Pablo Party 2014 - SF
Celebrating The Pablo Neruda Centennial Festival’s 10th Anniversary
A Poetry Fiesta of Love, Social Justice, and Ordinary Things.
Live Music and Film, too.

Thursday, July 10th. Doors 7, poetry starts at 7:30. $10-20 sliding scale
The Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom at 23rd, San Francisco

The evening will begin with a bilingual reading of Pablo's and related poetry by a diverse group of poets (partial list below*). This will be followed by a performance by Quijeremá, the artists behind our documentary’s soundtrack. Experience a whole constellation of South American rhythms in a stellar jazz idiom. We will also screen new material from our film-in-progress, “Pablo Neruda: The Poet’s Calling”, after which we’ll open it up for people to hang out, get down, see old friends, make new ones. Libations available by donation. Art will surround. Translators of The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems will sign copies of the bestselling book.

More info: neftali@redpoppy.net

*Readers currently include Adrían Arias, Jennifer Barone, Mark Eisner, Ingrid Keir, Barbara Paschke, William O’Daly, Alfonso Texidor, and Michael Warr. See bios below.

The history:

On July 12, 2004, 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 the legendary Lawrence Ferlinghetti and U.S. Poet Laureate emeritus Robert Hass, the premier of the first version of an early sketch of our documentary. A festival followed, featuring film; art; multi-disciplinary performances; local school children reading poetry they translated; lively talks on political poetry in the 21st Century; and much more.

Please join us if you’re in the area (or come, with or without a flower in your hair!) as we celebrate the tenth anniversary of that magical week.

www.redpoppyarthouse.org

Featured readers (others may be joining us):

Adrián Arias, is an American-Peruvian prize-winning poet, visual artist and curator, working with words and sounds with his body as an installation-poem. His poetry has been exposed in all kind of events, including the Stern Grove Festival in 2010 in a music concert with Meklit Hadero, the Struga Poetry Nights in Macedonia in 2009, and at the de Young Museum in San Francisco as part of a visual installation-performance. He also creates Video-poems, such as “Frida in the mirror,” official selection of the San Francisco International Film Festival. “Poetry comes dressed in words, but when we undress her, primal sounds may arise, the root of the word lives hidden in the depth of our poetic body.” 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, tonight’s host, is Red Poppy’s president and 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. He edited City Lights’ bilingual The Essential Neruda, the bestselling edition of Neruda in the US, and was 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. In 2004, with Red Poppy, Mark collaborated with his friend Todd Brown, who had started a diverse art space in San Francisco. Todd renamed it “The Red Poppy Art House” it is the intimate site hosting this evening’s event. (When Mark moved to Southern Chile a year later, he and Red Poppy dissolved their official partnership with the Art House.) On Neruda's centennial, Mark read Neruda's poetry and was interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition, and that night led the festivities this event is celebrating. The award winning cinematic exploration of Neruda that premiered that evening serves as the seed for our current, more ambitious project. Mark 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.

Ingrid Keir is a co-founder of the WordParty, and admits to being addicted to all things poetry. 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 QuestionsThe Hands of Day 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. Written with Han-ping Chin, his historical novel, This Earthly Life, based on the Chinese Cultural Revolution, was selected as a “Finalist” in Narrative magazine’s 2009 Fall Story Contest.

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. She was an important contributor and consultant to Red Poppy’s multilingual anthology of Latin American Poetry in Resistance. 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.

Alfonso Texidor is a poet, retiring translator, and editor for El Tecolote, a community newspaper within San Francisco’s Mission District. Alfonso’s journey began in the slums of San Juan, Puerto Rico before his family migrated to New York. He spent his time being involved with several advocacy organizations before making his way to San Francisco around 1983. Once in San Francisco, Texidor lived in Haight Ashbury for 10 years before reaching the glorious Mission District. He met fellow poets and became involved with the artistic movement that was home to the Mission neigborhood. Texidor was asked by his friend Carlos to do translations for El Tecolote, and the rest was history. He started as a translator and then became editor for the community calendar. Upon his retirement this year, he will have worked for El Tecolote for over a decade.

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.


Graphic art from the 2004 Festival