About this event
What: Online poetry reading
When: September 26, 4-5PM PST
Cost: Free online event
Featuring Japanese Canadian theatre artist Julie Tamiko Manning (“The Tashme Project: The Living Archives”), Word Vancouver presents a Tashme Haiku reading event on Sunday, September 26. Julie will recite haiku her grandfather wrote as a member of the Tashme Haiku Club while interned in the Tashme Internment Camp during World War II. Reading from Montreal, Julie with be joined by author Isabella Mori and Laura Saimoto (reciting Japanese) in Vancouver. The event is part of the commemorations of the fifth anniversary of Tashme Museum, located in the Sunshine Valley outside Hope.
Tashme was the largest Japanese Canadian internment camp, housing 2,600 residents from 1942 to 1946. Jacqueline Pearce, Jean-Pierre Antonio, and Michiko Kihira have been leading a massive translation project to translate half of the 600 haiku written by the young Tashme Haiku Club members into English haiku form. These haiku capture deep emotional moments of beauty and hardship during internment life.
Join us for this unique exploration merging literature, culture, and history.
Register at https://trellis.org/haiku (free)
Read BC History Magazine award-winning article Haiku in Tashme: The legacy of Sukeo “Sam” Sameshima | British Columbia Historical Federation (bchistory.ca)
Hosted by Word Vancouver with organization partners Historic Joy Kogawa House Society, Sunshine Valley Tashme Museum, and Vancouver Japanese Language School.