Poetry comes to life in new UH-Hilo exhibit

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The University of Hawaii at Hilo Art Department has opened an exhibit of visual responses to poetry by an international cast of 29 artists that is on display through April 15 in the third floor Campus Center Gallery.

The University of Hawaii at Hilo Art Department has opened an exhibit of visual responses to poetry by an international cast of 29 artists that is on display through April 15 in the third floor Campus Center Gallery.

“Poetry Scores Hawaii: LOOK LIKE WHAT IT MEANS” features visual responses to poems by the late Albert Saijo (1926–2011), a prescient California-born Japanese-American writer. Saijo collaborated with Kerouac and Lew Welch to co-author a book of haiku, “Trip Trap,” published in 1972. He also wrote an early guide to eco-friendly hiking, “The Backpacker.”

Saijo moved to Volcano in early 1990 to live and write, largely off the grid and out of the limelight.

The first substantial collection of his poetry, “Outspeaks: A Rhapsody,” was published by Bamboo Ridge Press in 1997. Visual responses to poems by Saijo posthumously published in the 100th edition of the Bamboo Ridge Press house magazine in 2012 is the focus of the current exhibition.

The exhibit was created in partnership with Poetry Scores, an all-volunteer international arts organization based in St. Louis, Mo., that translates poetry into other media.

The UH-Hilo gallery is open 8a.m.-4:30p.m. Monday through Friday and closed on holidays.

For more information, contact professor Michael Marshall at 932-7237 or email mdmarsha@hawaii.edu.