Saijo's Woodrat Flat Poetry
Jerry Martien, Ali Freedlund, and friends will read from Woodrat Flat by Albert Saijo. A Beat poet and naturalist, Saijo became a student of Zen Buddhism in his teenage years when he met a teacher in the Japanese internment camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. He later served with the U.S. Army in Italy, then studied US International Policy at Stanford University. In the 1960’s he and Jack Kerouac and the poet Lew Welch made a legendary journey across the country writing haiku as they drove. In the 1980’s Saijo and his wife homesteaded in the Mattole, where they built a small house on a flat overlooking the Pacific. He also grew marijuana, was busted by CAMP, and subsequently they moved to the Big Island. Because the book describes many of these events it was held back from publication during his lifetime. The manuscript was collected by Laura Saijo, arranged and edited by Jerry Martien, and published by Tinfish Press in Hawaii. Copies will be for sale at the reading.
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