In the days following the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011, poet Wago Ryoichi started a twitter feed. Living just 80 km away from the failed nuclear reactor, he sheltered in his apartment and bared witness to the unfolding devastation. This collection begins with excerpts from those original tweets and follows ten years of Wago's writing. The poems consider not just the human toll of the disaster but place the devastation of the land, the animals, and ways of life of Fukushima Prefecture on equal footing.
Wago Ryoichi is a poet and high school Japanese literature teacher from Fukushima city, Japan. In 2017, the French translation of his book, Pebbles of Poetry, won the Nunc Magazine award for best foreign-language poetry collection. Since March 2011, his writing has focused on the ecological devastation of the areas affected by the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi power station. His poem Abandoned Fukushima is sung by choirs across Japan as a prayer for hope and renewal.
Ayako Takahashi and Judy Halebsky work collaboratively to translate poetry between English and Japanese. Ayako Takahashi is a scholar and translator teaching at University of Hyogo in Japan. Her most recent publication is a book of scholarship titled, Reading Gary Snyder. She has published translations of many American poets such as Jane Hirshfield, Anne Waldman, and Joanne Kyger, among others. Judy Halebsky is a poet and translator. She is the author of Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged) (University of Arkansas Press, 2020), Tree Line (New Issues 2014) and Sky=Empty, winner of the New Issue Prize (New Issues, 2010). She is a professor of Literature and Language and director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Dominican University of California. Ayako and Judy have been working together for a number of years and have previously published articles in Japan on the development of English language haiku.
Author: 和合亮一Title: フクシマ以降 2021年3月、地震と津波が日本を襲った日から数日後、詩人の和合亮一はツイッターを始めた。事故のあった原子炉から80