The Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program announces a virtual celebration to be held Saturday April 10th at 7 PM. The program, called Poetry as a Bridge to Japan, is the culminating event in the current laureate’s project of the same name. For more than a year Tammi Truax has been reconfiguring her project in real time from live to virtual programs. Following a series of workshops on several Japanese visual art and poetry forms, a poetry broadside contest was held. The broadsides had to show a Japanese influence in the poem, art or both. Winning entries will be gifted to Portsmouth’s sister-city of Nichinan, Japan.
At the virtual celebration contest judge Patrick Donnelly will announce the winners and the digital art gallery will be unveiled. Donnelly is the author of four books of poetry, director of the Poetry Seminar at The Frost Place, and with his spouse Stephen D. Miller, translates classical Japanese poetry and drama. The translations in The Wind from Vulture Peak: The Buddhification of Japanese Waka in the Heian Period (Cornell East Asia Series, 2013) were awarded the 2015-2016 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature.
A talk on Japanese American poetry will also be given by Monica Chiu, associate professor of English at the University of New Hampshire specializing in Asian American literature. The evening will conclude with a conversation among all facilitated by Truax.
The celebration is free, open to all, and is sponsored by The NH Humanities Council and The Music Hall. Email pplpcontest@gmail.com to get your invitation or with any questions.
