What does it mean to be seized without warning? To seize back things taken? How do we reclaim that which is silenced or gone? Bridging lives and cultures, Brian Komei Dempster shares poems from his award-winning book, Seize, based on his experience of raising a non-verbal, epileptic son. Dempster deftly connects his son’s physical/verbal seizure to the wartime history of his maternal family—the forced removal from their church home and unjust incarceration in Topaz prison camp and elsewhere. Dempster’s poems retrace the contours of mixed race identity and fallout from myriad losses. Family photos illuminate these intergenerational legacies. (Virtual event).