writing

books

Postcards from the New World, chapbook, April 2018, Paper Nautilus Press, (Debut Series Prize winner).  I'm doubly excited because Aaliyah Gupta's fabulous art is on the cover!  The chapbook launch reading at Hugo House was fantastic, thanks to Gabrielle Bates, Troy Osaki, and Dujie Tahat!  Pictures here.  Video below under Watch/Listen.  Order the chapbook here.

These poems are wholly original and loaded with compassion, intellect, and lyric interrogation. Shankar Narayan’s Postcards from the New World explores proximity, intimacy, identity, violence, and diaspora with a knowing, prophetic allure. I love these poems for their epistemological underpinnings and their graceful invention. Gorgeous surprises fuel this wonderful debut. Fiercely talented and equally humane, Narayan is one of my favorite new poets.

—Lee Herrick, Fresno Poet Laureate Emeritus, 2015-17

This series of thirty-one poems meditates on connection and dissolution, construction and deconstruction, selves and societies.  In a violent historical moment, when rupture and brokenness (the breaking of bodies and the breaking of the word) are so evident, the speaker in these poems announces a belief that there is (there has to be) some good, some optimism, some light from a new sun if "Entanglement is a whole country."  In an eerie echo of Whitman, Narayan writes that "Entanglement  means  /what happens to you happens / to me," not just as cosmic fact but as an ethical binding of various selves—the constructed energies of the speaker (abused by the world, consumed by idealism), the inherited and problematic threads of the world around the speaker (distant traditions as tethers to a faraway land, the violent and virulent racism of the America right at hand).  In a song driven by words from our moment, Narayan has given us a compelling series of poems that will be worthy of rereading in the coming years.

—Tod Marshall, Washington State Poet Laureate, 2016-18

selected Journals AND MULTIMEDIA

Oral History Examination, River Heron Review, Fall 2020 (Pushcart Prize nominated and winner of the River Heron Poetry Prize for 2020, selected by Alina Stefanescu)

Unbordered, Christmas Tree, Kurta, and Diasphoria, Cascadia Magazine, December 2019 (also featuring the amazing artwork of Monyee Chau)

Ode to Road Rage, Arc Poetry Magazine #87, Summer 2019

Instruction Manual for Child, Moss, Volume 4, Summer 2019

The Times Asks Poets to Describe the Haze Over Seattle, Washington State Poet Laureate website, courtesy of Claudia Castro Luna. This poem was also anthologized in Take a Stand: Art Against Hate.

Grass, Flyway Journal of Writing and the Environment, Fall 2017 (Pushcart Prize nominated, annual Iowa Sweet Corn Poetry Prize winner)

We Are All Something, To CEO@Ancestry.com (Pushcart Prize nominated), and Duwamish, Crab Creek Review, Vol. 1, Spring 2017

Psalm From the Old World, Really System Issue 14 (La Mer Systyle), Spring 2017

Oppenheimer, Really System Issue 14 (La Mer Systyle), Spring 2017

Belonging, Jaggery, A DesiLit Arts and Literature Journal, Winter 2017

Immigrant Life in Bohemia, Raven Chronicles Vol. 24 (Home), Winter 2017

If Maps Were Hummingbirds, Panoply Zine, Winter 2017

X, Raven Chronicles Vol. 19 (Race -- Under Our Skin), Winter 2014 (Pushcart Prize nominated)

Police Department Demonstrates New Drone, to Help Allay Concerns, Mochila Review, Vol. 15, 2013

Selected anthologies

Note—if you buy any of the books below, please consider doing so via OpenBooks, Seattle’s very own local poetry emporium!

Red Creek Fir, Kubota, in Worth More Standing (upcoming 2022):  Speaking of anthologies, I’ve mentioned to some of you how excited I am, as both a dendrophile and a Canadaphile, to have two poems included in Caitlin Press’s upcoming anthology, Worth More Standing.  This book is a love letter to trees, and a tribute to their increasingly critical role in trying to head off our impending environmental apocalypse—timely in light of the ongoing activism at Fairy Creek to save the tiny remaining sliver of old growth on Vancouver Island.  The book will be out in October—but you can pre-order now.

Moon Trees, Love Letter from Immigrant to Octopus, in Cascadia: A Field Guide Through Art, Ecology, and Poetry (upcoming 2023):  I’ve mentioned to all of you how excited I am to have written the poems for two iconic northwest species for this upcoming anthology—the giant Pacific octopus, and the Douglas-fir.  The guide is now set to be published in spring of 2023 through Mountaineers books.  It’s a long wait, but it’ll be worth it!

Kubota, in Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden. One of my favorite places in Seattle, Kubota Garden, now has its own book! It’s from Chin Music Press, and it’s called Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden. Spirited Stone is a gorgeous coffee-table anthology featuring poetry, photography, and essays centered around Kubota Garden, a special place in Seattle with a deep and meaningful immigrant history.  (Feel free to check out the website dedicated to the book, which supplements the content in the book itself.) I’m excited to be featured in this beautiful book!

 Three-Spirit Prayer Before the Tandav, Invocation for the Impossible Present, and Psalm from the Old World, in The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit. The World I Leave You, edited by Lee Herrick and Leah Silvieus, centers around themes of spirituality in the work of many of today’s most incisive Asian-American poets. The contributor list is incredible—a who’s who of Asian-American contemporary poetry. I feel fortunate and blessed to be included!

Thanks and The Times Asks Poets to Describe the Haze Over Seattle, in Take a Stand: Art Against Hate. A Raven Chronicles-produced anthology, Take a Stand—Art Against Hate is among the best social justice poetry collections I’ve had the pleasure of reading—it includes poems that were already favorites of mine, along with new surprises. And new for 2021: this book was one of the winners of the Washington Book Award! Well worth checking out.

How To Run Above the Cliffs, in Washington 129: Poems Selected by Tod Marshall, State Poet Laureate. I was fortunate to be included in this very special anthology of Washington poets—one for every year of statehood!—curated by the tireless Todd Marshall.

This Is Not a Translation, in Poets Unite! The LitFuse @10 Anthology. Very excited indeed to be a part of an anthology in honor of a writing space that has meant a lot to me over the years. Litfuse, held annually in Tieton, WA, is a truly special community, and the book is wonderful.

The Moment I Realize Living in Seattle is Killing Me, in Poets Unite! The LitFuse@10 Anthology

Still-Life Triptych with Wolf, by AI Robo-Poet, in The 2019 Jack Straw Writers Anthology

Watch/Listen

Free Seminar: A one-hour seminar introducing Sufi poetry — which is also the subject of an upcoming class of mine via writers.com, You Are Drinker and You Are Wine.

Reading: Raw Video from PoetryBridge Reading, April 12, 2023 (I’m the second featured reader):

Reading: Voices for the Ukrainian People, March 2022 (I begin to read at around 36:00):

Interview and reading: For the Spirited Stone anthology, with the Kubota Garden foundation.

Audio only: Robo-Poet, an interview and reading with Kathleen Flenniken, former Washington State Poet Laureate.

Audio only: Three poems from my Black Box series, as part of Dean Davis’s Pictures of Poets project.

Reading with Claudia Castro Luna, PoetryBridge, January 2019:

Reading at Hugo House's chapbook launch event for Postcards from the New World, April 25, 2018:

Reading at WordsWest, March 15, 2017 (audio only)

Raven Chronicles Reading for Poets Examine Race: Under Our Skin, Spring 2014.  An old reading, but I'm keeping it on here because of my fabulous co-readers, and because these issues only seem more relevant over time: