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It has been decided recently that my third collection of poems "Will",
in which a lot of elegies on my mother who passed away in 2003
are covered, will be translated into English. The encounter with
Ms. Amelia Fielden, who takes care of the translation, dates
back to 1999, the year in which my first collection of poems
was published. She came to know by chance a collection of poems "Nami
no Kotoba de Tsutaetai (I Want to Tell You with the Words of
Waves)" during her stay in Japan that year, and , to my
delight, she had a very favorable impression on it. Since then,
I started to be in contact with her living in Australia.
I did not even imagine at all that my works being translated
into English, an idea I vaguely dreamed of, would be realized
this early.
I sincerely hope that this collection of poems will give more
people, living in countries where Japanese is not spoken, an
opportunity to get familiar with and have an interest in Tanka.
Mariko Kitakubo 2006 (from the preface of "On This Same
Star")
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Issued: 2006
Title: "On This Same Star"
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
To purchase, contact Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena CA, U.S.A., Ms. Tai Ling Wong, Bookstore Manager, via e-mail (tailingwong@yahoo.com)or phone (1-626-449-2742), or e-mail
myself.
>>click
here to view Pacific Asia Museum website
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It has been decided recently that my third
collection of poems "Will", in which a lot of
elegies on my mother who passed away in 2003 are covered,
will be translated into English. The encounter with Ms.
Amelia Fielden, who takes care of the translation, dates
back to 1999, the year in which my first collection of
poems was published. She came to know by chance a collection
of poems "Nami no Kotoba de Tsutaetai (I Want to Tell
You with the Words of Waves)" during her stay in Japan
that year, and, to my delight, she had a very favorable
impression on it. Since then, I started to be in contact
with her living in Australia.
I did not even imagine at all that my works being translated
into English, an idea I vaguely dreamed of, would be realized
this early.
I sincerely hope that this collection of poems will give
more people, living in countries where Japanese is not
spoken, an opportunity to get familiar with and have an
interest in Tanka.
Mariko Kitakubo 2006 (from the preface of "On This
Same Star")
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Kokako 6 (April, 2007): edited by Owen Bullok and Patricia Prime
On This Same Star – selections from the tanka poetry collection WILL by Mariko Kitakubo, translated by Amelia Fielden, Kadokawa Shoten, 2006, 189pp, $US $15. ISBN: 04-651667-4
These tanka are presented in sequences of from three to thirteen links. I was very shocked by the concision of the first individual tanka; it makes for a fine opening to a book:
to go and gaze
at the stars, how lovely –
none of us
is born
for suffering
And I concur with the sentiment!
The book comes alive with the moving sequence ‘To My Mother.’ Almost every link tears at the emotions through a spare veil of reflection and the need to accept death. Whether waiting in Outpatients or beside her mother’s bed when her mother has not spoken for ten days, we see the world of the poet changing:
unconscious
my mother sleeps on,
beside her
I drift away a little
from the time of this world
This is the effect that the immanence of death has, time is altered, the common reality shaken.
The sequence ‘The Ruined Village’ is written in response to an exhibition of photographs of Chernobyl’s nuclear disaster. Kitakubo finds the perfect chilling simile, “where like a scream / the silence shines.” In that disjunction between a scream and silence, between thins that should not sit together, she gives an impression of life irrevocably altered. It is not difficult then to generalize from this situation to others where the ashes of death are still falling.
Memories of the poet’s mother now pervade the poems, though other relationships come into view. There is a sense of re-enactment with respect to the hereditary effect of the father’s personality from whom she carries “a kind of craziness.” I liked this tanka for its ability to show what has been lost and at the same time suggesting a change in the social order and the function of marriage:
my ring finger
once showed that
being bound
and being loved
were one and the same
I think the word ‘bound’ helps her particularly. The obvious sense of constriction is softened by overtones of care, of wounds being bound. Set amongst so many poems about the death of her mother, this tanka also resonates with them, in the binding of a body into death (recent or ancient).
The poet meets her mother in dreams but also on occasions when there is that mystical sense of the other – a hand laid on her shoulder at the funeral, for example. The poet observes herself as having become a “sort of aged doll.” There is also the sense of having realized the intrinsic isolation of the human being, that was perhaps not obvious when her mother was alive. She misses her mother in almost every situation, as if this becomes a new presence, a new manifestation of that other. In the forest it is “as if there is / nothing else with life / but me.” This grammar is intriguing, and I am sure it is more that just the difficulty one may expect of translation. This person is being translated into a new reality and that is captured. I think the poet is conscious of the creative outpouring that has occurred for her since the death of her mother. This pain and paradox seems consistent with the passion that writing often embraces.
