PORT TOWNSEND — A bilingual reading and performance titled “The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse: A Translation in Celebration & Song” will bring together a poet, a singer and a player this Sunday afternoon at the Rose Theatre, 235 Taylor St.
Bill Porter, the translator known as Red Pine, will read the poetry of Stonehouse, the 14th-century Zen master and mountain hermit, while vocalist Jessika Kenney and violist Eyvind Kang offer music in this 1 p.m. program.
Admission is $15, and Red Pine’s books will be available for purchase and signing.
Stonehouse, considered one of the greatest Chinese Buddhist poets, used poetry as his medium of instruction. Near the end of his life, monks asked him to record what he found of interest on his mountain, and Stonehouse delivered to them hundreds of poems.
Newly revised, with the Chinese originals and Red Pine’s abundant commentary, The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse is for Zen students and other lovers of the outdoors.
Porter, who lives in Port Townsend, has received the PEN Translation Prize, a Guggenheim Literary Fellowship and other awards for his work with Chinese literature.
Kenney, a Seattle resident and adjunct faculty member at the Cornish College of the Arts, practices the traditional vocal arts of classical Persian Avaz and central Javanese Sindhenan. Since 2004, she has studied and performed with the world-renowned ney player and vocalist Ostad Hossein Omoumi.
For more information about Sunday’s performance cosponsored by the Rose, Copper Canyon Press and Seattle’s Frye Art Museum, see www.RoseTheatre.com or phone 360-385-1039.
