Norman Fischer Poetry Reading

Join us for a poetry reading with Norman Fischer at Village Books after the Guiding Teacher Installation ceremony. Norman will read from his new book any would be if, tanka by norman fischer.

“without love no quirks,” writes Norman Fischer in the midst of any would be if.  If one wants a book to show the world, not in its grandeur (or, maybe that, too) but in its process, in the betweenness we all inhabit, then this is the book one wants. I know I am glad to have it, and to return to it, often, “to be.” –Charles Alexander

A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, Norman Fischer is a poet and essayist. He has been practicing as a Zen Buddhist priest for thirty five years, and is one of the senior Zen teachers in America. Norman has written more than twenty-five books of poetry and prose.

Norman Fischer lives on a cliff near Muir Beach California with his wife Kathie, also a Zen priest. Their two sons live in Brooklyn.

The latest of his more than twenty-five poetry and prose titles are Experience: Thinking, Writing, Language and Religion (prose, Poetics Series, University of Alabama Press), Conflict (poetry, Chax Press), The Strugglers (poetry, Singing Horse Press), and Magnolias All At Once (poetry, Singing Horse). In 2000 he retired as co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, one of the largest Buddhist organizations in the West, and founded  The Everyday Zen Foundation is an international network of Buddhist groups and social projects. His latest Buddhist title is Training in Compassion (Shambhala).