There is sheer emotive beauty in a piece like this:
leaving a waterfall
tumbling into
my heart’s river,
he went away
my special one
The romantic is obvious, it is not shielded from our eyes, and she makes no apology fo r the intensity of feeling, it just sticks in our gut.
Later, she is apprehensive about new love:
I’m hesitant
to fall in love –
on my lips
the taste of blood
quietly revives
The animism of this is quite a surprise.
Some of the poem shows an incredible aptness in the choice of English word. For example,
when I remove
my contact lenses
they say to and fro
dissolving today
in their solution
Through ‘dissolving’ we are given a wonderful piece of imagery as well as the sense of time passing, concerns of the day left aside. Of course, ‘solution’ also has a double meaning and builds on the effect of the previous line, though perhaps unnecessary.
The sequences become increasingly varied, with some links veering towards the surreal, but it’s all to the good. You should get hold of this book.
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Book Review: “RIBBONS” Summer
2006, (Tanka Society of America Journal)
reviewed by Dave Bacharach
On This Same Star by Mariko Kitakubo selections from the
tanka by poetry collection WILL with translations by Amelia
Fielden. Kadokawa Gakugei Shuppan Ltd. 5-24-5, Hongo Bunkyo-ku,
Tokyo 113-0033 Japan; ISBN4-04-651667-4 C0092. Printed
in Japan. $15 US.
http://tanka.kitakubo.com/
On This Same Star is the title of a new book of tanka by
Mariko Kitakubo, a Japanese poet who has published three
earlier collections: I Want To Tell You in the Words of
Waves (1999, Artland), When the Music Stops (2002, Nagarami
Shobo), and WILL (2005, Kadokawa Shoten). On This Same
Star is a volume of 263 tanka selected by Australian poet
and translator, Amelia Fielden from the larger collection,
WILL.
Over the three year period between the poet’s last
publication and the collection from which this book comes,
she experienced major losses: She divorced; her only son
left for college; and her beloved mother died. The death
of her mother was overwhelming. Kitakubo had been an only
child whose father abandoned bother mother and daughter
early on, and the two of them grew so close that Kitakubo
feels their identities had merged:
we were more like
identical twins, than
mother and daughter ---
now only my shadow
has a heart-beat
From this terrible loss, and her general
state of loneliness, she pieces together a lyrical mosaic
of grief, sadness, and the search for affirmation. Her
tanka are nakedly honest, personal, exquisitely crafted,
and intensely lyrical. Over twenty percent of them directly
or indirectly reference death. Some express self-revulsion,
other bitterness towards her ex-husband; some are darkly
ambiguous. Kitakubo has a complex mind, and her preoccupation
with death is expressed by complex metaphors. In one tanka,
she voices her desire to return to the safety and anonymity
of her mother’s womb, where she and her mother were-literally
one and the same; in another, she pictures herself “a
sort of aged doll” passing through time as an image
in her mother’s funeral portrait. Later, she imagines
her spirit vanishing, leaving behind and empty husk in
the form of her moonlit bath tub; and further on, “thinking
of the endless/amount of blood there’ll be,” she
hesitates to pull the thorns from her heart, but is caught
in a dilemma: If she doesn’t pull them out, she won’t
die. Elsewhere she writes:
I’m going to fly off
somewhere or other ---
actually
I’m not a person,
just a piece of fluff
Within the book’s context, this pathetically
expresses pain so intense that the poet’s own personality
is subsumed by it. The countervailing attempts at renewal
and salvation occur with apparent randomness, and though
forming a minority of the total selection, they are signs
of health and healing. Kitakubo often uses as a positive
symbol; those tanka where she discovers it deep within
herself or within other things, possess a calm acceptance
that eases her pain. In one poem she associates herself
as well as her poetic voice with water, and by that combination
suggests that her poetry is her salvation. In another,
spiritual and physical renewal is suggested by biblical
language and baptism imagery:
I’ve gone on
not putting it all
into words-now
sounds from the river
within me grow louder
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was the end of things
really the beginning?
the form
of the prone body
is brimming with water
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In other poems, she refers to her past existence as an
ocean; or describes fish from a valley stream “glittering
still/behind my eyes ---; “or thinks of the moisture
within her left over” “of a summer’s
night;” or notices how precious the trees are with “boisterous
water” in their tops; or, most tellingly, washes
seaweed in water, a symbolic act of curing the madwoman
she saw herself as in a dream the night before. Interestingly,
at one point she indicates that her son is studying hydraulics.
