Seattle Civic Poet Shin Yu Pai launches new public poetry project on April 1

By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Seattle Public Library downtown installation with Cindy Luong poem. (Image courtesy of the organizers and poets of the “Poetry in Place” campaign)

National Poetry Month takes place every year in April. Its purpose is to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry nationwide. This year, Seattle residents will have the privilege and pleasure of discovering, installed throughout various parts of the city, poems by local poets on topics of place and sustainability. Organized by Seattle Civic Poet Shin Yu Pai, the poetry campaign, called “Poetry in Place,” began April 1, and highlights the work of five Seattle poets. The poems will be viewable from the street, at no cost, from Little Saigon to Greenwood.

At each location, there will be a guide to the campaign map of installation sites, along with complementary posters and postcards (while supplies last). Pai and the participating poets encourage citizens to re-display and re-post the poems, in person or online, to their heart’s content. The artwork to accompany each poem, such as font choices, and overall installation considerations in cases where the poems do inhabit a larger space, were created in collaboration with Taiwanese American graphic designer and University of Washington teacher Jayme Yen.

Yen has been known to the public in recent years as the co-organizer of the Seattle Art Book Fair.

“It’s important for me to highlight and work with Asian American artists and creatives,” Pai told the Asian Weekly. “[Yen’s] work as a designer is really next level.” Each poet and their poetry was given personalized consideration by Pai and Yen when deciding how to display their words. For instance, for the poem to be placed in Little Saigon, Yen chose a specific typeface that was designed by a Vietnamese typeface designer.

“It looks really beautiful, in particular when used with the Vietnamese language,” Pai said. They also asked the submitting poet, Bryna Antonia (Á Thanh) Cortes, if it would be possible to translate the poem into Vietnamese, along with the English. To that end, Cortes’ grandfather provided a translation.

“We’re very excited,” said Pai.

Installation of poem by Brian Wilson, as shown at the Seattle Municipal Tower Gallery. (Image courtesy of the organizers and poets of the “Poetry in Place” campaign)

When Pai, who has an enduring interest in the importance of place, put out the call for poems for the campaign, she was “looking for something deeply connected to place, that did a deeper dive into what that community might be, or imagining a place that would be thriving.” This qualification applied to either humans or the environment, or both, and so, for example, a poem about the local library was chosen—because a well-used and well-loved library not only has a strong sense of place, but also represents a thriving community. Pai liked the poem because it shows “the role of libraries in helping to nurture [the poet] as a young person” and it gives a feeling that “libraries are this very site specific place that contribute to the health and well-being of people in a community.”

The poems will be housed in locations that, for the most part, are specifically related in some way to the poem content (as all are related to Seattle, then it can be said that in general all are related to their display venues).

“I decided that I wanted to go out into the community and see if they were community partners…that might be willing to host some of these installations,” said Pai, and there were. One of the more significant sites, which is already used for art, is the Seattle Municipal Tower Gallery. Due to the unique spatial considerations, the poetry exhibition there will be more ambitious.
“Display in that particular space could be very effective because of the use of the structure to protect it, maintain it, and show it in a way that could be really unique,” Pai explained. For this space, a poem by Brian Wilson about Seattle weather was chosen.

“The atmospheric weather and the weather patterns that we experience here in the rainy Northwest will be on display there,” Pai said. The installation will be designed in such a way that paper cut outs of phrases from the poem will be suspended from “lighting fixtures and different places in the gallery to create a kind of cascading, or vertical, effect…almost like a simulation of rainfall.”

The five selected poets are Wilson, Cortes, Kathya Alexander, Cindy Luong, and Joe Nasta. Their experience and public presence ranges from better known to lesser known. Some are full-time creatives and others, such as Luong, write poetry more as a hobby than a job (for now!). One of the selections has a personal meaning to Pai, and no doubt to many others. The subject is that of urban beekeeping, the poet is Nasta, and the location will be in Belltown. Pai asked Nasta if it would be acceptable to incorporate the poem into a memorial for friend and Master Beekeeper Bob Redmond, who has passed away. Pai was given the green light by Nasta and by Redmond’s widow. Nasta’s poem will be alongside an image of Redmond.

Poems will be displayed at Slide Gallery in Belltown, Wa Na Wari black arts cultural center in the Central District, Seattle Public Library branches in downtown and South Park, Friends of Little Saigon in Little Saigon, Seattle Municipal Tower Gallery in downtown, and the Bureau of Fearless Ideas in Greenwood. The displays will be viewable from the outside and in some cases, from inside, during the regular business hours of each location. There is no fee to view.

For her part, Pai is gearing up for the next run of her podcast, as well as touring for a new book.

Kai can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.