SNARES AND TRAPS: POETRY AND THE VISUAL ARTS, A LITERARY BRUNCH
Part of the Montreal Zen Poetry Festival

Join poet/artists Stephen Addiss and Shin Yu Pai in an intimate literary brunch as they explore the connections between the visual arts and poetry, in their own work and in Zen traditions.  The brunch will take place at SoupeSoup Old Montreal, the latest addition to the trio of restaurants known for their wholesome and delicious food and cosy atmosphere.

Stephen Addiss, a renowned calligrapher and poet/scholar/artist will look at the interdependence of word and image as expressed in the tradition of haiga, “a combination of arts that I find fascinating… where a haiku and a visual image can combine to reach a deeper expression than either one might alone.”

Shin Yu Pai, poet, translator and visual artist, will look at her work in terms of its visual/textural languages: “My work is concerned with the contemplation of the spirit and inherent nature of the aesthetic object-both the poem as object or experience, and the subject matter of my poems, which very naturally gravitate towards the concrete, physical world,  articularly the visual arts.”

The event starts at 11 a.m., Sunday, March 08, with a simple but satisfying brunch, followed by the presentations. Total cost for the event is $20 full or $15 concession. Reservations are required. SoupeSoup Old Montreal is located at 649 Wellington Street, two blocks west of McGill Street. For more information go to: www.montrealzenpoetryfestival.ca

Stephen Addiss is a world-renowned calligrapher and a leading authority on Japanese art, as well as a musician, poet, translator and painter. He has published 36 books and exhibition catalogs, including Old Taoist: The Life, Art and Poetry of Kodojin (2001), 77 Dances: Japanese Calligraphy by Poets, Monks, and Scholars 1568-1868 (2006) and Haiga: Takebe Socho & the Haiku-Painting Tradition (1991). He holds degrees from Harvard University and the University of Michigan, and taught for 15 years at the University of Kansas before joining the faculty at the University of Richmond in Virginia as Professor of Art and Tucker-Boatwright Professor in the Humanities. He is the recipient of four grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and one from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Shin Yu Pai, born in 1975, is a second-generation Taiwanese-American poet and photographer. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with additional graduate studies at the Naropa Institute. She is the author of Haiku Not Bombs (Booklyn Artists Alliance), Works on Paper (Convivio Bookworks), Sightings: Selected Works [2000-2005] (1913 Press), The Love Hotel Poems (Press Lorentz), Unnecessary Roughness (xPress(ed)), Equivalence (La Alameda), and Ten Thousand Miles of Mountains and Rivers (Third Ear Books). Her work is anthologized in America Zen: A Gathering of Poets (Bottom Dog Press) and The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry (Wisdom Publications). In addition to her work as a poet, Shin Yu has exhibited her visual work at the Paterson Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, and the Three Arts Club of Chicago. Currently, Shin Yu Pai lives with her husband in Seattle where she is pursuing graduate work in Sociocultural Anthropology and Museology at the University of Washington.

Contact Person: Myokyo, Enpuku-ji/Centre Zen de la Main 514.842.3648 publicity@montrealzenpoetryfestival.ca

For immediate release

Montreal Zen Poetry Festival 2009

Forget the words!

Guests from across Canada and the U.S. will gather March 6-8, for the Montreal Zen Poetry Festival, a program of readings, workshops, seminars and panel discussions presented in various venues around downtown and the Plateau.

This year’s featured Zen poets include Peter Levitt, Zen teacher and long-time poet and translator from Salt Spring Island, Chase Twichell, poet and founder of Ausable Press in upstate New York, and Shin Yu Pai, a young poet, visual artist and collaborator from Seattle. Also joining us will be Seido Ray Ronci, a Missouri-based Zen monk, poet and musician.

We welcome back our special guest Red Pine, a prolific and widely respected translator ff classical Chinese literature (as well as a wonderful storyteller), from Port Townsend, Wash. Translator-poet David Hinton will travel from Vermont to join us for the festival.

He has earned wide acclaim for recreating the classical Chinese poetry tradition as compelling contemporary poetry that accurately conveys the texture and density of the originals.

