New Lao Minnesotan art exhibit opens In January: Refuge of the InvisibLao

We're less than a week away from the new exhibit “Refuge of the InvisibLao: A Visual Essay”  opening at the Vine Arts Center for two weeks. The exhibit is the first event in the country this year to mark 40 years of the Lao Diaspora and will run from January 10th to January 24th. Part of the exhibit will return in April at the Brooklyn Center Library for 2 months, but there will be many parts of this exhibit that will be shown only in January.

This ground-breaking grassroots exhibit will display original art, historic photography and oral histories of Lao refugees who've been coming to the US since 1975 as refugees and immigrants. In Minnesota, there are over 12,000 Lao who have rebuilt their lives there, with many living in the Greater Twin Cities metropolitan region. Minnesota is closely tied with Washington for having the third largest population of Lao in the US after California and Texas. There are almost half a million refugees with roots in Laos in America today, but few understand the labyrinthine road they took to get here both outside of our community and in it.

The exhibit has come together thanks to the journal Little Laos on the Prairie, the Laos In the House collective and the Lao American artist Chantala Kommanivanh who've all been at work for over five years to get ready for this event.

Little Laos on the Prairie Founding Editor, Chanida Phaengdara Potter will share many photos and interviews from her personal collection. Several photos from my personal collection will also be on display there including rare images from the 1960s and early 1980s.

The process of recovering these images has often been difficult. There weren't many photographers active during the conflict, instead typically stationed in neighboring Vietnam, Thailand or Cambodia. The subjects n these photos often never saw themselves and the reports almost never followed up on what happened to these men and women or their children.

The opening reception on January 10th will feature many special guests, food and beverages. Chantala Kommanivanh will come from Chicago to discuss his art at the exhibit. The exhibit is free and open to the public. Originals and prints of artwork will be available for sale. All proceeds goes to The Lao Diaspora Project and their collaborators to continue their work.

The Vine Arts Center is located at 2637 27th Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

A nice nod from Otterbein University

In the latest issue of the Towers alumni magazine for Otterbein University, they gave me a nice shoutout for DEMONSTRA. Several poems in the collection were inspired or informed by my years there between 1991-1997. I appreciate the mention.  

The Tuk-Tuk Diaries: Preludes and Postcards

Starting the year off right, here's a new retrospective collection of mine I released yesterday: The Tuk-Tuk Diaries: Preludes and Postcards (1991-2012). It collects the poems from at least three of my out-of-print books, seven chapbooks and other various projects that weren't widely available when first published. In total, this collection spans approximately 217 pages of verse. None of the poems in DEMONSTRA are included.

There are a few exclusions, but they're works that won't be missed by the ages. A good deal of my 1990s juvenalia isn't included. A few poems from defunct online journals are also missing. I have notes that I submitted to them, but some were based from Myspace or similarly fleeting sites. Let the lesson be: Keep redundant copies of your poems around, even if it seems excessive.

I wouldn't consider this an official "new" book of mine because it's missing a number of elements, such as annotations and acknowledgements. Further, 99% of the material has appeared previously, it's just arranged a little more differently than usual.

For me, artistically, however, it was important to metaphorically kick these verses out into the world so that I can now concentrate on creating a new body of work, particularly a number of projects calling for my attention including my Laodyssey: Laomerica 40 and the Laopocalypse texts. And, of course, getting the definitive Deluxe edition of DEMONSTRA finished once and for all to all of my kickstarter backers from 2013. Oof. Best laid plans of mice and men is an understatement.

But to keep this short: Happy New Year, and keep inspired!

[Poem] Fragment of a Dream of Atlantean Yellows

art by S.R. Bhanja

You are a mist for me, you thing of nevers known.
I weep your nameless name in my mind,
Your gaze a lightless inferno within a midnight hurricane.
You are a mist for me, you, beneath your shadow crown,
Thoughtless as steam between decrepit cogs and wind.

Trees make ready for autumn.
This city: Is that old burning Rome or Vientiane?
Clouds are savaged within the darkness,
Street lights always flashing to imagined jazz
Over concrete sidewalks, the smell of acid rain.
You are a mist for me, you, oceanic, absent

As a page in the Book of the Dead,
An asylum made of rivers and paint,
Howling, crawling without destination or intent,

A mouth of subatomic questions fluid
In its variations of impossibility
No mere human eye can taint.

-Originally appeared in Innsmouth Magazine, and later DEMONSTRA (2013)