Alan Chong Lau w/ Susie Kozawa, THIS SINGLE ROAD

One of the very first readers at Elliott Bay Book Company, Alan Chong Lau returns with his new book, This Single Road: Postcards and Notebooks from Kyoto. He will be joined by sound artist Susie Kozawa for an evening of collaboration.

Lau’s book offers a colorful look inside his notebooks, sketches, inspirations, and the poems born from his yearly visits to Japan. It also gathers many of the postcards he has sent from Kyoto, providing a glimpse into the social connections of this important and influential Seattle artist.

"We spend so much time on trains and subways that I can't resist sneaking in some sketches. I love the ephemeral moment when we as strangers on this earth get to spend mere seconds or minutes together sharing space before dispersing and never meeting again. Maybe it’s my own futile attempt to hold on to that elusive moment in time."

In This Single Road, poet and painter Alan Chong Lau opens his Kyoto journals to us — inexpensive pocket notebooks filled with quick sketches, poems, and fragments of daily life. Many of these moments return as watercolor postcards sent to friends, so what begins in private observation becomes a quiet act of generosity, a way of keeping connection alive through art. Echoing the haibun tradition of Bashō and Santōka, This Single Road is less a travelogue than a record of engagement — intimate and playful — a lifelong conversation with place, with practice, and with Kazuko, his companion in life and art.

Alan Chong Lau is a poet and visual artist based in Seattle, Washington. He is the co-author of The Buddha Bandits Down Highway 99 with Garrett Hongo and Lawson Inada (Buddhahead Press, 1978) and the author of Songs For Jadina (Greenfield Review Press, 1980) and Blues and Greens: A Produce Worker’s Journal (University of Hawai’i Press, 2000). He serves as the arts editor for the International Examiner that covers news, features, and the arts for the Northwest’s pan-Asian Pacific American community. As an artist, he is represented by ArtX Contemporary Gallery in Seattle, Washington.

Susie Kozawa, a sound artist, composer and performer, works mostly with sound collages and site-specific installations, in which the gathering of sounds is a primary activity. She explores different acoustic spaces using musical instruments she makes out of found objects, kelp, modified toys and human voice. She creates live sound design for dance and theater productions. She was a founding member of Aono Jikken Ensemble.

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