Tag Archives: Elaine Woo

World Poetry Celebrates Kagan Goh with His New Show!

TO HEAR THE SHOW: CICK HERE!

http://www.coopradio.org/content/world-poetry-caf%C3%A9-el-mundo-de-la-poesia-

Featured was his upcoming production

SURVIVING SAMSARA
by Kagan Goh

A celebration of the resiliency of the human spirit
to transcend the suffering of
the stigma and discrimination of mental illness

WHERE: THE INTERURBAN GALLERY
1 EAST HASTINGS (@ CARRALL)

WHEN: Thurs June 15 & Thurs June 29, 2017

Doors Open 7 PM
Show Starts 7.30 PM

Suggested Donation $20
(Pay what you can. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds)

A Multimedia Multidisciplinary Theatrical Performance
Featuring
KAGAN GOH – Actor & Spoken Word Artist
SALOMÉ NIETO – Butoh Dancer & Choreographer
ANGELO MORONI – Director & Composer/Musician
JUJUBE JACINTO – Rapper
RENA DEL PIEVE GOBBI – Filmmaker

SYNOPSIS

Surviving Samsara is a multimedia multidisciplinary live theatrical production that incorporates acting, spoken word, Butoh dance, rap, music, film and video. Surviving Samsara recounts the author Kagan Goh’s struggles with manic depression. This story takes place over two decades as Kagan Goh struggles to survive the highs of mania and the lows of depression. As a survivor, Kagan gives us insight into an ‘insider’s’ experience of madness. He exposes the damaging effects of the stigma of mental illness, and explores manic depression not only as a disorder, but as a spiritual emergence — a vehicle for personal growth, healing and transcendence. Kagan’s deeply personal stories illustrate his transformation from victim to survivor to activist.

The production of Surviving Samsara is proposed, managed and facilitated by people with personal, lived experience with mental health challenges.

CREATIVE TEAM

KAGAN GOH – Producer, Spoken Word Artist, Playwright, Actor. http://kagangoh.com/
Kagan Goh is an award-winning filmmaker, published author, spoken word poet, and mental health advocate and activist. Kagan has been published in numerous anthologies, periodicals and magazines. Select Books in Singapore published his first book, Who Let in the Sky? Goh is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker with a number of releases, including the award-winning Mind Fuck (1996) and Stolen Memories (2012). His films have been broadcast on national television and gained entry into respected film festivals across Canada. His personal mission is to educate people about mental health issues and fight the stigma against the mentally ill.
(www.kagangoh.com / www.stolenmemoriesdocumentary.com)

SALOMÉ NIETO – Butoh Dancer/Choreographer.
Renowned for her emotionally-charged performances, audiences have described pataSola co-founder, Salome Nieto, as ethereal, evocative and enchanting. Her work explores the essence of Butoh and the integration of spirituality with her cultural identity. An accomplished dancer and choreographer, Salome has 23 years of specialized Butoh training with internationally-renowned instructors and has danced extensively with Kokoro Dance Company. As well as executing her own works in Vancouver, BC, Salome has performed in Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua, Thailand, England and Poland. Recent collaborations include projects with Butoh Masters Gustavo Collini-Sartor (Argentina) and Valentin Tzin (Russia), Dianne Farnsworth, Donna Redlick Dance and since 2014 with Poet Kagan Goh (Canada).
(www.patasoladance.com)

ANGELO MORONI – Director, Musician/Composer, Social Theatre Facilitator
With more than 15 years practicing Theatre and Music, Angelo has performed in numerous theatre and modern dance companies, including in experimental music ensembles. Furthermore, he has given social theatre workshops to kids, teens, adults, the visually impaired, Amnesty International, and to educators at UBC in Canada and Mexico. In Surviving Samsara, Angelo, the musician/composer, has also given Kagan Goh (actor) directorial support with his written pieces.

JUJUBE JACINTO – Rapper, Stage Manager, Audio Visual Designer
Jujube Jacinto is a self-taught lyricist, performer, and visual artist living with bipolar. Through her work, she heals personal trauma, inspiring others to do the same. As stage manager in Surviving Samsara, she assists with all technical aspects of the production: successful timing and delivery, costumes, props, projector, and lighting.

