Our canceled panel becomes a collective blog post

With thanks to Brandon Shimoda, Split This Rock, and Future Poem for the space to imagine what might have happened: “At 1 p.m. on Friday, March 27, five Japanese American poets—Brian Komei Dempster, W. Todd Kaneko, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Brynn Saito, and I—did not give a reading at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, D.C. We did not gather before an audience to share and discuss our work, and the work of other Japanese American poets. We did not gather to discuss the literature of Japanese American incarceration. We did not gather…”