Other symbols of spiritual restoration are human wings,
willful flight into the air, dancing, and direct confrontation.
She says that it’s “time for me / beat my
wings, as in / a string ensemble” an indirect reference
to the writing of lyric poetry. Dancing occurs not only
as an affirmation of her spirit, but in celebration of
freedom from her unhappy marriage. At one point, her
mother is imagined in a symbolic paradise: “through
dancing waters / in the flower gardens / she smiles at
me. “Kitakubo sometimes confronts what’s
happened with a determination to make the best of it.
In the most striking example, she recognizes the impossibility
of grasping all that lies ahead after her mother’s
death, acknowledges how feeble are the survival tools
at he disposal, but vows to continue her life:
time after death
immeasurable ---
I will pull together
a bundle of dim lights
and walk on
The symbols within Kitakubo’s poems are personal and reliably
consistent. Besides the positive ones mentioned, there
are unmistakably negative symbols: sand, dust, wind and
snow. When these words or the images associated with them
appear in a poem, physical or spiritual death is nearby.
Sand is especially deathly in any form or amount, whether
it be fleck in her mother’s eye, or the gigantic sand clock
inside which the poet finds herself trapped and slowly
buried “with quantities of sand / falling clown on me /
from time to time.” Wind, a typical Japanese symbol, is
used here as an agent of spiritual destruction and identity
loss. Kitakubo associates snow, another common symbol,
with heaven: When it occurs in her tanka, death is calling,
but it’s a benign death, promising a kind of quiescent
beauty and possible reunification with her mother:
brushed by your hand
I would turn into
powdery snow
and that instant
be called to Heaven
Formally, Kitakubo’s technique is rich and varied. Though
she tends to write in bipartite structures such that her
tanka’s first three lines are set off from the last two,
there are frequent variations in which the pattern is reversed,
with the first two lines set off. Often, at least one part
of the tanka, or all of it, lacks a subject. However, many
of them do have a subject; some have more than one, and
many run straight through as one syntactically connected
expression. Kitakubo also makes use of repetition, re-voicing
words, phrases, or entire lines. This often has a strong
rhythmic impact as well as an insistence on meaning, as
in the following, and in another instance, one word repeated
in the entire last line achieves a powerful emphasis, the
repetition itself a demonstration of the theme:
for no reason
they raise their voices
in shrill cries,
for no reason they cease ---
Heaven’s twilight cicadas
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with my strength
I cannot halt
a boulder
once it has set out
rolling rolling
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Kitakubo’s style is accessible due to the scrupulousness
of Fielden’s translation. She has been careful to retain
the original phrase order and line pattern whenever possible,
and when the original tanka was vague, she assures us that
she kept the translation vague. And the flow of the Japanese
5-7-5-7-7 pattern that Kitakubo loves has been transliterated
by Fielden into smooth under the fingers; the text is clear
and easy to read. The cover shows a quietly tasteful design
incorporating Japanese calligraphy:. It’s a handsome volume
that’s a pleasure to hold. And pleasure, Kitakubo assures
us, is an important part of our natural life. For despite
the pain and grief expressed in these pages, the first
tanka of the book establishes a basic truth that throws
the rest into stark relief:
to go and gaze
at stars, how lovely---
none of us
is born
for suffering
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On This Same Star
by Mariko Kitakubo
A Review by Robert D. Wilson
On This Same Star is an appropriate title for Mariko Kitakubo's
new book of tanka, masterfully translated into English
by Amelia Fielden of Australia. Kitakubo takes readers
of her poetry into a world both personal and reflective.
I'll close both ears
and listen
to the ancient ocean's
tumult
within my body
Of course, the world she paints for us with
her words would not be credible if her skill as a poet
were run-of-the-mill. Her tanka poems call to mind Yosano
Akiko and Fumiko Nakajo, two female Japanese poets whom
I have the deepest admiration and respect for. And not
because her poetry resembles theirs. It does not. But like
the aforementioned poets, she speaks intimately about her
feelings utilizing yugen, makoto, and good form.Take the
above tanka. When a person cups his hands over his ears,
shutting out outside sound, he hears a sound mimicking
ocean waves. Kitakubo is referring in her poem to meditation.
