Honolulu's own featured in upcoming West Coast reading tour

Eric Paul Shaffer to participate in "The Literary Northwest Series"

Honolulu Community College
Contact:
Billie K Takaki Lueder, (808) 845-9187
Communications & External Affairs, Chancellor's Office
Posted: Jan 26, 2012

Author Eric Paul Shaffer
Author Eric Paul Shaffer
Honolulu Community College Language Arts Instructor and Acting Division Chair Eric Paul Shaffer has been invited to participate in “The Literary Northwest Series” at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, with his friend and fellow writer Bill Porter, who publishes under the name of Red Pine on Friday, Jan. 27.
 
The two share a long and abiding interest in the work of Shih-te, the lesser known friend and companion of Han-shan, a legendary figure associated with a collection of poems from the Chinese Tang Dynasty. Porter was among the first to translate the complete known works of Shih-te. Shaffer, at the same time and unaware of Porter’s translation, intrigued by the obscurity of Shih-te, began writing poems in the “voice” of Shih-te.
 
“Bill and I have been friends for 25 years and when we met up again in Taiwan in 1991, we discovered our mutual interest. He gave me a copy of Inside Temple Walls, his translations of Shih-te’s work. Inspired, I spent the next two to three years writing many poems in Shih-te’s voice, which became my second book of poetry, Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen,” shares Shaffer. “It is an honor to be a part of this reading tour to share our work with others.”
 
For more information of “The Literary Northwest Series”, visit the Oregon State University website: http://oregonstate.edu/cla/wlf/literary-northwest-series.
 
The two will also read from their works at two area bookstores that same week at St. Johns Booksellers in Portland, Oregon, and at The Elliott Bay Book Company, in Seattle, Washington; see these websites for more information: http://www.stjohnsbooks.com/ and http://www.elliottbaybook.com/node/events/jan12/redpine.
 
Since Shaffer began working at Honolulu Community College, he has been as busy publishing as he has teaching. Since 2007, he has published 92 poems in local, national, and international literary reviews, journals, and magazines, in print and online.
 
His poems have appeared in a number of well-known national publications, such as Slate, North American Review, The Sun Magazine, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Poetry East, MARGIE, Gargoyle as well as local publications, such as Bamboo Ridge, Hawai‘i Pacific Review, Hawai‘i Review and Tinfish.
 
In addition, his poems have also been published in Australia’s Going Down Swinging, Island, and Quadrant; Canada’s Antigonish Review,CV2, Dalhousie Review, Event, Fiddlehead, and Prairie Fire; Ireland’s Poetry Ireland Review and Southword Journal; New Zealand’s Poetry NZ and Takahe; and the United Kingdom’s Iota, Magma, Orbis, Prole, SOUTH Poetry, and The Stand Magazine.
 
In 2007, Road Sign Suite: Across America and Again, Shaffer’s poetry chapbook collection of thirty-six poems about travels throughout the United States, was published by Wisconsin’s arts press Obscure Publications. Then, in 2009, Obscure Publications published Restoring Lady Liberty, a twenty-four-page poem sequence and chapbook addressing the renovation of the Statue of Liberty.
 
Also, in 2009, Shaffer’s first novel, Burn & Learn, or Memoirs of the Cenozoic Era, was published by Leaping Dog Press.
 
In 2009, for his poem “The Whistle,” Shaffer won the James M. Vaughan Prize for Poetry, an endowed award sponsored yearly by Hawai‘i Pacific University, and in 2010 won first place in the Loren Tarr Gill Poetry Competition with his poem “A Boat of Bones,” and he received third place in Loren Tarr Gill Fiction Competition with a selection from his novel-in-progress, Six Ways Home.
 
His work has also been anthologized. Earth’s Body, a forthcoming collection of ecological and environmental poetry, will include “The Open Secret of the Sea” from Lāhaina Noon (2005), his fifth book of poetry. The Rose Book (2007), a collection of writing on the subject of roses, and Entering (2011), an anthology of work from poets in and of Davis, California, both included his poem “For Veronica, Instead of a Rose.”
 
Shaffer is currently working on a re-issue of Rattle Snake Rider, his second book of poetry, with Turkey Buzzard Press, a Colorado poetry cooperative. He is also seeking a publisher for the manuscript of his sixth book of poetry, currently titled Even Further West.