Saturday, March 25, 2023, 11am to 2:30pm
Free Saturdays @ the de Young Museum
This celebration, hosted by The Last Hoisan Poets (Genny Lim, Flo Oy Wong, and Nellie Wong), welcomes you to consider how poetry builds bridges that bring people together.
Join the Last Hoisan Poets and their special guests Rafael Jesús González, Alaina Gupta, Rebecca Nie, devorah major & Marcus Shelby for a series of pop-up readings in the de Young.
World Poetry Day, observed on March 21, was established in 1999 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “with the aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard.”
Practiced throughout history – in every culture and on every continent – poetry speaks to our common humanity and our shared values. The simplest of poems can be a powerful catalyst for dialogue and peace.
>>> https://www.famsf.org/events/world-poetry-day-last-hoisan-poets
Schedule
| 11 to 11:30 am | The Last Hoisan Poets and Rafael Jesús González Gallery 4 (Art of the Americas), 20 min The Last Hoisan Poets and Alaina Gupta Gallery 5 (Contemporary art), 10 min |
| 11:35 am to noon | The Last Hoisan Poets and Rebecca Nie, “Yin Mountain” Gallery 15, 15 to 20 min The Last Hoisan Poets, Gallery 17, 5 to 10 min |
| 1:30 to 1:55 pm | The Last Hoisan Poets and devorah major Gallery 40 + 50 (Art of Africa + Lhola Amira: Facing the Future) |
| 2 to 2:30 pm | The Last Hoisan Poets and Marcus Shelby Galleries 28, 29, 50a, 60, 61, 62 (Kehinde Wiley: An Archeology of Silence) |
>>> Click here for a Map of the de Young Museum
Rafael Jesús González, native of El Paso, Tx., taught Creative Writing & Literature at Laney College, Oakland where he founded the Mexican & Latin American Studies Dept. He was Poet in residence at Oakland Museum of California and Oakland Public Library 1996. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English for his writing in 2003. In 2013 he received a César E. Chávez Lifetime Award, and in 2015 the City of Berkeley also honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2017, he was named the first Poet Laureate of Berkeley. http://rjgonzalez.blogspot.com/
Photo: Peter St. John
Alaina Gupta, now 11, has always been an avid reader and writer. Thanks to a serendipitous introduction to Flo Oy Wong by her 2nd grade teacher, she picked up poetry. With encouragement, she found avenues to express herself: She read her poem “Hope During Pandemic” on the NPR California report in Jan ’21. Her poem was also featured as part of De Anza College’s public art project, “Hope and Solace” in Cupertino. Her poem, “The Mountain”, was selected for the Union School District Writers and Artists Showcase across all Bay Area Public schools. She collaborated with Flo Oy Wong in APICC’s Asian America Festival 2022 Showcase in Japantown. Her poem, “A New Spring”, won 1st place in the 10-12 yr category, for the San Jose Public Library 2022 Spring Poetry Contest. She also writes short stories. Her pride and joy is her first published poetry book on Amazon, “A Potpourri of Playful Poems” Alaina goes to elementary school in San Jose, California.
Rebecca Nie is a Chinese American Zen master, scholar, and award-winning algorithm and new media artist. Rebecca Nie now serves as the Buddhist Chaplain -Affiliate at Stanford University. Chinese literature and cultural heritage are some of Nie’s lifelong passions. As a Zen master of the Korean Jogye Order and the founder of Mahavajra Seon Sanctuary, Rebecca Nie is dedicated to unleashing humanity’s full potential through artistic expressions and offering systematic training in Eastern wisdom-spiritual traditions. Yin Mountain: The Immortal Poetry of Three Daoist Women, translated by Nie and her co-author Peter Levitt is published by Shambhala Publications. For more information, please visit https://rebeccanie.com/.
devorah major served as San Francisco’s Third Poet Laureate. She has seven poetry books, the most recent califia’s daughter, two novels, four chapbooks and a host of short stories, essays, and poems in anthologies and periodicals. In 2022 she received Italy’s Reginajk Coppola International Literary Award and toured in Sardinia, Northern and Southern Italy. In June 2015 major premiered her poetry play Classic Black: Voices of 19th Century African-Americans in San Francisco at the S.F. International Arts Festival. devorah major performs her work nationally and internationally with and without musicians. https://www.devorahmajor.com/
Marcus Shelby is a composer, bassist, bandleader, and educator who currently lives in San Francisco, California. His work focuses on the history, present, and future of African American lives social movements and music education. Shelby is the Artistic Director of Healdsburg Jazz, an artist in residence with the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and a past resident artist with the San Francisco Jazz Festival and the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Shelby has composed several oratorios and suites including Harriet Tubman, Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio, Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues, Green and Blues, and a children’s opera Harriet’s Spirit produced by Opera Parallel 2018. Shelby also composed the score and performed in Anna Deavere Smith’s Off-Broadway Play and HBO feature film “Notes from the Field” (2019). Shelby is also the voice of Ray Gardener in the 2020 Oscar-Winning Disney Pixar film “SOUL”. https://marcusshelby.com/
Photo: Tom Sieu
The Last Hoisan Poets — Genny Lim, Nellie Wong, and Flo Oy Wong — trace their roots to China’s Toisan villages, home of the Hoisan-wa (a.k.a. Toisanese/Taishanese) Chinese dialect. They hold special poetry readings in English and Hoisan-wa, to pay homage to their mother language which is at risk of fading from collective memory.
The Last Hoisan Poets at the de Young Museum, 2023. Photograph by Theo Schear
Welcome to your museum — a place for poetry.
In celebration of World Poetry Day, the Last Hoisan Poets share three poems written in response to the de Young’s architecture and public spaces.
- Genny Lim’s haiku, written in response to Drawn Stone by Andy Goldsworthy.
- Flo Oy Wong’s welcoming poem written in response to the Marcus Garden of Enchantment, landscape architecture by Walter Hood, Hood Design Studio.
- Nellie Wong’s ODE, written in response to the de Young museum, designed by Herzog & de Meuron.
>>> Read FAMSF’s blogpost Poems Inspired by the de Young
POEM: From Middle French poème, from Latin poēma, from Ancient Greek ποίημα (poíēma), from ποιέω (poiéō, “I make”).
This World Poetry Day program is the final in a four program series created by The Last Hoisan Poets, working in partnership with the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. The poetry and music performances included “American Born / Resident Alien”, a tribute to Hung Liu (7/2/22); “American People”, a celebration of the life and art of Faith Ringgold (11/19/22) and a community commemoration of National Angel Island Day (1/21/23).
The Last Hoisan Poets would like to thank the wonderful public programs team – Devin Malone, Maria Egoavil and Rosario Sotelo at the de Young Museum – for their amazing support and care.