also tonight and then tomorrow.

A reading and conversation with contributors to The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry featuring Dale Pendell, Pat Reed, Gail Sher, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa with editor Andrew Schelling
Friday October 20, 2006
6:00 pm @ Café Royale
800 Post (at Leavenworth), free

A reading by Diane di Prima,
Joanne Kyger and
Michael McClure
introduced by Andrew Schelling
Saturday October 21, 2006
7:30 pm @ Unitarian Center
1187 Franklin (at Geary), $10
(SFSU students & Poetry Center members free)

For decades, from early Asian immigrants and their North American counterparts traveling West across the Pacific, there has been engagement by people living in the Bay Area with the philosophy and spiritual practices of Buddhism. San Francisco poets from Kenneth Rexroth to Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen among others followed paths that helped convey elements of Buddhist thought and practice to their readers. Friday evening at Cafe Royale, several terrific local poets and contributors to The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry —Dale Pendell, Pat Reed, Gail Sher, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, along with anthology editor Andrew Schelling—will get together to read and talk openly about their poetry and Buddhist traditions. Saturday night at the Unitarian Center we'll showcase a rare group poetry reading by three of the elders among San Francisco poets: Diane di Prima, Joanne Kyger, and Michael McClure, introduced by anthology editor Andrew Schelling.

Andrew Schelling, well-known as poet and translator from India's classic Sanskrit poetry, and as a teacher at Naropa University, has in The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry (Wisdom Publishing, 2005) gathered the poetry of 29 contemporary poets whose works show discernible lines of influence connecting to the ongoing heritage from Asia: two and a half millennia of writings especially from India, China, Tibet, and Japan.