The Ledbury Poetry Festival Featuring Japanese Poets July 5-14 2013

The Ledbury Poetry Festival, the ‘biggest and best poetry festival in the UK,’ will take place this year from 5– 14 July. The festival features poets from all over the world and this year three poets have been invited from Japan to perform and give talks about their work. UK-based Japanese performance poet Kazuko Hohki will also be performing. The festival features live readings, performances, workshops, open mics, music, exhibitions, films, family events, street events, a slam and more. This is the festivals’ fifteenth year of celebrating poetry in the rural heartland of England. Ledbury is only an hour from Birmingham or three hours from London.  Bookings are now open and The Festival programme is up online. Bookings can be made in person at the box office at The Shell House Gallery in Ledbury, online or by telephone or post.

The three poets who will be visiting from Japan are Kiwao Nomura, Machi Tawara and Gozo Yoshimasu.

Kiwao Nomura is a pre-eminent Japanese poet, writer, critic, and lecturer. He is considered one of the key players in contemporary Japanese poetry. Nomura studied Japanese and French Literature, and has taught at Tokyo Meiji University and Waseda University. Since  2000 he has concentrated exclusively on poetry, performance and his work as a critic, publisher and organizer of poetry festivals. Forrest Gander, co-translator of Kiwao Nomura’s poetry, noted in an interview, “What we find in innovative Japanese poetries like Gozo Yoshimasu’s and Kiwao Nomura’s has, as far as I know, no equivalents in contemporary poetry in English. The mix of the philosophical and the whimsical makes for a tone that is absolutely weird to Westerners.” Forrest Gander will also be speaking at Ledbury Poetry festival.

Machi Tawara is a contemporary Japanese poet. She was born in Osaka and raised in Osaka and Fukui, graduating from Waseda University with a degree in Japanese literature. Under the influence of the poet Sasaki Yukitsuna, she began to write tanka. And upon graduation she took up a post as a high school English teacher, a role which she continued until 1989. She is a Tanka poet who is incredibly popular with Japanese audiences. She wrote a 50 poem sequence, August Morning (八月の朝), which received the 32nd Kadokawa Tanka Prize. She released her fist major collection Salad Anniversary (サラダ記念日) in 1987, It became a bestseller, selling over 2.6 million copies. She received the 32nd Modern Japanese Poets Association Award for this book. “Salad Phenomenon” is the phrase coined to describe the impact of this book on Japanese society. Tawara herself became an instant celebrity, besieged with requests for autographs, interviews, public lectures, guest columns in newspapers and magazines, and TV and radio appearances. Her third collection of tanka, Chocolate Revolution, was published in 1997.  She is most famous for revitalizing  tanka for modern Japanese audiences but she is also well known as a critic, author and translator of Japanese classic literature into contemporary Japanese. In addition, she has published a number of popular travel and photography books and has written a series of essays for newspapers and magazines such as Asahi Shimbun Newspaper, Asahi Weekly and Bungei Shunju. She has also served as a member of various committees including the Commitee for Japanese Language and the Central Committee for Education.

Gōzō Yoshimasu is a prolific and highly acclaimed Japanese poet, photographer, artist and filmmaker who has been active since the 1960s. He received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays in 2013, the 50th Mainichi Art Award for Poetry in 2009, the Rekitei Prize and the Purple Ribbon Medal in 2003. Major influences include Ishikawa Kyuyo, Paul Klee, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, William Blake, John Cage, Patrick Chamoiseau. Many of his poems are multilingual, blending elements of French, English, Chinese, Korean, Gaelic, and more, and feature cross-linguistic and typographic wordplay. His poems rely on intimate experiences with geography and history, layering encounters in the present with an awareness of the past. His performances often include film, chanting, ritual procedures, and the collaboration of musicians and other artists. English translations of his work include at the side (côtés) of poetry translated by Jeffrey Angles. He will be showing a film about the March 11 disaster and giving an accompanying reading at the Ledbury Festival.

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is delighted to be supporting the Ledbury Poetry Festival with a Daiwa Foundation Small Grant.