Ishle Park's "Work is Love" CD Release & Going Away Party!

Come celebrate the release of Ishle Park's new CD "Work is Love" and give her a proper send-off as she returns home to New York City.

About "Work is Love"

Ishle Yi Park's debut CD, entitled "Work is Love", combines poetry with acoustic guitar, Korean traditional drums, beatboxing, and song to give a lovely and refreshing new sound to the medium called "spoken word".

Here is a poetry CD that you can actually listen to - beautiful words and beautiful music. Far from a rant, Work is Love is a collection of 12 poems (all accompanied by music) and songs, all written, composed, and sung by the artist.

By working with gifted musicians, Ishle gives her poetry a fullness few spoken word albums attain. Vongku Pak, a professional Korean drummer/street performer, and Diego Campo, a Spanish guitarist, are just a few of the musical talents. Taiyo and Mas, two members of her pan-Asian collective FeedBack, also grace the album.

Hip hop heads will also appreciate the fact that Japan's critically acclaimed DJ Honda produced a tight track for the collection called "Sa-I-Gu". The CD also contains one live poem, recorded for HBO's Def Poetry Jam and introduced by artist Mos Def.

Unlike most spoken word performers, Ishle is also an accomplished writer - her work will appear in The Best American Poetry of 2003, edited by Pulitzer-prize winning Yosuf Komunyakaa. From Korean women seadivers to Hart Street in Brooklyn, Ishle's words cover vast ground.

Work is Love is a mature, lovely, and surprising album that gives a good taste of the artist. Whether driving in your car or laying in bed at home, this compilation is one that you will savor.

About the artist

Ishle Yi Park was born to Korean immigrant parents in New York in 1977. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and has taught creative writing in elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, colleges, prisons, and community centers throughout New York and San Francisco. She worked as Arts-In-Education Director of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and was a poetry editor for Tribes Magazine and The Asian Pacific American Journal.

She helped nurture and curate (re)collection, the only Asian-American open mic series in New York. A recipient of a fiction grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Gregory Millard Fellow, her work has appeared nationally in over 20 publications including New American Writing, Slam, The Cream City Review, The NuyorAsian Anthology, Beacon Best 2001, and the forthcoming The Best American Poetry 2003, edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa. Her first book, called The Temperature of this Water, will be published with Kaya Press in spring 2003.

Ishle has performed at colleges and venues in the United States, Cuba and Korea as a solo artist, and as part of a pan Asian collective called Feedback. Winner of the "best love poem in fire engine red" at the Nuyorican's Glam Slam, Loudpoet of the Year and Grand Slam Champion (2000) of Bar 13, and she is the first Korean American woman ever to compete and feature on the finals stage at the National Poetry Slam. She has been written about in The Economist, Asianweek, The Black Scholar Review, and The San Francisco Guardian, and has aired nationally on FOX, Gotham TV and HBO's Def Poetry Jam.

Ishle Yi Park currently lives in Oakland, and works as the California Arts Council Writer-In-Residence at the Youth Speaks Literary Arts Center.

To learn more about Ishle Yi Park, visit her website at www.ishle.com.

When:
Friday, June 27, 7-9pm

Where:
Youth Speaks
2169 Folsom (between 17th & 18th)
San Francisco
Map it | Public Transportation

Cost:
$5 entry, $10 entry & CD

Performances by:
Ishle Yi Park
Jason Mateo & Jocie de Leon (8th Wonder)
Rupert
Tim Arevalo
Youth Speaks poets
DJ FFlood (hip hop & reggae)

Purchase Ishle Park's debut CD "Work is Love" online