Janice Lee with Brenda Iijima: November 29, 2018

The Poetry Center presents, as the inaugural program in its In Common Writers Series, Janice Lee, reading and in conversation with Brenda Iijima. Janice Lee reads from her collection The Sky Isn’t Blue: Poetics of Spaces (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), as well as her forthcoming novel Imagine a Death, and from unpublished lyrical essays. The In Common Writers Series series is supported by a grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund.

Janice Lee (00:24:43)

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Steve Dickison introduces Janice Lee, who then begins the night reading an excerpt from The Sky Isn't Blue dedicated to Will Alexander titled "Ocean Beach Pier." Next Lee reads "The Dogs," followed by a manuscript from their forthcoming work Imagine a Death. Lee finishes her performance with the literary pieces "The Tree" and "The Whales."

Conversation (00:49:41)

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Brenda Iijima begins with introductory remarks regarding Janice Lee and her work, with their conversation focusing on Lee's work and tendencies in her writing and thinking. They discuss Lee's play with paradox in regards to oppositions. Iijima about the connectivity between Lee's various works. Lee credits her understanding of connectivity to her mother, to her Korean roots, and to her relationships to animals and inter-species communication. Iijima asks Lee about her affinity for addressing "the catastrophe," her relationship to the English language, and how she believes her work is changing, and brings up their common reading of works by Robin Wall Kimmer and Luce Irigaray. The conversation, opened up to the audience, turns to the process Lee has experienced while cultivating her science fiction novel-in-progress, her thoughts on repetition, the work of British biologist Charles Foster, her feelings on being considered as a Korean-American writer, and other concerns.

Tags: animals, brenda iijima, captain kirk, catastrophe, charles foster, connectivity, death, death and grief, dogs, dr. spock, ecology, entropy, entropy publishing, essays, fiction, gaston bachelard, in common writers series, indigenous languages, internal spaces, inter-species communication, intuition, janice lee, korean american writers, literary conferences, loss, luce irigaray, lyrical essays, maryam ivette parhizkar, mothers, mourning, narrative, novels, prose, race and writing, robin wall kimmer, science fiction, star trek, thinking its presence, time, trauma, travel essays, university of arizona poetry center, walter and elise haas fund, whales, will alexander

Added to Poetry Center Digital Archive on January 4, 2019.

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Janice Lee with Brenda Iijima: November 29, 2018 (Updated a year ago)

Janice Lee (00:24:43)

Conversation (00:49:41)

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Janice Lee with Brenda Iijima: November 29, 2018 (Updated a year ago)

Janice Lee (00:24:43)

Conversation (00:49:41)

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