{"id":39820,"date":"2015-02-04T17:57:05","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T17:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39820"},"modified":"2015-02-04T17:57:05","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T17:57:05","slug":"an-interview-with-poet-brian-komei-dempster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39820","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Poet Brian Komei Dempster"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Interview with Poet Brian Komei Dempster<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Hyphen: Asian America Unabridged<\/a>
\n2015-02-02<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Thomas Leong<\/strong>, San Francisco Bay Area poet; 2014 graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program in poetry<\/p>\n

I first met Brian Komei Dempster<\/a> in Winter 2000 as a student in his Kearny Street Workshop<\/a> writing class, held in his grandfather\u2019s Buddhist church in San Francisco\u2019s Japantown, and was immediately impressed by his warmth and patience. Brian has edited two books of personal stories by Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in WW II camps<\/a> — From Our Side of the Fence<\/em><\/a> and Making Home from War<\/em><\/a>. His debut poetry book Topaz<\/em><\/a>, which won the 15 Bytes 2014 Book Award in Poetry, was published in 2013 by Four Way Books.<\/p>\n

What I admire most about Topaz<\/em> is its skillful interweaving of the historical and the personal, which reflects the way that inherited family legacies are both a burden and a gift for one to sort through and integrate. Brian\u2019s story — and the speaker’s quest in the book — is further complicated by his mixed race heritage and upbringing by a Japanese American mother and white father. As a Chinese American, I\u2019ve experienced cultural bifurcation but, through Brian\u2019s work, have discovered a new world of racial dualism. His fearless investigation of its nuances and conflicts is inspiring. He can write of a grandmother\u2019s grief and then seamlessly present the sexual angst of adolescent males: his ordering and juxtaposition of poems reflects the multi-layered resonances of the speaker\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

Brian\u2019s poetry is carefully crafted, with formal experimentation, yet remains accessible to a broad audience. It is personally expressive, though grounded within the context of family and community. His poems chart new territory and speak hard truths. Most importantly, for me as a writer, they feel authentic.<\/p>\n

Brian’s poems have appeared in New England Review<\/em>, North American Review<\/em>, Ploughshares<\/em>, and numerous other journals as well as various anthologies, including Language for a New Century<\/em><\/a> and Asian American Poetry: the Next Generation<\/em><\/a>. He is a professor of rhetoric and language and a faculty member in Asian Pacific American Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he also serves as Director of Administration for the Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Thomas Leong<\/strong>: Can you tell us about your name — Brian Komei Dempster — and where it comes from?<\/p>\n

Brian Komei Dempster<\/strong>: My father\u2019s name is Dempster, which has European roots, and my mother\u2019s maiden name is Ishida, which is Japanese. The name Komei was given to me by my grandfather, Archbishop Nitten Ishida<\/a>. I didn\u2019t always use Komei, but as I got older and became a writer, I felt I had to use Komei; otherwise someone might not know who I was, not get the half Asian part of my identity. According to my grandfather, the name means \u201ctall, high, clear –like a mountain. \u201d The fact that my grandfather — who’s a priest — gave me the name imbues it with gravitas…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Interview with Poet Brian Komei Dempster Hyphen: Asian America Unabridged 2015-02-02 Jeffrey Thomas Leong, San Francisco Bay Area poet; 2014 graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program in poetry I first met Brian Komei Dempster in Winter 2000 as a student in his Kearny Street Workshop writing class, held […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,13743,8,20],"tags":[19260,19259,19258,17310,19151,19261],"class_list":["post-39820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-brian-dempster","tag-brian-k-dempster","tag-brian-komei-dempster","tag-hyphen","tag-hyphen-asian-america-unabridged","tag-jeffrey-thomas-leong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}