Word S3 E4: Int'l Women's HERstory Month 2020

By Tom Maxedon
Published: Friday, March 13, 2020 - 5:05am
Updated: Monday, March 16, 2020 - 4:23pm

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Stephen Wilcox/Arizona Commission on the Arts
The 10 state finalists from L-R: Julia Murphy, Drew Kolber, Amayah Kelly, Kyley Jones, Riley McKinney, Karen Jie, Oscar Landa Samano, Sophia Crevelt, Christina Schweiss and winner of the competition, Sylvia Dale.

We celebrate international women’s HERstory month with some influential writers and readers.

One of whom connects poetry to music.

We also explore gender identity in the Asian Pacific community with a NY poet who’s planning on returning to the Valley later this year.

Stephen Wilcox/Arizona Commission on the Arts
Sylvia Dale, a Native American and former Ganado High School senior in Apache County, won the Arizona Poetry Out Loud competition in March 2020.

But, we begin with a young Native American woman who recently won the state Poetry Out Loud recitation contest in Phoenix.

Ganado High School student Sylvia Dale competed against nine other finalists at Burton Barr Central Library March 7. She read a poem written by Gila River Indian Community poet Natalie Diaz.

The readings were judged by a panel of Arizona writers including the first Phoenix Youth Poet Laureate, Sareya Taylor, who read one of her own poems “Bad Day Thoughts” between rounds.

Congratulations to Sylvia and all those who were state finalists. She will compete in the national competition scheduled for next month in Washington D.C.

Dr. Judith G. Wolf, an Arizona-based poet an educational psychologist, joined us to talk about her work as she will be honored later this month with the Medallion of Merit by the Arizona chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters. Wolf is the founder and director of Young Arts who is a poet with deep connections to the Valley music community.

Yermin Ko
Erin Kong is an interdisciplinary artist (actor, writer, singer) whose written work explores the intersection of memory, identity and creation.

Her poems from "Songs of Life" were part of Kenneth Fuch's 2019 Grammy Winning album "Piano Concerto ’Spiritualist/Poems of Life/Glacier/Rush, and later this year, she will debut her next musical collaboration, "Father's Song" with composer Clint Borzoni.

Finally the 1996 song, “Across the Sea” by Weezer figures into our final discussion. The song and the story is an element of inspiration for our next guest, Erin Kong who is a poet and performer with deep connections to the Valley.

They are currently living in New York but plan to move back to Phoenix later this year. They are currently working on their second manuscript and a poetry collaboration with a Phoenix writer and performer.

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