first letter from lae
Hello from Tokyo!
I will be listing updates here on my projects and things going on in life.
July to September 2023
I began writing poetry and prose again, which has been a whole journey of rediscovery and exploration in new ways, and I submitted to literary magazines for the very first time.
Two of my paintings, "weaving tomorrows" and "thank you for existing", appear in the first issue of manywor(l)ds on August 15th.
With a used vintage point and shoot digital camera, similar to the one I used when I first started taking photos with a digital camera many years ago, I have started experimenting with capturing light and emotion without necessarily adhering to technical precision and clarity. Here are some first photographs.
I have started an itch.io account, which is empty so far, but I'm looking forward to releasing some zines or other writing / art publications there in the near future.
My name is now in lowercase: Lae Astra -> lae astra
My prose poem "Wingspread (Letter to Yanyi)" appears in the Crescent constellation of Astrolabe on September 22nd. With the support of ipso, I have a recording of the reading here.
A small poem I wrote called "spacebird music" is in Issue 5: Birdsong of tiny wren lit.
I have done a lot of painting for a first art chapbook manuscript, and learned to format a manuscript using InDesign.
Readings
I have read (among other works):
Seance in Daylight - Yuki Tanaka
some of All of It Singing - Linda Gregg
Burying the Mountain - Shangyang Fang
Rose - Li-Young Lee
Joy of Missing Out - Ana Božičević
BARBACK - Elias Baez
bug butter - [sarah] Cavar
COMRADE - Daniel Liu
Syntax Error - Siobhan Dunlop
random access memory - nat raum
I WISH I WAS CREATING - SG Huerta
I Do Everything I'm Told - Megan Fernandes
The Hurting Kind - Ada Limón
(originally sent out on tinyletter in September 2023)