Dr. Stephanie Han

Category: Poetry

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Poetry Reading & Writing

Three Poems in Cultural Weekly and On Art…

I was happy that three poems were published in Cultural Weekly. This is a great literary journal out of LA — vibrant and energetic. I like it because there are a range of poems and also, I respect the work of Chiwan Choi, a fellow Korean American writer. He has a good sense of humor and is fiercely dedicated to creative expression. People who spend their lives writing, editing, artmaking, and fostering communities and ideas that allow people to express who we are–these are uncommon individuals.

COVID has demonstrated to us all that we need to live differently. To those who are outside of the creative fields it may behoove you to take a look at how another segment of the population lives and breathes. Why? Because as Oscar Wilde stated, artists are the future. So we can take a cue from those who are enthralled with asking the questions about what makes us human, why we are, how we are, and know that to live your life in a way that challenges and wrestles with these ideas of beauty and pathos is entirely possible. Those who do so have chosen the path that in the end, defines our civilization. That’s it: art DEFINES us. This is the raw and raging truth of art, that it is created in defiance and will. It shows us beauty and to do this, rebels against every system that exists in our life.

This is art at its best.

And know this too–yes, those who do this, the artists and writers, have the answers (or at least know what some good questions are) when it comes to thinking of new ways to live and be in this COVID and later, post-COVID world.

Creativity–art is what defines who we are as a people. We are all capable of creativity and expression–telling and living stories and colors that are imagined. To be and to do this is the great feat of our time and the great task of any life: to live in defiance of convention, to declare our being, to upend what IS to honor beauty and compassion. This is life. Truth. Mimesis. Art.

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Poetry Reading & Writing

Read & Write with Dr. Han: Creative Process, PEN-Los Angeles Emerging Voices, ‘Company’

Aloha,

A poem for National Poetry Month: ‘Company’. Stay healthy everyone. The world awaits and needs your well-being. We will be better than we were before. Keep the faith and believe in the possibility.

I’m grateful to say that I participated in the PEN Emerging Voices Workshop, part of PEN America. PEN fostered then, and continues to nurture, the idea of voice and letters, and dedicates its efforts to protecting the beauty and ferocity of our humanity as expressed in speech, words, and writing. (Shout out to Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, PEN president of Hong Kong!)

I am deeply honored to be affiliated with PEN. PEN sings to what we should be as writers, artists, and citizens. It is a special group to be a part of, particularly within the context of Los Angeles and Hollywood. PEN reminds us: The Word Matters.

THANKS TO WRITERS FROM PEN EMERGING VOICES

Huge thanks to those who were with me in the literary trenches: Shonda Buchanan Renee Simms Carl Peel Rhonda Mitchell and more–William Archila, Lisa Nunez-Hancock, and those of an earlier cohort like Noel Alumit without whom I would not even be an alum! You all as writers, poets, thinkers, and dreamers changed my life. You were and are people who honor the muse and the voice, who deeply feel the call to speak and express, to tell the truths and sorrows and joys of living.

I saw then what it meant to write from a deeply intimate space, what it meant to create with joy and hope, with compassion and belief. My anguish at not writing and living up to your work, my desire for approval, my pleasure hearing your writing, my understanding that I was in the presence of those who wrote the heart and spirit, my determination to write better. It was all there. I will always endeavor, to the best of my ability, to write the truths that all of you write in life, and in books and poems and stories; I will strive to fight the good fight of freedom of expression and personal belief; I will try always to stand for justice over greed, to live honestly in words on the page and yes, in real life.

Company

by Stephanie Han

With the tuck into hard night

we have become more

and less of who we sleep to be.

This disease is the killing.

Fear bred the dream

of kindness between toes and stars.

Through lips and water

we know justice is what we swim for.

Paddle to safety, to land, to shore.

Love is willed beyond salt and blue.

Share food on screens and know this:

We are nothing without belief.

Clap. Sing. Masks rip our worries

to shreds.  Open the hope of divine skin,

soft new and old. The fat stored

for lean times? Use it up. Now.

Company calls. You. Me.

The distance is as real as our

bicycle hearts. The stranger

across the street, whose eyes

tell us that holy is who we

are and were, is always, always

the best china guest

we invite into our home.

Categories
Poetry Reading & Writing

Read & Write with Dr. Han: Poetry in the Pandemic

Day 1

Today I began teaching. I wrote this between classes:

Poetry in the Pandemic

How do I tell them that
this is the test for the gods?
For we are alone here
as we enter, as we leave.
And the date has only moved up.
This trial run is just a test,
a black and white target of descending
numbers on a screen. A series of
red and yellow warnings.
What we learn now is the solitude
of the self. The truth of dust
we ache to sweep and hide.
This is it. This is the fullness of our life.
in these rooms.
The abundance of who we are
has always been with us.
It has never been anything but—
we simply adorn our ears
instead of listening. That’s over now.
Now is the mirror we must summon.
Joy. Love. The patient breath of kindness.
It’s here and has always been
a leaf, a tide, a laugh,
a black rock under a sun.
Face the myth that others
have written. Hold in your hand
the heart you so longed to bury.
Sing.

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