Thursday, November 23, 2017

Nirala Poetry Poster: Yuyutsu Sharma’s “You are a New Yorker”

Yuyutsu Sharma’s “You are a New Yorker”
https://www.amazon.com/dp/8182500729
Art By Phil Padwe

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Celebrated Hollywood composer Chad Canon's "Dreams of a Sleeping World" - Second rehearsal in the Academia Philharmonicorum, Slovenia, with Yuyutsu Sharma's Quaking Cantos poem in it

Friday, November 10, 2017

Yuyutsu Sharma honorary mention in New York Times piece on Otis Kidwell Burger!

N.Y. / REGION

A West Village Warrior Fights, and Writes, On

Character Study

By COREY KILGANNON NOV. 8, 2017

Otis Kidwell Burger in front of her townhouse, where she has lived for nearly 60 years.CreditYana Paskova for The New York Times

“Poetry Reading, 6 p.m.,” read the sign taped outside the doorway of the Bethune Street townhouse where Otis Kidwell Burger, 93, has lived for nearly 60 years.

Inside, from a rocker cushioned with red velvet, Ms. Kidwell Burger presided over the dozen or so poets gathered in her parlor, a cozy haven with Oriental rugs, a working fireplace and shelves of old books and general clutter.

Ms. Kidwell Burger, a writer and sculptor, lives with her two cats in the 1836 building that she and her then-husband, the late literary agent Knox Burger, bought in 1959. Its upper floors served as a rooming house, with rooms starting at $8 per week, she said.

“It was full of strange folks,” she said.

The room next to the magician was rented as a writing space by the author and activist Jane Jacobs, who worked on her seminal book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” there, Ms. Kidwell Burger said.

“Jane lived around the corner on Hudson Street, but she had a house full of teenagers and it was quieter here,” said Ms. Kidwell Burger, who joined forces with Ms. Jacobs in the ’60s to resist projects threatening the small-town character of the neighborhod

She recalled being with Ms. Jacobs at a 1968 public hearing for Robert Moses’s plan to build a downtown expressway.

“I said to her, ‘Is there any way we can stop this?’” Ms. Kidwell Burger recalled. “She leaped onto the stage and pulled the stenographer’s notes from the machine and was immediately arrested.”

Ms. Kidwell Burger has written several books, as well as poetry, science fiction and book reviews for magazines.CreditYana Paskova for The New York Times

“It hit the papers and brought attention to this stupid plan and people thought better of it,” she said.

Ms. Kidwell Burger long ago cleared out the rooming house operation upstairs but continued to rent out two upper floors. During the ’80s, the actress Jennifer Grey was a tenant, so Matthew Broderick was often around, and other young celebrities.

“I remember Madonna sitting on my stoop,” said Ms. Kidwell Burger, who lived as a child at the top of Todt Hill in Staten Island. She was a zoology major at Cornell University and settled afterward in Greenwich Village.

She and her husband hobnobbed with writers like Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut, a family friend who set part of his novel, “Mother Night,” at the Bethune Street townhouse.

Ms. Kidwell Burger raised two daughters, made and sold her sculptures, and wrote several books, as well as poetry, science fiction and book reviews for numerous magazines.

Her latest book came out this year “Cats, Love & Other Surprises,” illustrated by her daughter Katherine Wilcox Burger. She has a docket of public readings lined up.

Ms. Kidwell Burger, who turns 94 on Nov. 9, writes on a Smith Corona Sterling typewriter at a foldout desk. Her assistant then reads the work and types it into a computer.

Ms. Kidwell Burger is still an outspoken activist. She does not care for President Donald J. Trump, and she has been known to walk the neighborhood holding a cardboard sign with the message, “Nasty Man, Lock Him Up.”

Yuyutsu Sharma, left, reads his poem at Ms. Kidwell Burger’s weekly gathering.CreditYana Paskova for The New York Times

She is also territorial. After flowers were recently stolen from her sidewalk planter, she taped a warning note “to the creep who keeps stealing these plants.”

Her Sunday evening invitation-only salons have a Bohemian feel. Many of the poets date back to the Village in the ’50s, and Ms. Kidwell Burger can reminisce about longshoremen working the piers and seaman living in local rooming houses and frequenting salty bars. She can recall freight trains clattering by on the tracks that are now part of the High Line.

“Now it’s one of the more expensive places in the city to live,” she said. “The billionaires are pushing out the millionaires.”

On a recent Sunday night, part of the reading was devoted to a cache of 45 sonnets that Ms. Kidwell Burger wrote some 50 years ago and then left in a drawer until dusting them off recently.

“They’re going to start comparing you to Edna St. Vincent Millay,” said Michael Graves, a poet and salon guest that night.

Mr. Graves then read a poem of his about an undocumented immigrant living in New York. Erik La Prade read his poem about the poet W.H. Auden, who lived on St. Marks Place in the East Village.

Shelley Seccombe read her poem “Interlude,” which ruminated on the challenges and rewards of negotiating New York’s alternate-side parking regulations. Yuyutsu Sharma, a Nepalese poet who treks in the Himalayas, read his poem about earning the right to be called a New Yorker.

