When: Tuesday, October 22, 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver
Cost: By donation at the door ($5 to $10 requested.) To RSVP, please email info@kogawahouse.com.
Montreal poet, editor, and publisher Marco Fraticelli will read from his two latest books of haibun (a combination of haiku and prose).
Drifting is based on the actual diaries of Celesta Taylor, a widowed domestic who lived in the Eastern Townships of Quebec at the turn of the last century; Fraticelli adds his haiku resonance to her journal entries.
A Thousand Years contains Fraticelli’s constructed love letters of Chiyo-ni, a well-known woman haiku poet who lived in Japan in the 1700s. The letters are juxtaposed with Chiyo-ni’s actual haiku.
Fraticelli will examine the intricacies of writing from another person’s point of view that is grounded in historical research. He will explain why haibun was his form of choice for these two projects, and address the juxtaposition of fiction and non-fiction in his writing.
Writing across gender may be harder, require more research and humility. We may fail or get ‘called out’ for letting our biases show … But the attempt at understanding, empathy, and inhabiting the soul of someone whose life experience is not ours, helps us grow as writers, and people too.
—Sarah Seltzer, literary critic, in The Atlantic
Please join Historic Joy Kogawa House members and friends as we host visiting writer Marco Fraticelli for this literary reading. A musician and poet, he has been a 26-year executive member of Haiku Canada, and the editor and publisher of the literary magazine, The Alchemist, and the Hexagram Series of haiku chapbooks. His poetry has won awards internationally. All are welcome to attend.