In Preparation for a Visit to Mount Aso & a Round of Renshi

From March 17 through 20 I will be in Kumamoto, Japan, engaging in a renshi-writing collaboration with Japanese poets Shuntaro Tanikawa, Hiromi Ito, Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, Wakako Kaku, and the American translator Jeffrey Angles. This will be followed by a series of readings and lectures:

On March 22 a reading for the Japan International Poetry Society, at the Heartpia Kyoto, Conference Room #3, in Kyoto; on March 26, a talk and group discussion at Josai International University, Tokyo; and on March 27 a reading with Ryuta Imafuku and Keijiro Suga at Meiji University, also in Tokyo.


During my time away, postings on Poems and Poetics will continue without interruption, as follows:

March 13 Christine Wertheim: The Infestation of Bodies by Tongues (Part One)
March 17 Jerome Rothenberg: Metamorphoses & Other Stories
March 20 Reconfiguring Romanticism (39): Jeffrey C. Robinson, Two Poems with Notes after Wordsworth and Keats
March 24 Haroldo de Campos: from Galáxias, 2 poems & an author’s note
March 28 Rose Drachler, Two Poems with Numbers & Letters

The following is a variation on a poem for the first round of renshi and an open tribute to the masters of the game:

soon to be with you
on Aso not Death Mountain
in the other poem

beneath which looms the shadow
of a visionary fish

(j.r.)