Recorded at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine on February 25, 2015, this event — presented in partnership with the Weatherhead East Asia Institute at Columbia University — served as a farewell to Xu Bing's exhibit "Phoenix." Ten poets in total, five from China and five from the US, shared work written in response to Xu's artwork. The roster of readers for the evening consisted of Bei Dao, Ouyang Jianghe, Xi Chuan, Zhai Yongming, Zhou Zan, Charles Bernstein, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Pierre Joris, Afaa Weaver, and Marilyn Nelson (the Cathedral's then-current Poet in Residence). Opening comments were made by The Very Reverend Dr. James A. Kowalski, Dean of the Cathedral, and by event organizer Professor Lydia H. Liu from Columbia University; Xu offered closing remarks.
You can watch video footage of the complete event, along with segmented MP3 audio of individual readers on the special page we've put together for this event. Promotional images for the reading can be found in this Jacket2 commentary post by Bernstein.