RENA DEL PIEVE GOBBI – Filmmaker, Production Assistant, Audio Visual Designer
Rena Del Pieve Gobbi is a Vancouver Artist and Filmmaker. Her work has screened in 15 countries and opened for the Images Film Festival Gala in Toronto as well as the Canadian Images Gala at the VIFF IN Vancouver. Rena was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1993. Her art work is concerned with issues surrounding PTSD and sexual violence. Rena collaborated with Kagan Goh on the Surviving Samsara piece photographically five years ago. She is very excited to continue collaborating on this material. “My feeling is that work that demonstrates the experiences of mental illness are crucial to raising awareness.” To this end Rena has made a video, seclusion, out of photographs shot on a camera smuggled into a psychiatric hospital when she was in her early 20s and a painting depicting herself locked in the seclusion room for seven days. The video is narrated with three journal entries woven together from the same time. An improvisational soundtrack accompanies the narrative and brings to life the hallucinated monkey in the next room. (www.rena.ca)

NOTICE:
Copies of Kagan Goh’s chapbook of
SURVIVING SAMSARA are available for sale for $20. Source: Kagan Goh

World Poetry Celebrates the Talented Poetess Michelle Elrick.

Listen to the SHOW HERE!

Notes from co-host Elaine Woo:

“Michelle, author of then/again, Nightwood Editions 2017, engages us with the meaning of home, pushing the limits of the meaning of home, finding belonging in others or in a feeling of familiarity and comfort. She, too, discusses her literary legacy in other poets and in song.”

Image made By Scott Munn

Michelle Elrick is the author of two books of poetry including newly released, then/again (Nightwood Editions, 2017). Her writing has appeared in Geist, CV2, Event, Poetry Is Dead and on CBC television. She was the recipient of the 2011 John Hirsch Award and was a finalist in the 2015 CBC Literary Award for Poetry. She lives and writes in Halifax, Nova Scotia.Courtesy of Nathaniel Moore Publicist, Harbour Publishing Co Ltd., Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.,

Poem:

expect something and nothing at once: a car coming down the road,

a tilted x, a feeling of enough enough/a rapture love. count: two

days without sleeping, three hours spent hiding, seventeen years of limiting love and one long highway, the way it dips and caresses

the shouldering hills. wait with squint and exhaustion: breath

condensed on a cold brass hinge, elds scraped clean of snags

and novelty. wander in/out of rooms with a mirror under your chin.

climb out of the bed, the window, the car and threadbare drapery

of blue velour: gold exponential on the carpet. don’t talk, listen to the curve of this particulate. stare at the cabin past the dim

of trees: its red roof, the taste of warm tomato.

the mountain rises under your knees: algae, juniper. humming

hydro electric box: (red rover, red rover) call and careen, your name

still ringing, still ringing, drawing circles around your face, around

the many lips of the rose’s middle. gulls follow the tractor, picking out dew worms. sunset between Olympic and North Shore,

grazing red and spo ed land of white and orange stars. clouds pass

behind the tree: you say the name of the book you are reading, I touch your leg under the table, we leave the condom on the desk.

(how many brothers/sisters do you have?) mathematics of hunger,

of silence, noise. the universe expands beyond dead stars shining.

asymptotic crush. the things that used to be true.

by Michelle Elrick (C)

excerpt from the poem “square” from the book then/again (Nightwood Editions, 2017)

World Poetry Celebrates Lorna Crozier’s Latest Book Launch!

To hear their words of wisdom and exceptional poetry: LISTEN TO THE SHOW!

Lorna Crozier, an Officer of the Order of Canada, is the author of sixteen previous books of poetry, most recently The Wrong Cat and The Wild in You. She is also the author of The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Ordinary Things and the memoir Small Beneath the Sky. She is a Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria, has been awarded the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, and is a three-time recipient of the Pat Lowther Award. Born in Swift Current, she now lives on Vancouver Island with writer Patrick Lane and two fine cats.
For further information, please contact kelsey@freehand-books.com
Information and a full catalogue are also available at our website
at www.freehand-books.com.
Advance Praise for What the Soul Doesn’t Want.
“[A] late-career highlight… [Crozier] can speak for the inanimate with whimsy and empathy, knows when and how to conjure sensuality, and can sneak in an emotional payload.”
— Quill and Quire

Source: Kelsey Attard.
Praise for Lorna Crozier
“Lorna Crozier’s The Blue Hour of the Day . . . reads like one long autobiographical poem of astonishing coherence and beauty, and so powerful that, after I’d closed the book, I found that I’d unwittingly learnt several of the lines by heart.”
— Alberto Manguel, The London Times Literary Supplement
“Crozier writes of a world of imperfection, clumsiness, violence, betrayal, pain, and in spite of everything, delight and love . . . Always accessible, Crozier speaks a language we understand, but she uses it to tell us things we don’t.”
— Canadian Literature.

World Poetry Reading Series

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