CHA Issue#13 Goes Live

Click HERE to read the February 2011 issue of Cha.

The February 2011 issue of Cha has now been launched. We would like to thank Arthur Leung (poetry) and Reid Mitchell (prose) for returning to the post of guest editors and reading the submissions with us. We would also like to thank our Reviews Editor, Eddie Tay, for curating an expanded section of reviews. The issue also features a new editorial by Jeff Zroback entitled "When You Live with a Poet".

The following writers/artists have generously allowed us to showcase their work:

POETRY: Krishnakumar Sankaran, Vineet Kaul, David Sutherland, Graeme Brasher, Randy Gonzales, Mary-Jane Newton, Divya Rajan, Nicholas Y.B. Wong, Jason Eng Hun Lee, Shelton Pinheiro, Jeffrey Thomas Leong, Changming Yuan

FICTION: Shivani Sivagurunathan, Vandana Nambiar, Vineetha Mokkil, Margaret Hui Lian Lim, Ram Govardhan

LOST TEA: Bob Bradshaw

PHOTOGRAPHY & ART: Annysa Ng (cover artist), Christopher Szabla, Yip Wai Shai, Steve Wing

INTERVIEW: Elaine Woo

REVIEWS: Reid Mitchell, Jason Eng Hun Lee, Alice Tsay, Michael O'Sullivan, William Noseworthy, Abigail Licad, Mary-Jane Newton, Vivian Ding and Michael Tsang who review the following books:

Kristine Ong Muslim's A Roomful of Machines, Mani Rao's Ghostmasters, Sherry Quan Lee's Chinese Blackbird, Melody S. Gee's Each Crumbling House, Robert Raymer's Tropical Affairs, Shimao Shinzo and Madeleine Marie Slavick's Something Beautiful Might Happen, Dimitris Lyacos's Poena Damni, Z213: Exit, Tiziano Fratus's Creaturing, Jack Kornfield's The Buddha is Still Teaching, Khế Iêm's (ed.) Poetry Narrates: An Anthology of Vietnamese New Formalism Poetry, O Thiam Chin's Under the Sun, Karen Llagas's Archipelago Dust, Sweta Srivastava Vikram's Because All is Not Lost, Anindita Sengupta's City of Water, Edwin Thumboo's (ed.) Fifty on 50, Xu Xi's Habit of a Foreign Sky, and Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's Hiroshima in the Morning.

Our fourteenth issue ("The China Issue") is due out in June 2011. Cha former contributor, distinguished Chinese scholar and poet Yibing Huang will be joining us as guest editor. We are also accepting submissions for the Fourth Anniversary Issue, which is scheduled for November 2011. Robert E. Wood (poetry) and Royston Tester (prose) will act as guest editors. If you are interested in having your work considered for publication in Cha, please read our submission guidelines.

We would also like to draw our readers' attention to the Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2011. The festival will take place between 8-18 March and it features a great line-up of writers, including Cha contributors Martin Alexander, Andy Barker, Viki Holmes, Wena Poon, Xu Xi, Louise Ho, Leung Ping-Kwan and our Reviews Editor Eddie Tay. More information about the festival: http://www.festival.org.hk/

Finally, if you liked a story published in Cha in 2010, please consider nominating it for the storySouth's Millions Writers Award: http://asiancha.blogspot.com/2011/02/2011-millions-writers-award.html

We hope you will enjoy the new issue of Cha. Thank you for your continued support.

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming & Jeff Zroback / The Editors
Cha

t@asiancha.com | j@asiancha.com 

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Leave a comment & let us know your thoughts on the issue.

ASIAN CHA Issue#13 Editorial

originally posted here

When You Live with a Poet

When you live with a poet, you know exactly which three-year-old work she means when she asks, "Did you like the enjambment in the second stanza?"

When you live with a poet, you are expected to know words like "enjambment."

When you live with a poet, you need to have a job. It is hard to retire on a poet's salary.

Right from the start of your life with the poet, you come to understand that she does not see the world in the same way as other people.

When you live with a poet, you realize that books make gift-giving easy and cheap, especially when bought second hand. The poet thinks that used books have more character anyway.

While working at your job because you are living with a poet, you learn not to panic when you receive an email with URGENT!!!! in the subject line, knowing it will contain her latest work, which "Really needs to be proofread now. It is very important that I don’t miss the deadline for _____ Review."

When corresponding with a poet, it is advisable not to write sarcastic replies about the "importance" of submitting anything to ________ Review.

When you live with a poet, you get used to being plagiarized, although the poet prefers to call it "fair use."

