Discipline: Literature – poetry

Shin Yu Pai

Discipline: Literature – poetry
Region: Seattle, WA
MacDowell Fellowships: 2003, 2004, 2011
More: shinyupai.com

same / cloth

(a poem for Leona Coakley-Spring)


the white robe, a length of rope
a pointed hat: hate symbols

evidence of a message much
louder than "go back to where
you came from,"

there are people here who will hurt you

a veiled threat that burns
bright as any wooden cross

planted in the earth as if
to stake a claim, what if we

were to sow seeds of
solidarity for a stranger

public “victim” of a hate crime
the “black business owner”

who believed the best about
another human - instead

of recognizing the glory suit
for its cut-out eye holes

saw a choir robe
to sing the holy gospel -

to know this neighbor
by her name, to recover

some deeper meaning of “clan”

same / cloth

Shin Yu Pai is the author of several books of poetry including Aux Arcs (La Alameda, 2013), Adamantine (White Pine, 2010), Sightings (1913 Press, 2007), and Equivalence (La Alameda, 2003). In 2020, Entre Rios Books will publish ENSO — a mid-career survey that encompasses 20 years of work across disciplines including poetry, book arts, installation, animation, and public art. Her nonfiction work has appeared in YES! Magazine, Tricycle, International Examiner, and City Arts. She served as the fourth Poet Laureate of the City of Redmond from 2015 to 2017.

Portrait by Daniel Carrillo

Studios

Calderwood

Shin Yu Pai worked in the Calderwood studio.

In the winter of 1998, motivated by his passion for reading, Stanford Calderwood donated funds for a new writers’ studio. Burr-McCallum Architects of Williamstown, MA, provided the award-winning design in 1999; and the construction of the handsome studio was completed in time for its first artist to arrive early in 2000. With a series of double-hung casement…

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