Arts and Culture of Japan in Saugatuck

The Saugatuck Center for the Arts hosts an annual Global Cultural Festival in which they highlight the arts and culture of a specific region, and this year the topic is Japan. Throughout April they have free lectures on Japanese film, poetry, kimono, etc., performances of of Japanese drumming and kamishibai storytelling and workshops on tea ceremony, kimono, sake tasting, and a variety of topics for kids including origami, calligraphy and fan painting. You can take a look at the full schedule here.

I will be participating in the festivities as well, with a lecture on Japanese poetry on the evening of April 12th and a workshop on composing Japanese poetry on April 17th. I feel like I'm pretty well prepared for the lecture, especially since a lot of it is coming from recent lectures in my premodern Japanese culture and civilization course, but I have to admit I'm a bit nervous about the workshop. I've had my students do exercises in poetry composition before, but I have a lot more experience talking about Japanese poetry than I do teaching how to write English versions of Japanese forms. At any rate, if you can get down to Saugatuck for at least some of the events, I'm sure it will be memorable.