Good writing lives not just in communicating your idea but making your readers feel that idea in their souls.
“Life,” the great novelist Ralph Ellison once remarked, “is jazz-shaped.” If that’s so, then we writers—whose subject is inevitably life—would do well to pay that other sophisticated art form some attention.
In this workshop, we’ll survey a century of jazz music in search of what it might add to our repertoire as writers.
What, for instance, might we learn from jazz’s emphasis on rhythm, improvisation, and call and response? How about from blues and scat singing?
And what parallels might we draw between the evolution of literary technique and the various aesthetic programs laid out by jazz artists over the course of the twentieth century, from ragtime to swing, bebop to cool jazz, free jazz to fusion?
We’ll also study a handful of poets and prose writers whose styles are deeply indebted to jazz—such as Langston Hughes, Jack Kerouac, Ntozake Shange, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, and Rafi Zabor.
Participants can expect to leave with at least one tune stuck in their heads and an exhilarating sense of the potential for the writer’s art to cross-pollinate with others.
To be held in the garden or in the living room at Historic Joy Kogawa House, depending on weather. This event will be held in-person. With musical accompaniment on guitar.
About Tom Gammarino
Tom Gammarino is author of the novels King of the Worlds (Chin Music Press, 2016) and Big in Japan (Chin Music Press, 2009) and the novellas Jellyfish Dreams (Amazon Kindle Single, 2012) and The Yellows (Black Hare Press, 2023). He recently co-edited Snaring New Suns: Speculative Works from Hawai’i and Beyond (Bamboo Ridge Press).
Recent stories and essays have appeared (or soon will appear) in Interzone, The Oxonian, American Short Fiction, The Writer, Tahoma Literary Review, and Hawai‘i Pacific Review, among others.
He holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School and a PhD in English from the University of Hawai‘i and has received a Fulbright fellowship in creative writing and the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, Hawai’i’s highest literary honour. Currently, he teaches science fiction, magical realism, jazz lit, and creative writing at Punahou School in Honolulu.
Tom Gammarino will write in residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House from June 1 to 30, 2023, and this public program as part of the residency.
Joy’s 88th Birthday Bash
In Japanese culture, reaching the age of eighty-eight is considered a milestone that deserves a special celebration. This celebration is commonly known as Beiju or yone no iwai. It became popular since the character for number 88 resembles the character of rice when written together; rice, when translated to Japanese, is bei. [more at http://yabai.com/p/4294]
To honour Joy Kogawa on her eighty-eighth birthday, friends and neighbours are invited to visit Joy Kogawa House for an open house that includes:
- self-guided tours of the heritage house
- new and used book sale
- children’s crafts
- refreshments
All accompanied by musical performances with Kogawa House Ukulele Strumming Circle and Solidarity Notes Choir.
Where: Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver
When: Sunday, June 4, 2 to 4pm
Cost: Free
Find out more at info@kogawahouse.com.