Deep breathing, slowly, listening to one's body, shutting
out the sensory world. Interesting is her use of the word, "tumult".
It is a word that can be interpreted in more than one way.
The poet hints, does not "say all", and invites
readers to come into her world in an experiential way.
The poet doesn't write tanka as a channel to become famous.
She carefully, perhaps even spiritually, chooses her words,
crafting a poem that leaves a reader wondering, and thinking.
Aiding her in this is her use of lyricism, yugen (mystery
and depth), respect for the genre, and a willingness to
share her makoto (truth and beauty) in a personal, intimate
manner.
Take the above tanka. When a person cups his hands over
his ears, shutting out outside sound, he hears a sound
mimicking ocean waves. Kitakubo is referring in her poem
to meditation. Deep breathing, slowly, listening to one's
body, shutting out the sensory world. Interesting is her
use of the word, "tumult". It is a word that
can be interpreted in more than one way. The poet hints,
does not "say all", and invites readers to come
into her world in an experiential way. The poet doesn't
write tanka as a channel to become famous. She carefully,
perhaps even spiritually, chooses her words, crafting a
poem that leaves a reader wondering, and thinking. Aiding
her in this is her use of lyricism, yugen (mystery and
depth), respect for the genre, and a willingness to share
her makoto (truth and beauty) in a personal, intimate manner.
trying to escape
memories of submersion
in the pale blue waters
of my mother's womb,
I blow big bubbles
I should have
asked for help . . .
I've been searching
for mother's face
in the mirror
with what am I
to protect myself . . . no way
the blade of a human
will cut through spirits
of mountains and rivers
Kitakubo's sense of rhythm is refreshing
and worthy of study. Lyricism is essential to good tanka,
yet many poets have strayed away from lyricism, especially
those poets writing English language tanka. Says Kitakubo's
translator, Amelia Fielden:
There are poetic stress accents in Japanese, so traditional
poetry is given rhythm by writing to a pattern of 5/7/5/7/7
sound-unit phrases, with varying breath pauses being made
when read aloud.
in this flesh of mine
what evil is there?
as the sun sets
numbers of fingerprints
floated in my mirror
Translating a poem from the Japanese into English is a
monumental task, especially if the translator wants to
retain the poem's lyricism while remaining true to the
poem's intent in a manner that is as close to the original
as possible. Says Kitakubo, ". . . tanka, because
it is lyric poetry and so difficult to translate, has
had a rather limited and half-hearted acceptance outside
of Japan."
With this in mind, Kitakubo would not settle for just any
translator. She wanted someone who would accurately convey
the spirit of what she had written and still maintain the
beauty of the lyrical form.
Kitakubo adds: "The translation of a tanka not only
involves the accurate transmission of a poem's 'story'
but must also show cognizance of that which lies behind
the written words. . . Amelia (Fielden) is a poet with
a deep understanding of Japanese culture and a linguistic
expertise based on many years of study of Japanese literature.
. . . I have become convinced of her ability to translate
in a way which is both totally faithful to the original
tanka, and also poetic in English."
Good translators are few and far between, especially when
it comes to translating from the Eastern mindset into the
Western mindset. Amelia Fielden is one of the best in the
field. Working together, Kitakubo and Fielden have given
the English speaking world a rare treat; poetry that is
memorable, ethereal, lyrical, and worthy of study.
The tanka in Kitakubo's book is a selection of poetry from
her third collection of tanka entitled, Will. The poet
dedicated Will to her mother who passed away in 2003.
Many of the tanka in On This Same Star, therefore, are
of an elegiac nature, and poignant . . . so much so that
at times, I was moved to tears by the truth, spirit, and
feeling emanating from these poems.
are they overflowing
with things she wishes
she could tell me . . .
my mother's tearful eyes
after more than ten day's sleep
my mother
has become
my beloved child
put to bed
in a pure white room
This is a special book. I recommend it with no reservations.
Mariko Kitakubo is a star whose time has come.
when I contemplate
the copious blood-flow
of our world's peoples,
an avalanche begins its slide
in a part of myself
On This Same Star
by Mariko Kitakubo
Translated by Amelia Fielding
Kadokawa Shoten, 2006 ($15)
ISBN4-04-651667-4 C0092
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Issued: 2008
Title: "Cicada Forest"
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
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To purchase, contact Pacific Asia Museum
in Pasadena CA, U.S.A, Ms. Tai Ling Wong, Bookstore Manager,
via e-mail (tailingwong@yahoo.com) or phone (1-626-449-2742),
or e-mail myself.
