Poetography, where pen and camera meet
March 11, 2010 by Lynn Knell
Filed under Arts, Coming events, Salmon Arm
Apr 3 – May 1, Salmon Arm –
“Leaving My Found Eden: A Poetography Exhibit”, showcasing of the work of award-winning poetographer Ron L. Zheng is coming to SAGA Public Art Gallery in April and is a must-see event so mark the dates April 3rd to May 1st on your calendar.
Ron L. Zheng is a celebrated author, photographer, Tanka poet and graphic artist. Born in China, raised in Japan and having lived many years in the US, Mr. Zheng draws upon his diverse cultural experience in each of the traditions to skillfully weave the very best of black and white photography and English-language poetry into beautiful tapestries, visual stories that reach the souls of people with a wide range of backgrounds. He calls this art Poetography.
Tanka poems are short, lyrical poetry, structured in 31 syllables that are arranged in groups of 5,7,5,7 and 7. Similar to haiku, it is the oldest and most popular form of poetry in Japan.
The first book of his work, Leaving My Found Eden: A Poetography Collection, won the da Vinci Eye Award (for book cover design), and has been named as a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Award (for poetry), the National Best Books 2009 Awards (for photography and G&L non-fiction), the 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Award (for cover design) and the 2010 Reader Views Literary Awards (for Humanities). His poem, “Train Door Opening” won a First Honorable Mention in the 6th International Tanka Festival in 2009.
Mr. Zheng is a member of the Academy of American Poets, Tanka Canada, the Tanka Society of America and the American Institute of Graphic Artists, and he has been a contributor to such tanka journals as Modern English Tanka and Gusts.
His work has been exhibited in Vancouver, Port Moody, Parksville, Toronto, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Pomona, New York City, Washington, DC, Portland, Seattle, Jersey City and Nishinomiya, Japan. You may view more of his poetography at http://www.poetography.org.
To show his support for the SAGA Public Art Gallery and the Salmon Arm art community, Mr. Zheng will be contributing half of the sales of his art work to the gallery.
The SAGA Public Art Gallery is located at 70 Hudson Ave. NE in Salmon Arm and is open from 11am to 4pm Tuesday to Saturday each week. For more information, view the website at http://www.sagapublicartgallery.ca or contact the gallery by phone at 250-832-1170.
I feel that our SAGA is a local gallery and should not be promoting the works of US based International personalities who have no feet upon Shuswap soil. In exceptional cases I can accept an art show from Canadian artists who have no roots here, but do not believe it is right to forfeit our precious gallery space to ‘foreigners’ when we have local talent seeking forum to display their talent.
It’s the responsibility of the gallery to expose the community to a variety of artwork, including international artists. And, in this case, the artist is donating half of the proceeds of the sale of the art work to the gallery. How many Canadian artists are willing to do that?
As an amateur photographer and poet I feel this is very inspirational and intend to forward the article to a friend in Norway who shares my pastime. I expect others will be inspired as well.