When you live with a poet, you somehow know without asking that the fair use policy is not reciprocal.

One night, during your life with the poet, you will find yourself explaining that her reading Auden out loud while you do the dishes is not quite the equal division of labor she seems to think it is.

When you live with a poet, you become very good at counting syllables and thinking of rhymes.

When you argue with a poet, it is bad news if she starts taking notes.

Even though you live with the poet, she thinks you will somehow believe her latest poem is not "autobiographical in any way."

When you live with a poet, you sometimes catch her staring at teacups or laughing at a single sock. You pray to god that this has something to do with being a poet.

When discussing living arrangements with the poet, you actually hear her say that she will do the laundry when she "is inspired."

Sometimes you wish you did not live with a poet.

When you live with a poet, you learn it is a compliment if your newly baked bread has her reaching for a pen instead of a butter knife.

If, while cohabitating with your poet, you hear the hoover running, you do not assume that this means she has been inspired into domestic duties. You know it is just as likely you will find her sitting next to the vacuum with a worried expression on her face, "Does it sound more like Brrrrr or Wrrrrr? I can't get the onomatopoeia right."

When you live with a poet, you automatically reply it is more like "Vrrrrr," as if this kind of thing happens all the time in other houses.

When you live with a poet, you are amazed by her creativity, but wish she didn’t always have such a goddamn active imagination.

When you live with a poet, you live with a poet.

After a few years living with a poet, you start to worry about who will have to pack all those books when you move.

When you have spent enough time living with a poet, you no longer complain when her typing wakes you up at night. Instead you put in earplugs and go back to sleep, content that at least she is writing.

Living with a poet is easier when she is writing than when she is not.

Every day you live with the poet, you become more and more grateful she does not see the world the same way as other people.

You hope you will always live with the poet.

Jeff Zroback / Co-editor

Cha

27 February, 2011

Leave a comment and tell us what it's like living with your writer/poet.

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Reverse déjà vu (alert: contains strong language)

The poem alluded to in this post is now published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.

There are two squirrels in a recent poem I wrote roaming in the garden outside the kitchen. I put them in the work not because I have actually seen them in the garden. If authenticity was my goal I could put two black-and-white cats, for they are the frequenters of that area and in fact I think they think the place is theirs, judging from the extremely defiant looks they give me whenever I catch sight of them. Or foxes. In the past two years, I have seen foxes in the garden twice. Both times, it was snowing gently and the garden was serene with a sense of expectation. The foxes stirred the quietude and stillness when they trotted from one spot to another, displaying their golden fur. They did not stay long. I would like to think that they had a secret schedule and that they had to be seen by a particular number of good people (e.g. me) before the city disowned the snow and everywhere turned ash-grey.

Back to the squirrels -- living in London, of course I have seen many of them, especially in parks big and small. The squirrels here are genuinely fat and they move leisurely. It is hard to imagine that the city is doing poorly if you gauge its economy by the largeness of the squirrels' tummies. I put two squirrels in the poem, however, not to evoke a sense of place. I remember reading some writing advice about putting 'insignificant' details in a piece of fiction in order to strengthen its mimesis (i.e. l'effet de réel). I admit I do that every now and then. But I cannot in all conscience dismiss the squirrels as merely some unimportant information.

To tell the truth, in my poem, the squirrels are sharers of the lonely persona's secrets. Confined in the kitchen that she cannot really call her own (read another Kitchen poem by me here and oh for God's sake, I know real rabbits don't lay eggs but my rabbits weren't real, were they?), my persona projects some of her psyche onto the squirrels outside of her window. They are futilely digging some shallow holes for some non-existent nuts. I did not think that anyone else had discussed squirrels and secrets in literature. Otherwise, I would not have put the animals in my work. This is supposed to be a secret between me and my poem. 

Consider my shock then when I read the following lines in Emily Dickinson's poem one evening when I was really already half asleep (it must be around 4:00am), drool on both the corner of my mouth and the page:

The Pleading of the Summer—

That other Prank—of Snow—

That Cushions Mystery with Tulle,

For fear the Squirrels—know.

I sat up. I read those lines again and again and again and again. OH MY FUCKING GOD (excuse my language). DICKINSON STOLE MY SQUIRRELS. SHE TOTALLY DID!

I assure you, I have calmed down now. My using the squirrels in my own poem, I think, is a case of reverse déjà vu. I know very well this is imprecise terminology. It is okay not to correct me.

(And yes, I know I will be informed of my ignorance very soon after this blog post has been uploaded. People will send me a list of literary works with 'squirrels' and 'secrets' in them. Go on.)


