Daryl Ngee Chinn, longtime CPITS board member, area coordinator, and poet
teacher, will be honored at the 45th Symposium in Santa Barbara on August
28. Daryl will read with David Starkey, who will teach a four hour writing
intensive that afternoon. In recent years, Daryl has traveled the state
creating Chinese banquets as CPITS fundraisers as helping to create and
expand the poetry community in this huge state of ours.
I, Daryl Ngee Chinn was born in Salt Lake City almost sixty-four years ago.
All my grandparents were born in China.
I produce handmade chapbooks on my computer
and using tools and skills I learned from bookmakers.
The poems I’ve written that I like best
are about things that are always with us:
death, food, love, and the lives that no one sees.
Some, like the ones about dancing, appear to be true.
Some, but not many, have won awards—
one about the letter e; another about dreaming a dance.
My qualifications to stand before you seem to be
that I have cooked five dinners to raise money for CPITS.
I started because CPITS needed money, and I have cooked
with Kathy Evans, Suzie Terence, Emmanuel Williams, and Maureen Hurley
in Sausalito; Mary Lee Gowland and Anne Molin
in Oakhurst, near Yosemite; Christine Kravetz in Santa Barbara; and Brandon and Andie Cesmat, Jill Moses, Jackleen Holton, Seretta Martin; and Jim Babwe, in San Diego, among others.
My father, who memorized Confucius and ran a laundry, said,
“Do the best with what you’ve got.”
I figured I could cook,
and I’d raised money that way a few times.
While doing so, I found that CPITS is a loose confederation
of poet teachers, parents, poets, and generous people.
These poems are for you; in fact, some of these poems are about you. When you hear this, please remember what Allison, my sixteen-year-old daughter, said, when asked about this, which was, “At first, I kind of minded, but then I realized that we were the agents to a higher truth.” Or, you can think of two things I said to my wife last year while I was enduring appendicitis last year and we were building a sauna, “There is no metaphor,” and, “Every nail is a work of art.”
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