Of course, as the old Village’s radical and political roots give way to the forces of soaring real estate, Ms. Kidwell Burger’s townhouse, which she bought for $30,000, is now appraised at $12 million, she said.

“People are constantly calling and leaving me notes asking if I want to sell,” said Ms. Kidwell Burger. She’s not interested. “The good lord isn’t making any more Village townhouses.”

East Bay Express-News for the Berkeley Reading!

One Day OnlyUser Submitted

Himalayan Workshop with Poet Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma 
Sat., Nov. 11, 12-2:30 p.m.
510-981-6148
ischneider@cityofberkeley.info
Free
www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/events/himalayan-workshop-poet-yuyutsu-rd-sharma

Advance signups recommended by calling 510-981-6148. Join us in the 4th floor Story Room for an exciting workshop with Himalayan poet Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma. Using mantras, prayers, folk music and striking panoramic slides of Nepal from his book, Nepal Trilogy, itinerant poet, anthologist, and translator, Yuyutsu, will discuss the oral and folk traditions of the Himalayas and read poems from his travels in three regions of the Himalayas --Everest, Annapurnas and Helambu. Advance Signups Recommended by calling 510-981-6148. First come, first served at the door if seats available.


Berkeley Public Library, Central Branch
2090 Kittredge St. (at Shattuck Ave.)
BERKELEY-DOWNTOWN Be the first to review this location!



Literary Events, One Day Only, User Submitted

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Books Are Magic, Brooklyn by Yuyutsu Sharma

During our restless

search for a newly

opened Bookstore

‘Books Are Magic’

on Smith Street

or some street close by,

we came across

a dead warbler,

a tiny Amazon miracle,

greyish mantle, ornate

orange head and bluish wings.

Wearing a child’s smile,

it lay still

and when Jack touched it

with the tip of his walking stick,

it didn’t break

into a swift flight

only got pushed away.

A Prothonotary warbler,

a tiny barrister

of swampy woodlands
of Nicaragua,
it lay prostrate,

the lost prayer

of a beaten warrior.

‘They die every day

in thousands,’

Jack croaked in

his shrill Brooklyn

accent, as we moved on.

“Over a billion

dead so far

hitting themselves

against glassy panes

of the Hi-rise.

They should have

a legislation to put

mock hawks on the glass panes,”

he complained,

"so they wouldn’t

dare to go near them

and drop dead.”

Like things that

once flew and shone

in our skies like magic.

@ Yuyutsu Sharma

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Himalayan Workshop with Poet Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma

https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/events/himalayan-workshop-poet-yuyutsu-rd-sharma

Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma

Yuyutsu at NYU

12

November 11, 2017 - 12:00pm-2:30pm 

Central Library

Advance signups recommended by calling 510-981-6148. Join us in the 4th floor Story Room for an exciting cultural and writing workshop with Himalayan poet Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma. Using mantras, prayers, folk music and striking panoramic slides of Nepal from his book, Nepal Trilogy, itinerent poet, anthologist, and translator, Yuyutsu, will discuss the oral and folk traditions of the Himalayas and read poems from his travels in three regions of the Himalayas --Everest, Annapurnas and Helambu. Reading from his books of poetry, Annapurna Poems and Milarepa’s Bones, Helambu, and more recent, Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems, Yuyutsu will share Nepal's history and describe how poets have played key roles in the making of Nepal and ushering in democracy. Yulyutsu's books will be available for sale and autographing. Attendance limited to 50 people. Advance Signups Recommended by calling 510-981-6148.First come, first served at the door if seats available.

Yuyutsu was a shaman in his childhood. He spent time with the Himalayan sages as his father was a devout follower of certain religious holy men who do not stay in one place more than a couple of days. He believes his current wandering poet's path is a result of his association with Naga ascetics. In the workshop, Yuyutsu will read poetry from his recent travel books, Space Cake Amsterdam and Other Poems from Europe and North America and A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems, and will discuss the art of writing poems as the poet travels across continents.

Yuyutsu is the 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.

See Yuyutsu's blogspot.

Event Category: 

Performing Arts, Special, Book Discussions/Events
Export to Calendar: Add this event to your calendar (iCal).

https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/events/himalayan-workshop-poet-yuyutsu-rd-sharma

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Brooklyn Launch of Yuyutsu Sharma's Eternal Snow

Saturday, Oct 21, at 6 pm to 9 pm Brooklyn Launch of Yuyutsu Sharma’s Eternal Snow and A Workshop with the Himalayan Poet, Hosted by Yoga Sole, Windsor Terrace Brooklyn – 254 Windsor Place – Brooklyn, NY 11215 Tel: 718.541.1382 , Reading$ 10pp Workshop $25pp Reading included) www.yogasole.com Host : Evalena Leedy evalena@yogasole.com

Boston Launch of Eternal Snow at Out of the Blue too Gallery, Cambridge

Monday, Oct 23, at 7:00 pm: Yuyutsu Sharma Reading at Boston Launch of Eternal Snow with Timothy Gager at Out of the Blue Gallery, in the Stone Soup Poetry Series, at 541 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge. Host: Chad Parenteau