Dennis Maloney, founder of White Pine Press in Buffalo, N.Y., will contribute as a translator, a tanka poet and a small press editor and publisher. Stephen Addiss, a worldrenowned calligrapher and a leading authority on Japanese art, as well as a musician, poet, translator and painter, will involve us in his love for haiga, a visual form that links poetry and painting.

The biennial Montreal Zen Poetry Festival is fast becoming a must-attend cultural event. Launched in 2007 under the auspices of Enpuku-ji/Centre Zen de la Main, a Rinzai Zen practice center in the Plateau, the festival draws on the deep interconnection of Zen and poetry as it aims to bring an awareness of Zen and Zen culture to a wider audience.

The theme of this year’s program – Forget the words! – is also the title of a translation panel that will be moderated by Erín Moure, one of Canada’s most eminent poets. The line, taken from a verse by Chuang Tzu, the Chinese Taoist philosopher, alludes to the interdependence of language and meaning, a familiar issue for writers.

This year, festival-goers will be invited to begin each morning with Zen meditation. The daily schedule of activities includes a writing workshop with Peter Levitt, in collaboration with the Quebec Writers’ Federation, and a collaborative poetry workshop with Shin Yu Pai.

David Hinton will deliver the Paul Hsiang Lecture, sponsored by McGill University’s Centre for East Asian Studies. Meanwhile, Zen monk-scholar Victor Sogen Hori will host an evening of Poetry: Memory and Dharma, with Chase Twichell and Peter Levitt.

The festival will close with a literary/visual brunch at Soupesoup, a smart restaurant in Old Montreal. Shin Yu Pai and Stephen Addiss will present their work, which bridges poetry and visual arts.

Contact person:

Myokyo

Enpuku-ji/Centre Zen de la Main

514.842.3648

publicity@montrealzenpoetryfestival.ca

www.montrealzenpoetryfestival.ca

For immediate release

Memory and Dharma – two poets and a scholar monk in conversation at the Montreal Zen Poetry Festival
Come and deal in contradictions and paradoxes as two poets and a Zen monk have a conversation about memory and Dharma. Asking questions as fundamental as What is the self? and What is the nature of time?, the evening will be a foray into some deeply philosophical issues as well as a riveting conversation with two very personable and accomplished poets, Chase Twichell and Peter Levitt.

The practice of Zen is concerned with non-duality and a direct manifestation of the self, and yet so much of Zen poetry has references to memory. How does time come into our notion of the self? The paradox of Zen poetry is that it uses words to express the inexpressible. How can we use language to do this?

The discussion will be led by Professor Victor Sogen Hori of McGill’s Religious Studies Department.

Following the discussion, both Chase Twichell and Peter Levitt will read from their work.

Victor Sōgen Hori is a Rinzai Zen monk, translator and author of Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Koan Practice. He has co-edited several books on Buddhism, and is currently Associate Professor of Japanese religions at McGill University.

Peter Levitt is an award-winning writer, poet and writing teacher. He is author of Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom, and ten books of poetry. Formerly an MFA faculty member in poetry at Antioch University, Peter Levitt currently teaches in the UBC Creative Writing Optional Residency Program.

Chase Twichell is a widely published poet, editor and teacher, whose books of poetry include Dog Language (2005), The Snow Watcher (1998) and The Ghost of Eden (1995). Many of Chase’s poems are heavily influenced by her years as a Zen Buddhist student of John Daido Loori at Zen Mountain Monastery. In 1999, Chase founded Ausable Press, which was recently acquired by Copper Canyon Press. She lives in Keene, New York, with her husband, novelist Russell Banks.

When: 7:30pm – Poetry: Memory and Dharma (75 minutes)
Where: Alfred Dallaire Memoria, 4231 Boulevard St Laurent, corner Rachel

Tickets: $15/12(available at the door or on the Montreal Zen Poetry Festival Website)

For full details of this discussion and reading and all other events of the Montreal Zen Poetry Festival, go to:
www.montrealzenpoetryfestival.ca

Contact Person: Myokyo, Enpuku-ji/Centre Zen de la Main 514.842.3648
publicity@montrealzenpoetryfestival.ca