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Celebrating The Pablo Neruda Centennial Festival’s 10th Anniversary
July 10, 2014 @ 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
$10 – $20
A Poetry Fiesta of Love, Social Justice, Live Music and Film
Presented by Red Reels Film Series & Red Poppy
Join us for a unique evening celebrating The Pablo Neruda Centennial Festival’s 10th Anniversary a night of poetry, music, film and everything Neruda. The evening will kick off with readings from poets central to Neruda’s works including visual artist and curator Adrián Arias, WordParty Poetry and Jazz Open Mic host Jennifer Barone, editor of City Lights’ The Essential Neruda Mark Eisner, WordParty co-founder Ingrid Keir, noted Neruda translator William O’Daly, translator and editor Barbara Paschke and acclaimed poet Michael Warr. This event will also feature a live performance from Quijeremá, who performed the soundtrack to the documentary-in-progress, Pablo Neruda: The Poet’s Calling. New selected scenes from the film will be screened, as well as bonus material starring Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Mark Eisner is the president of Red Poppy, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the power of Latin American poetry to evoke emotions and foster social consciousness. In 2004, he collaborated with his friend Todd Brown, who had founded the Portfolio-IS-Mission Art House in 2003 (which would later become the Red Poppy Art House). On July 12, 2004, what would have been Neruda’s 100th birthday, Mark was interviewed and read Neruda’s poetry on NPR’s Morning Edition. That night Red Poppy threw what the San Francisco Chronicle called “a perfect birthday party” to celebrate the centennial of the legendary Chilean poet and social justice activist, Pablo Neruda. Poetry readings by the likes of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Robert Hass, music by Quijeremá, and the premier of an award-winning documentary that now serves as the seed for the more ambitious The Poet’s Calling. A week-long festival followed, featuring art, multi-disciplinary performances including Protest Tango led by the Red Poppy Art House’s founder Todd Brown, local school children reading poetry they translated, lively talks on political poetry in the 21st Century, and much more. Copies of The Essential Neruda will be on sale at the event. Several of the translators may be present at the end to sign your copy if so desired; proceeds from the sales of the book as well as a portion of the event’s admission will go towards the documentary’s crucial phase of editing this summer. Please join us as we celebrate the tenth anniversary of that magical week.
Adrián Arias, American-Peruvian prize-winning poet, visual artist and curator, working with words and souns with his body as an installation-poem. His poetry was exposed in all kind of events, such the Stern Grove festival in 2010 in a music concert with Meklit Hadero, the Struga Poetry Nights in Macedonia in 2009 or at the de Young Museum in San Francisco as part of a visual installation-performance. The video of Pablo Neruda’s “Poem XV” (“I like it when you’re quiet…”) he directed for “The Poet’s Calling” documentary will be screened this evening.
Jennifer Barone is the host of the WordParty Poetry and Jazz Open Mic every third Tuesday at Viracocha in San Francisco, California. She is the author of three books of poetry, her most recent titled Saporoso, poems of Italian food and love. She’s been a selected poet for the 2007 and 2012 Poets Eleven contest, organized by Jack Hirschman, SF Poet Laureate and the SF Public Library.
Mark Eisner is the producer and co-director of the documentary-in-progress, Pablo Neruda: The Poet’s Calling, parts of which will be screened at the event. It has received support from Latino Public Broadcasting. The cinematic exploration he premiered at the 2004 Festival, entitled “Pablo Neruda! Presente!”, won an Award of Merit in Film from the Latin American Studies Association, and serves at the seed for this new, more ambitious project. Mark edited City Lights’ bilingual The Essential Neruda, the bestselling edition of Neruda in the US, and is one of its principal translators. His translations and (non-Neruda) opinion pieces, book reviews, and other writings have appeared in a wide variety of publications. He recently co-edited Red Poppy’s multilingual anthology of Latin American Poetry in Resistance and is finishing a biography on Neruda. He consults on a variety of issues related to Latin America in order to pay the bills. Mark earned his BA from the University of Michigan with High Honors in English/Creative Writing and distinction in Political Science. He received his MA in Latin American Studies from Stanford, where he was later a Visiting Scholar.