ADDED in December 2011: "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence" (George Eliot's Middlemarch, chap. 20).

You sometimes have to make a mess before you can get it to go right

Jocelyn Bell Burnell talks about the logic of Science in this episode of Beautiful Minds. The following is my transcription:

Way back in the Middle Ages, they thought that planets went round the sun in circles. Perfect circles. They had to be perfect. They were heavenly bodies. And then they got better telescopes, better data, and they recognised that the planets weren't where they expected them to be. They weren't in the right place. But they were reluctant to relinquish the circles. So they invented epicycles -- little circles on the rim of the big cirlce. Like a roundabout roundabouts. They could explain what they observed like that. Then they got better telescopes, better data, and found they had to add more epicycles and it got messier and messier and messier. And then one of the key astronomers of the time, Johannes Kepler, said maybe it's not circles, or circles plus epicycles, or circles plus epicycles with epicyles on them. Maybe it's slightly squashed circles. … And that cleared the air wonderfully. And suddenly... it was clear and simple again.

She also said: "Science always doesn't go forward. It's a bit like doing a Rubix's Cube. You sometimes have to make more of a mess with the Rubix's Cube before you can get it to go right. "

NUS Literary Society Evening of Poetry and Music 26 Feb. 2011

From their website:

The annual NUS Literary Society Evening of Poetry and Music will feature upcoming writers and literary figures, interspersed with live musical performances from NUS music groups. Also included in the EPM will be the prize presentation for the ’10/’11 Creative Writing Competition and readings by the winners.

Alvin Pang and Ovidia Yu, judges of this year's competition, will appear as special guests of the evening. More information here.

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Alvin Pang's poetry was published in Issue #2 of Cha and his photography was published in Issue #12 of Cha.

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W. F. Lantry in Verse Wisconsin

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W. F. Lantry's poem about Wisconsin Protests, "Vision", can be read here.

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W.F. Lantry's poetry was published in Issue #12 of Cha.

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W. F. Lantry and J. A. Tyler in The Dead Mule

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W. F. Lantry's short story "Desire" and J. A. Tyler's short story "Variations of a Brother War" are now published in the February 2011 issue of The Dead Mule.

• W.F. Lantry's poetry was published in Issue #12 of Cha.
• J.A. Tyler's fiction was published in Issue #1 of Cha.

Jee Leong Koh in Mascara

Three poems by Jee Leong Koh, "In His Other House", "The Hospital Life" and "The Bowl", are now featured on the "New Worlds" section of Mascara Literary Review. Read the poems here.
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Jee Leong Koh's poetry was published in issue #6 of Cha.
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When you say 'I am just playing (with him/her/you)!', are you sure you are really 'playing'?

• "The Swing" (1767) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard 
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Harold Bloom (1994) sums up Johan Huizinga's summary of the properties of play:

1) freedom
2) disinterestedness
3) excludedness or limitedness
4) order


Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens (1944), p. 13:

Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside "ordinary" life as being "not serious", but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means. 

You probably aren't really 'playing' most of the time.

We saw "The Swing" in the Wallace Collection. It's a very interesting piece. 
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The

Craig Santos Perez's From Unincorporated Territory {Saina} is a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry

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Congratulations to Craig Santos Perez! His poetry collection From Unincorporated Territory {Saina}, published by Omnidawn, is a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry. You can purchase a copy of the book directly here. The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes 2010 will be awarded on April 29, 2011, in a ceremony at the Los Angeles Times building. Good luck! 

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Craig Santos Perez's review was been published in issue #9 of Cha.

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Craig Santos Perez in Zoland Poetry

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Two reviews by Craig Santos Perez are published in Zoland Poetry:

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1) Craig reviews David Buuck's The Shunt (Palm Press)

2) Craig reviews Jen Hofer's One (Palm Press)

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Craig Santos Perez's review was been published in issue #9 of Cha.

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Marc Vincenz in Poets & Artists

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Marc Vincenz's new poem "Post Nuclear Love Child" is now published in Poets & Artists. You can also listen to his reading of the work. 

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Marc Vincenz's poetry was published in Issue 10 of Cha.

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Book Talk: Is The Writer Her Character(s)? | 24th February

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From the HKU Library website:

How much is a writer the character(s) of her novels? Authorial distance can often be hard to gauge in books that are supposedly "fiction." Come and join this provocative conversation between author Xu Xi and journalist Richard Lord as they discuss Xu's new novel Habit of a Foreign Sky. Xu will also give a brief, introductory reading from the book.

More information about the talk can be found here.
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Xu Xi's creative non-fiction was published in issue #6 of Cha.
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How is love like watercolour?

