Reading the Himalayas at Cornelia St Café: Readings & Book Launch

Plus a Select Open Mike 

Thursday, Oct 25, 2018, 6-7:30 pm
  29 Cornelia St, New York, NY 10014, USA Phone: +1 212-989-9319
http://corneliastreetcafe.com/

Renowned Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu Sharma travels from the Himalayas to read at New York’s famous West Village venue along with distinguished fellow poets, namely Jill Hoffman, Robert Scotto, Anna Halberstadt and Mike Jurkovic. Yuyutsu will read from his new work based on The Rubin Museum Exhibit, The Second Buddha focused on Padmasambhava along with his Himalayan poems.

A launch of his Pratik Magazine’s Double Summer/Spring Issue carrying special material on Europe along with the Pre-launch of the American poet, Robert Scotto’s new book of poems, Imagined Secrets ( Nirala, 2019) by distinguished NYU Professor, Poet and Curator of New York Writers Workshop,  Tim Tomlinson will also take place.

In addition, Pratik’s Summer/Fall Double Issue will be launched there and Select Contributors will read from it.

Recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, Yuyutsu RD Sharma is an internationally acclaimed South Asian poet and translator. He has published nine poetry collections including, A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems, Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems, Nepal Trilogy, Space Cake, Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America, and Annapurna Poems. Widely traveled author, he has read his works worldwide and held workshops in creative writing and translation at Queen’s University, Belfast, University of Ottawa and South Asian Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany, University of California, Davis, Sacramento State University, California, Beijing Open University and New York University, New York. Yuyutsu is the Visiting Poet at Columbia University, New York and has just returned from China where had gone to read and conduct workshops at Beijing Normal University. Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world to read from his works and conducts Creative Writing workshops at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home. 

Jill Hoffman is the Founding Editor of Mudfish (Box Turtle Press), and the Mudfish Individual Poet Series. Box Turtle Press has just published The Gates of Pearl, a book-length poem in two voices, hers and her mother Pearl’s, as Mudfish Individual Poet Series #11. Black Diaries (Mudfish Individual Poet Series # 2) was published in 2000. Her first book of poems, Mink Coat, was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1973. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974-75. Jilted, a novel, was published by Simon & Schuster in 1993. She has a B.A. from Bennington College, M.A. from Columbia University and Ph. D. from Cornell University. She has taught in major universities (Bard, Barnard, Brooklyn, Columbia) and published in major magazines, such as The New Yorker and Paris Review. She has led the Mudfish Writing Workshop in Tribeca since 1990. She is also a painter.

American poet and scholar, Robert Scotto was a professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, until his retirement. His previous publications include A Critical Edition of Catch-22, a book on the contemporary American novel and essays on Walter Pater, James Joyce and other major and minor nineteenth and twentieth-century writers.  The first edition of his biography, Moondog, won the 2008 ARSC Award for Best Research in Recorded Classical Music and the Independent Publisher Book Awards 2008 bronze medal for biography. The second edition, published in 2016, is the basis for a documentary, to be released in 2018, featuring him as a participant. He has also written the entry for Moondog in the second edition of The Grove Dictionary of American Music. Although he has published poems occasionally in small journals throughout his life, his 2010 book, Journey Through India and Nepal, was his first collection.

New York-based poet, psychologist and translator, Anna Halberstadt has published six books, including, Vilnius Diary, 2014, Transit, 2016, Green in a Landscape with Ashes, 2017 and Gloomy Sun, 2017, and two books of translations: Selected Selected by Eileen Myles and Nocturnal Fire by Edward Hirsch, in Russian.  Her work has appeared in over 60 literary journals and anthologies, such as Alabama Literary Review, Alembic, AmarilloBay, Atlanta Review, Bluestem, Caliban, Café Review, Cimarron Review, East Jasmine Review, FatherNature, Literary Imagination, (Oxford Journals) and many others. Halberstadt was a finalist of the 2013 Mudfish poetry contest and she was nominated for the Pushcart prize twice.She is a recipient of the International Merit Award by Atlanta Review, 2016, Award for Poetry by the journal Children of Ra in 2016. Her book Vilnius Diary in Lithuanian translation had won TOP 10 by Lt.15– named one of the best ten books published in Lithuania in 2017. It also won the Award of the Association of Lithuanian Translators in 2017. Anna was named Translator of the Year 2017 by the journal Persona PLUS for her translation of Bob Dylan’s poem. She is a member of the American PEN center.

American poet, Mike Jurkovic is the 2016 Pushcart nominee, poetry and musical criticism have appeared in hundreds of magazines and periodicals. Full length collections, smitten by harpies & shiny banjo catfish  (Lion Autumn Press, 2016) Chapbooks: Eve’s Venom (Post Traumatic Press, 2014) Purgatory Road  (Pudding House Press) Anthologies: WaterWrites and Riverine (Codhill Press, 2009, 2007). President, Calling All Poets, New Paltz, NY and producer of CAPSCASTS, performances from Calling All Poets Series. Features & CD reviews appear in All About Jazz (August 2017 – ) & the Van Wyck Gazette. He loves Emily most of all.