World Today
Sijo Events in Chicago
(April 9 - April 10)
video length 6 min 39 sec
WIth Professor David McCann, Harvard University
UIC Campus, April 9, Sijo Workshop for English teachers
Harold Washington Library April 9, Introduction to Sijo
Andrew Bae Gallery April 9, Enchanted Evening of Sijo, Arts & Wine
David McCann, Professor Harvard University; Director, Korea Institute
Following is a copy from the Boston Globe Interview article -
The new haiku?
Harvard professor David McCann says America is ready for sijo
"CAMBRIDGE - The class on writing Asian poetry that Professor David McCann teaches at Harvard includes units on Chinese quatrains, Korean sijo, and Japanese haiku, the last of which is so well-known that McCann’s students had haiku days in middle school. Why, McCann wondered, couldn’t the three-line Korean sijo that he loves enjoy the same widespread recognition as the three-line, 17-syllable haiku?
With that, McCann, a poet and professor of Korean literature, embarked on a mission. He is the founder and chief marketing officer of a campaign to popularize the sijo (pronounced SHEE-jo), a traditional poem of 43 to 45 syllables whose third line contains a twist on the theme developed in the first two.
This spring McCann hosted a sijo festival at Harvard - the first anywhere, he believes, to feature both Korean and English sijo. A sijo contest for middle and high school students which McCann judges attracted 450 entries from two dozen states this year, up from 160 in its 2008 inaugural year. Bo-Leaf Books just published McCann’s “Urban Temple: Sijo, Twisted & Straight,’’ one of the first anthologies of sijo written in English.
“Students who have a haiku day, when they grow up and see a Japanese novel, they’ll be interested,’’ McCann says. “There could also be a sijo day. Children might find sijo something they can try, then one day see a Korean novel translated and say, ‘I can read it.’ ..."
~ Boston Globe .... read full interview
April 9 (Fri) 10 am -3 pm: English Sijo Writing Workshop headed by Harvard Professor David McCann for high school English teachers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Student Center East (Suite#613), 750 S. Halsted St. Chicago
Detail info...
April 10 (Sat) 11 am-1 pm: lecture on sijo and sijo Reading by Professor David McCann for the general public in the Chicago Author’s Room on the 7th floor of the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Chicago (312-948-8939)
Detail info...
April 10 (Sat) 6-8pm: “Enchanted Evening with Sijo, Wine, and Arts”, sijo reading and reception with Professor David McCann at the Andrew Bae Gallery, 300 W. Superior St. Chicago (312-335-8601) - Detail info
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