Paolo and Francesca da Rimini  (1855) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 

Yesterday, when I was reading the following description of watercolour by Laura Cumming  in "New Review" (pp. 32-33), 'love' came to my mind, and I am still thinking about it:

Watercolour has a life of its own. You make your mark on the page and very soon it's not entirely yours. The paint sinks into the surface, seeping, running, spreading disastrously or drying too fast, forming suggestive blots or stains. No matter how quick you are – or how slow – it does not stay put, or remain stable. The colour comes, and it goes, drying unpredictably by evaporation.

Too wet and watercolour will pool, buckling the page. Too dry and it will stop the brush in mid-flow. It reacts badly to a drop of rain or too much heat, to the artist's impatience or aggression. Although it accommodates happy accidents, it is also disaster-prone right to the last-minute mishap of the water jar farcically overturned.

It cannot be displayed in direct sunlight without fading like Tinkerbell. So it is to some extent a hidden art, preserved behind veils or between the covers of portfolios and albums, languishing under wraps in stately homes and museums. Everyone knows that watercolour gradually weakens. Indigo can age to brown or even pink. The brightest green may dwindle to grey.

So romantic and melancholy, don't you think? Cumming is reviewing the exhibition "Watercolour" at Tate Britain, London (until 21 August).

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Cha contributors in The Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2011

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Cha contributors Martin Alexander, Andy Barker, Viki Holmes, Wena Poon, Xu Xi, Louise Ho, Leung Ping-Kwan and our Reviews Editor Eddie Tay will be appearing in The Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2011 (8-18 March). More details can be found here.
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Read Martin's "Smashing Up the Grand Piano" [and an analysis of the poem], Andrew's "Welded to Reason by Brittle Metals" [and a review of his Snowblind from My Protective Colouring], Viki's "smoking double happiness at the grand stage dinner & dance" [and a review of her miss moon's class], Wena's "Copernicus for a Singaporean Grandmother" [and an analysis of the poem], Xu Xi's "Confucius and Hair", Louise's poems, Ping-Kwan's poems, and finally, all Eddie's contributions, in Cha.

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[2010]
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Greg Santos's The Emperor's Sofa (DC Books, 2010)

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Greg Santos's debut poetry collection, The Emperor's Sofa is now available. Do also check out the following two book trailers: 

• http://vimeo.com/16674362
• http://vimeo.com/19709603

Congratulations, Greg! 

Greg Santos's poetry was published in issue #10 of Cha.

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2011 Million Writers Award

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If you liked a piece of fiction published in Cha in 2010, please consider nominating it for storySouth's 2011 Million Writers Award.

Nominations can be made HERE. 

In 2010, we published three issues and the following four short stories are eligible for the award:

1) "Love Story" by Kimarlee Nguyen (February 2010)

http://www.asiancha.com/issue/10/kimarleenguyen

2) "A Month in the Tropics" by Donna Miscolta (May 2010)

http://www.asiancha.com/issue/11/donnamiscolta

3) "Crossing Over" by Gwen Florio (May 2010)

http://www.asiancha.com/issue/11/gwenflorio

4) "The Earth that Stands Before Us" by Elizabeth Weinberg (September 2010)

http://www.asiancha.com/issue/12/elizabethweinberg/

Thank you for your support.

The Editors and Authors of Cha

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Luisa A. Igloria in Quay

Cover photo from the Powerhouse Museum, Tyrell Collection. No known copyright restrictions.

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Luisa A. Igloria's poem "Open Relationship" is now published in the latest issue of Quay: A Journal of the Arts. Read it here.

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Luisa A. Igloria's poetry was published in issue #2 and issue #8 of Cha.
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Did Emily Dickinson mean 'need not'?

I know parallel semantic and syntactic structure is a key feature in Emily Dickinson's poetry. But reading the poem below, I was just thinking that 'need not'1 might make more sense than 'cannot' in the first stanza. What do you think? 

The Gradation of Fire (1939), Rene Magritte

CXXXIII.

You cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.

You cannot fold a flood
And put it in a drawer,--
Because the winds would find it out,
And tell your cedar floor.

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1I thought of needn't first but contractions are seldom used by Dickinson apart from 't.

W. F. Lantry in Blip Magazine

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W. F. Lantry's short story "Lacry-mosa" is now published in the Winter 2011 issue of BLIP Magazine. Read it here.

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W.F. Lantry's poetry was published in Issue #12 of Cha.

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Rumjhum Biswas in Every Day Poets

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Rumjhum Biswas's poem "Short-Tempered" is now featured at Every Day Poets. Read it here.

