Hybrid Event: Gogyohka Flash with Peter Fiore

 

3:00 pm Thursday May 19th
Hybrid: Gogyohka Flash As A Literary Form with Peter Fiore

This event will be streamed via Zoom, and in-person at the library for a limited number of participants -- please RSVP to amcdonough@clamsnet.org!  

The first thing you might ask is, “why use the word Gogyohka?”  Gogyohka is a five line poem, based on the tanka and pioneered by the Japanese poet Enta Kusakabe.  Instead of determining the line breaks by syllable count, Gogyohka determines the length of the line by the breath, the natural pause a speaker takes in expressing ideas, images, and thoughts.  Readers like M.Kei have suggested that Gogyohka and Tanka are different in Japanese, but in English all Tanka are basically Gogyohka. It is truly an international form which can be written by anyone in any language.  Everyone breaths.

Enta’s original intention was spread the Gogyohka word all over the world.  Unfortunately, Enta has patented the term Gogyohka in Japan so that only he can use it.   Rather than further his cause this has actually slowed it down,  at least in America, where Gogyohka activity has all but disappeared.  There are journals that publish Gogyohka, like Atlas Poetica, Skylark, and 100 Gourds, but they all use the work Tanka, perhaps out of deference to Enta.  As a form of protest against anyone trying to privatize a literary form, Peter uses the word Gogyohka as much as he can.

Peter Fiore is the author of four books: text messages, tanka poetry published by Mushroom Press; flowers to the torch, tanka prose published by Keibooks; when angels speak of love, a novella published by Loose Moose Press; and Dissolving Boundaries, American miniatures published by Mushroom Press.

Peter started painting in the winter of 2018/19 as an antidote to the news—as Sun Ra has suggested, art as medicine for a nightmare. His work is on display at Ona, a gift shop on Main Street in Tarrytown, NY and he is an artist in residence at Pam Nelson’s Pilates Works in Carmel, NY. Peter lives in Mahopac, NY where he paints, writes and plays tennis, in order to meet creative and exotic fellow travelers.

In-person attendees will meet in the Vineyard History Room on the main floor of the library, and bring your own writing materials—paper, pens, notebook.