last saturday, on april 23, my seattle-based american poet friend Koon Woon, author of award-winning Chasing the Waters, kindly offered to publish a poetry collection for me with his Goldfish Press.
on april 24, i prepared some 60 poems titled Kinship: For Yuan Hongqi and Liu Yu, and sent it to him with the 'table' page, 'ack' page and 'about' page. every poem is written about, for or to one of my family members. while most of them are based on essentially true experiences, some are on imagined or dreamed experiences. some of those to, for or about my late father Yuan Hongqi and my mother Liu Yu are actually among the best-received pieces i have written. among the 60 some pieces, at least 50 have already been published individually online or in print.
yesterday, Koon told me that after ten days of waiting we will get the proof. hopefully it will come out sometime in may.
this will be my fifth collection. i never give a dame about how many copies can be sold -- i know few of the vast majorities of poetry collections by most poetry writers are actually sold or even read outside their core social circles, but i want to do something not only to show my gratitude to Koon for his kind invitation, but also to pay 'tributes' to my family members.
at 5:00 pm today, i am going to read three poems with my younger poet son Allen Qing Yuan as scheduled on DC Poetry Project: the Power of Poetics, a blogtalk show hosted by renowned dc-based american poet Michael Anthony Ingram.
i am quite nervous about the reading event. because of some bad experience with the telephone and my health condition (a red light or a telephone ring can make me jumpy or nervous), my listening comprehension becomes poorer the moment i pick up a phone to communicate in english...
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