syllabary: poetry + music
duo, trio & quartet performances
Kevin CK Lo ::: violin, electronics, voice
Eric Guo ::: keyboards, voice
Trinh Lê ::: voice
Steve Dickison ::: voice
We’ll open with poetry + music turns by Trinh Lê, Eric Guo, and Kevin CK Lo, then for the program’s second half a longer piece based around a 22-page poem — syllabary — sounded by two voices, beginning at either end to meet in the middle, with music. For this work, originally scheduled with different personnel for April at the Irtijal improvised music festival in Beirut, we’ll be attempting a hometown version here in San Francisco, a listening to and observing, in minutiae (as ‘syllabary’), this world’s messages:
earth said of earth you have to stop before stopping stops
Free and open to the public. Our gratitude to Artists’ Television Access.
Kevin CK Lo is a composer, choreographer, writer and artist living in Oakland. His work utilizes instruments, digital sound processing and generative programming environments to examine spatial and auditory sensitivities, topological structure and audience kinesthetic response while seeking to corrupt conventional compositional/performative/installative rationale. He is currently completing a PhD in Music Composition at UC Berkeley.
Eric Guo is a poet and musician from the Bay Area currently based in Berlin. His first chapbook and I write letters to you and I shed the first thing on my mind is out from Bottom Left Buzzer Press, Berlin. He studies literature and media at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Trinh Lê is a poet and community archivist attending to the spiritual materials of lesbian life. Her work has been supported by the Academy of American Poets, the San Francisco Public Library, and the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley. Trinh received her MFA from San Francisco State University, where she now works in the archives at The Poetry Center.
Steve Dickison from 1999 to 2024 directed The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University. Recent writings are on the work of Norma Cole, Etel Adnan, Simone Fattal, Nicholas Mirzoeff, the Umbra Workshop poets, and a conversation with Egyptian poets Safaa Fathy and Maged Zaher. A performance incorporating his syllabary will happen at Irtijal in Beirut this October.