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The Love Poetry Festival in honour of Milton Acorn & Gwen MacEwen

The Inaugural Love Poetry Festival in honour of Milton Acorn & Gwen MacEwen at Ward’s Island, Toronto on Saturday was a great success. I was proud to read with Trevor Abes, George Elliott Clarke, Whitney French, Karen Mulhallen, Honey Novick and Robert Priest. Thank Michelle Alfano and George Elliott Clarke for organizing this event with a beautiful venue and Roger Sharp’s music. Here is the link for details. Thanks!

LOVE POETRY FESTIVAL Videos by Henry Martinuk:  First Part | Second Part

 

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Three poems by Dana Gioia, translated by Anna Yin

Dana Gioia and Anna Yin at the 2016 West Chester Poetry Conference
at the 2016 West Chester Poetry Conference with Dana Gioia

Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning poet. Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia received a B.A. and a M.B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Gioia currently serves as the Poet Laureate of California.

I was very grateful for a scholarship to attend the 2016 West Chester Poetry Conference and met Sir Andrew Motion, Dana Gioia and many other fine poets. I was touched by Dana’s poems that he wrote for his first son who died very young. Here is one of them. With Dana’s permission, I translated three of his poems.

 

Prayer

Echo of the clocktower, footstep
in the alleyway, sweep
of the wind sifting the leaves.

Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur
of autumn’s opulence, blade of lightning
harvesting the sky.

Keeper of the small gate, choreographer
of entrances and exits, midnight
whisper travelling the wires.

Seducer, healer, deity or thief,
I will see you soon enough—
in the shadow of the rainfall,

in the brief violet darkening a sunset—
but until then I pray watch over him
as a mountain guards its covert ore

and the harsh falcon its flightless young.

(The Wartburg Choir, “Prayer” by Morten Lauridsen, poem by Dana Gioia)

Check Anna’s translations in upcoming book “Mirrors and Windows” (Guernica Editions 2021)

Watch California’s Poet Laureate Dana Gioia in Conversation with Kay Ryan

 

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Why Poetry? Answers found in “Measures of Astonishment”

measures-of-astonishment-220

(A refreshing and eclectic mix of both deeply personal and formal essays that offer a glimpse into the minds of some of Canada’s most influential poets: Margaret Atwood, George Elliot Clarke, Anne Carson, Anne Simpson, Tim Lilburn, Marilyn Bowering, A.F. Moritz, Mark Abley, Glen Sorestad, Robert Currie, Don McKay, Lillian Allen, and Gregory Scofield) -Measures of Astonishment” Poets on Poetry
                                         –Qutoes from publisher

From time to time, I wonder “Why Poetry?”… 
After reading a part of the book: Why Poetry (by Margaret Atwood) and Every Exit is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep) by Anne Carson, I have gotten answers…. thanks!

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Glad that two of my new poems:”Family Album” and “Because Of” were published in “Quixotica” in HongKong. This collection of poems is by both award-winning and emerging poets from Hong Kong, Singapore, the Phillippines and beyond, illustrating how Don Quixote continues to inspire and illuminate across oceans and centuries. Good luck to the book launch in HongKong this July.