Award-winning writer Cathy Song will lend her gently compelling voice to Bamboo Ridge Press and Manoa Valley Theatre this weekend, but there will be a new rhythm to her words.
Song will be doing an online reading of her new volume, “All the Love in the World,” at Manoa Valley Theatre at 4 p.m. Saturday to raise funds for the two institutions. It is her first work in prose, coming amidst sustained acclaim for her deft poetry. The book was inspired partly by the death of her father in 2016.
“It was the impetus of my father dying that I really wanted to write about my father’s life, and I felt that short stories seemed to be the best way to handle a lot of information that I couldn’t do in poetry,” Song said, adding that the Elizabeth Strout novel “Olive Kitteridge” served as a model. “These are definitely discreet stories, but the way I grouped them they do have a narrative line.”
She wrote most of the stories in an intense burst of activity, as the first anniversary of her father’s death approached in 2017. “I could feel myself going into a funk, and I actually spent one week of intense writing, and I pretty much finished it in a week,” she said. “It was kind of amazing. I don’t know if I’ll ever have an experience like that again,” adding that in comparison, she’s been working on a single poem since March.
Song said she found it “kind of easier” to work in prose rather than poetry because “you have a lot of words at your disposal,” whereas with poetry a single word “has to do so much work.”
Song has an earned acclaim as the writer of subtly sentimental, moving poems about family, tradition and community. A graduate of Kalani High School, Wellesley College and Boston University, she received the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for her first book of poetry “Picture Bride,” a reference to her grandmother, a Korean immigrant. Her subsequent works “Cloud Moving Hands,” “The Land of Bliss,” “School Figures” and “Frameless Windows, Squares of Light” have garnered widespread recognition and multiple prizes, including the Hawaii Award for Literature and the Elliot Cades Award for Literature.
The reading will include a Q&A and can be viewed on either facebook.com/manoa
valleytheatre or facebook.com/bambooridge. Donations are requested.
“They do good work for the community, and I couldn’t imagine a community without a literary journal like Bamboo Ridge or a local theater like Manoa Valley,” Song said.
“It’s going to be the first of its kind for us, our first foray into virtual content,” said Misty Sanico of Bamboo Ridge Press.
