Poetry that is produced orally and poetry that is written have often been pitted as fundamentally different, the former an ephemeral, inspired process and the latter thoughtful and labored. Oral poems are uttered, only to be forgotten if not remembered, while written poems are recorded and edited, over and over again, until the poet deems them complete. This distinction then extends to how oral and written cultures are understood more generally.

On Thursday September 12, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop is proud to present a prerecorded conversation between Craig Santos Perez, Ivanna Sang Een Yi, Aone van Engelenhoven, and Jan-Henry Gray, during which our esteemed speakers use poetry as a lens to discuss the way language evolves and changes. What are the differences and similarities between poems produced orally and poems that are written? How does poetry change a written tradition? How does it change an oral tradition? What role does it play in either?

The talk will be posted to our YouTube and will be available to watch at any point afterwards.

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Craig Santos Perez is an Indigenous Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the author of seven books of poetry and the co-editor of nine anthologies.

Ivanna Sang Een Yi is an Assistant Professor of Korea Studies at Cornell University. As a scholar of Korean literature, culture, and performance, her research focuses on the performative dimensions of living oral traditions as they interact with written literature and the environment from the 18th century to the present. She has published on contemporary Korean poetry, the relationship of the p’ansori epic storytelling tradition and the more-than-human world, and the storying of land in the Indigenous oral traditions of the Americas.

Aone van Engelenhoven holds a PhD in Linguistics from Leiden University where he now works as a University Lecturer in Southeast Asian linguistics. He has published extensively on linguistic topics in Indonesia, Timor-Leste and the Moluccan diaspora in The Netherlands. Being of Dutch-Indonesian descent he is a bilingual native speaker of Dutch and Indonesian. His present research focuses on the semiotics and mnemonics of oral storytelling and poetry and the use of Indonesian and indigenous languages for the transfer of ritual knowledge. His latest publication is an edition on oral traditions in insular Southeast Asia published a Cambridge Scholars Publishers.

Jan-Henry Gray is the author of Documents (BOA Editions, Ltd.), selected by D.A. Powell as the winner A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and the chapbook Selected Emails (speCt! Books). He’s received fellowships from Kundiman, Undocupoets, and the Cooke Foundation. He was born in the Philippines and has lived in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and Brooklyn. He is an Assistant Professor at Adelphi University in New York.