how a story can radically shift depending on who’s doing the telling or through whose eyes we’re witnessing things from. We’ll also look at The Writer’s Voice and talk about why finding your own voice as a writer is so important.
The second most important decision you need to make is deciding Where and How to begin your story. “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop,” said the king in Alice in Wonderland. We’ll look at why it isn’t that simple when it comes to short fiction.
During this workshop you’ll do writing exercises, as well as read your work out loud and discuss your writing with the class. I will provide a mini course pack that we’ll use for examples and inspiration and that you are welcome to take home with you.
Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the critically acclaimed story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth (Key Porter), the just-published Better Living Through Plastic Explosives (April 2011, Hamish Hamilton / Penguin Canada), editor of the BC Book Prize–nominated Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow (Douglas & McIntyre), and the fiction editor of Vancouver Review.
Her fiction has been broadcast on CBC and widely anthologized, most recently in Best Canadian Stories: 2010. A new story appears in the May 2011 Walrus magazine. She is on faculty this spring with the Banff Centre’s writing program and is an adjunct professor in creative writing at the University of British Columbia.
She lives in East Vancouver, with two men, one tall, one small.
To register, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.