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Rumjhum Biswas's poem "Bones" was published in issue #12 of Cha. The piece has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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Lyn Lifshin in Sensitive Skin

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Lyn Lifshin's poems "Rose", "If Those Blossoms Don't Come", "Letter", "Haven't You Ever Wanted to Use the Word Indigo?", "Blue at the Table in the Hot Sun", "Maho Bay, Near the Atrologer's Table", "July 23" and "The Black Silk Skirt Falling" are now published in Sensitive Skin. Read the poems here.

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Lyn Lifshin's poems were published in issue 4 and issue 10 of Cha

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Jennifer Wong in Glass: A Journal of Poetry

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Jennifer Wong's poetry sequence "The Last Monologues" is now published in the latest issue of Glass. Read it here. 

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Jennifer Wong's poem "Companions" was published in issue #5 of Cha and discussed here. She has also reviewed books for the journal.

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"Hot sexy ladies from Thailand"

Click the image to enlarge. 

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Visit Cha's Facebook page.

Expecting CHA

Cover artist: Annysa Ng

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In Issue #13 of Cha, due out at the end of February 2011, we have:

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15 poems by 12 poets | 5 short stories | Works by 4 artists/photographers | 1 "lost tea" | 1 interview with graphic novelists | Review of more than 16 books


&


1 editorial

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Jee Leong Koh's Seven Studies for a Self Portrait

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Jee Leong Koh's new poetry collection Seven Studies for a Self Portrait (Bench Press) is now available for purchase on Amazon. You can read a description of the book and a sample poem "Study #5: After Frida Kahlo" here.

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Jee Leong Koh's poetry was published in issue #6 of Cha.
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Robert Raymer's Lovers and Strangers Revisited will be translated into French

Robert Raymer's Lovers and Strangers Revisited will be translated into French by Éditions GOPE. The French version will be sold in France, Switzerland, Belgium and Asian places such as Hong Kong, Thailand and Cambodia. You can go to Robert's website and learn more about the translation project.

Robert's short story "On Fridays", from Lovers and Strangers Revisited, was published in Issue #12 of Cha.

Gillian Sze reads (13 February 2011)

POETS FOR PLAYS

“Some of the city’s most well-known poets bring the love at an Infinitheatre fundraiser this Sunday, Feb. 13 from 5–7 p.m. at Bain St-Michel (5300 St-Dominique). Mike Spry, Gillian Sze, Mary di Michele, and others will read the love poetry of well-known Montreal poets like Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen. Wine and cheese will follow, with music by Karen Young.”

ARTSWEEK, Montreal Mirror

Read Gillian Sze's Cha profile.

Lyn Lifshin in The Orange Room Review

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Lyn Lifshin's poem "" is now published in the February 2011 issue of The Orange Room Review. Read it here.

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Lyn Lifshin's poems were published in issue 4 and issue 10 of Cha

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Winnie Chau is a featured poet on Eyewear

Winnie Chau

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Winnie Chau's poem "The Finger-biting Girl", previously published in The Delinquent, is now featured on Eyewear. Read it here.

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Winnie Chau's poem "her story" was published in Issue #4 of Cha.

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Kudos 86

Kudos 86

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011

Runs mainly from the end of January right up to mid March, and beyond in some cases –

£3.00

       

THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

 and loads of dough with The Biscuit Prize

Ver-ily there’s some tasty stuff around:

old favourites from Southport,Torriano, Verulam, Ware, Writeonsite, and Frogmore Papers, Kent & Sussex Poetry Society, Northampton Literature Group, along with David Burland, John Dryden, Able Muse, and all.

There’s many a new Challenge, plus other good causes & matters medical: The Hippocrates Prize and Swale Life

You could of course just go Larkin about, having adventures with Rider Haggard, or going great guns with The Mayor of Enfield’s Poetry Competition.

Maybe get yourself to the Greek … Writer’s Retreat, courtesy of Limnisa, or invent a love story for WritersReign, inspired by ‘Words and Ideas’ from Words by The Water

And if you think the answer lies in the soil, there’s Gardener’s World, Brightoncow, Thynks, Jim Baen and Verity Bargate and lots, lots more to unearth right here…

Biscuit International Short Story Prize 2011

1st Prize £1,500

or publication of collection or novella,

plus £500 + 75 books - the choice is yours

Deadline: 9th May 2011

Fee: £10  1000 - 5000 words

www.biscuitpublishing.com

Send SAE to Biscuit Publishing, PO Box 123,

Washington, Tyne & Wear, NE37 2YW