Ingrid Keir is a co-founder of the WordParty. She currently teaches Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, and is nearing completion of her M.F.A. at SFSU. In the past, she has organized and hosted several poetry readings honoring Neruda’s birthday, and is an avid lover of his work and poetic vision. Ingrid has written several chapbooks: The Secrets of Like (2004), Toward the Light (2007) and has been published in many journals including the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Sparkle and Blink, and Out of Our to name a few. Her work was selected as a 2012 winner in the annual Benicia Love Poetry Contest, and published in an anthology From Benicia with Love (Poetry, that is), 2013. www.thewordparty.com
William O’Daly is a poet, translator, editor, and fiction writer. With Copper Canyon Press, he has published eight books of Pablo Neruda’s late-career and posthumous poetry (including Winter Garden, The Sea and the Bells, The Book of Questions, and World’s End). He also published a chapbook of his own poems, The Whale in the Web. Bill has received national and regional honors for his creative work; he was a finalist for the prestigious 2006 Quill Award in Poetry, for which he was profiled on NBC’s The Today Show. Bill is an NEA Fellow and has been published in a wide range of domestic and international magazines and anthologies. A board member of Poets Against War, he’s also taught on the college level and as a poet in the schools.
Barbara Paschke has been involved in translation for over thirty years, both as a translator and editor. Her publications include Riverbed of Memory (by Daisy Zamora),Clamor of Innocence, and Volcán (City Lights Books), Clandestine Poems (Curbstone Press) and short stories and poetry in the literary travel companions to Costa Rica, Cuba, and Spain (Whereabouts Press), New World, New Words (Two Lines Press), First World Ha Ha Ha (City Lights), Literary Amazonia, and The Empire for 1 Poem. She has also contributed translations to a number of literary journals. Currently, she is a board member of the Center for the Art of Translation, where she coordinates the annual Northern California Translation Award. Her other passion is music; she has been and continues to be part of several choral groups in the Bay Area.
Michael Warr is author of The Armageddon of Funk, We Are All The Black Boy, and co-editor of Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry From Chicago’s Guild Complex, all from Tia Chucha Press. His literary awards include the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, 2012 Poetry Honor Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award, a National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and others. Michael is currently editing the anthology Of Poetry & Protest – Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, which combines poetry, portraits, essays and archival prints.
Red Reels is the Red Poppy’s in-house monthly film series. Red Reels seeks to support emerging and first-time filmmakers and support the Bay Area arts community by featuring the work of local artists and filmmakers. The series aims to expand on the Poppy’s multidisciplinary focus by utilizing visual culture and cinema as a platform for intercultural exchange and community dialogue. Red Reels films expose audiences to diverse global traditions and encourage audiences to discuss issues highlighted in the films and explore common themes present in their own lives.Screenings will explore a unique interdisciplinary approach to film, utilizing real time performances from other disciplines to create a multi-layered viewing experience for audiences. By integrating mediums like dance, painting, or a live musical performance, screenings can create a unique viewing experience for audiences that stands apart from traditional screening techniques.
Red Poppy is dedicated to promoting the power of Latin American poetry to evoke emotions and foster social consciousness. Their current priority is completing a groundbreaking documentary film on the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. His faith in the “poet’s obligation” to use poetry to bear witness to injustice and promote progressive social change inspires their work. They have also just completed a multilingual anthology of Latin American “Poetry in Resistance.”
Quijeremá is a fine-tuned Oakland (SF Bay Area) based performing arts ensemble that has been recreating the concept of mixtura in World Music. Quijeremá infuses their original contemporary Latin American compositions with a deep sense of unique ancient musical traditions. New with primal, the real and ethereal permeate each performance—an amalgam of Quijeremá’s mastery of traditional music and the present. Still, the blending of rhythm, texture, and color in their music is seamless, transparent and one-of-a-kind. Captivating audiences over the course of a eight-year, five-album career; this fine-tuned San Francisco Bay Area based quintet of world musicians has only gotten better.
Photo title: Pablo Neruda and wife Matilde Urrutia, after reading at Cal Berkeley, 1966
San Francisco Chronicle article:
Mark Eisner on NPR Morning Edition, Renee Montaigne telling the country about the festival that night:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3301011
Admission: $10- 20. Doors at 7:00pm Show at 7:30.
Tickets will not be sold in advance for this event. Please arrive at the Red Poppy when doors open to purchase tickets.