>>click here to view Pacific
Asia Museum website
Cicada Forest takes us on a sweeping journey
through a progression of themes, subject matter, and
settings that reflect Kitakubo's life as woman, daughter,
lover, and mother... Kitakubo's voice is often positively
elemental, felt as a force of nature... Yet, ironically,
the finest poems
in Cicada Forest appear to concern themselves with
small things:
how small
I really am
here between
a potato field
and the wide sky
it's myself
a hundred years later
I'm
scooping up,
both hands full
of warm sand
What is large here is Kitakubo's transcendent,
personal vision of human experience, a vision and sense
that places such things as potato fields and handfuls
of beach sand at the center of the world's stage . . . Kitakubo
is a poet whose voice and sense of the world place her
directly within that magnificent literary genealogy that
includes Murasaki Shikibu, Ono no Komachi, Ootagaki Rengetsu,
Saigyo, Ryokan, and Yosano Akiko.
--Excerpted from "Preface to Cicada Forest" by
Michael McClintock,
President, Tanka Society of America
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Review:
by Giselle Maya(A Journal for Linking Poets ”LYNX”)
Cicada Forest by Mariko Kitakub. Translated by Amelia Fielden.
Published by Kadokawa Gakugei Shuppan Ltd. 5-25-5 Hongo
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 Japan. Price of book $15.
Reviewed by Giselle Maya
The book Cicada Forest has an elegant cover designed by Yoko Hasegawa, with a preface by Michael McClintock.
The entire book is a delight to read. First, there is “New Writing” with four sections in which the reader is
introduced to the poet’s life through her lyrical and
sparse approach to tanka writing. Glimpses of her life are
revealed, always with great finesse and restraint: the
reader will discover unique and memorable tanka. The sensitive
translations by Amelia Fielden make each word count, with her
light touch.
I feel the plight
of endangered creatures
on this planet,
like they’re looking at me
with my child’s eyes
Kitakubo’s love of the earth and our universe is expressed in
poems such as:
the sky dissolves
and is flooded with rain -
prostrating myself
I press my lips
to the soaked plain
A sense of the vastness of our space for living and moving is
accentuated by her writing about wings. The theme of wings is
woven through the entire book, creating a feeling of the
ancient desire of Icarus for flight and transcendence, the
possibility of a scintillating dance in space and time.
oh give me wings
for my back,
shining wings
which seek
only virtue
How exhilarating this feels! And expressed as a tanka it is
simply inspiring.
The entire collection of Mariko Kitakubo’s tanka, spanning
the years from 1999 to the present time is her journey as
woman, mother,and poet. Her family relationships become
apparent; countries, seasons, mindscapes and seascapes, life
and death touch the reader’s sensibility. Both a vastness
and a microscopic focusing on detail are crafted into these
tanka. Especially skillful are the poems relating to the
raising of her son. Wistful, ringing true to me a mother of
a son and daughter, she explores in a gentle manner with
sentiments which have not yet been the subject matter of
tanka so far.
Maintaining a comfortable distance, Mariko explores the presence
in her life of her young son:
twenty years ago
separating
from me
certain cells became
a charming male
seeing you off
suddenly I recollect
the day you were born -
now in mid-winter
there’s the Orion star
onto my withered heart
falls a small star -
with you
I share
a single tomato
There is a melding of human experience with nature: a Shinto
sense of a unifying principle where one touches the earth with
reverence and gratitude.
in the midst
of this rain
they appear,
the mountain god and
the god of the stream
beside a quiet man
sea birds
one after another
dropping from the sky
like sacred messages
These are tanka jewels rising from the pages of Cicada Forest
and waiting to be sung and interpreted by a graceful dancer.
On the far side of the spectrum are a few poems which explore
darker human experiences, what Mariko so aptly calls “the
desolation of Descartes” No permanent peace and serenity have
been attained by human beings and there will be times of pain.
cutting my foot
on a tree-root
I felt
the desolation of Descartes
slowly slide into me
And yet, the entire book radiates confidence in the human
species and its endeavors and one feels encouraged to continue
one’s life-work
I have no way
of being really sure
about things,
yet my nails are growing
so confidently
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I am truly grateful to the fact that many experts wrote
about me and my work.
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About the Poet:
Written by Amelia Fielden
(Poet and Translator of the modern Japanese Tanka)
Mariko Kitakubo is a poet who lives in Tokyo . A member
of the Association of Contemporary Tanka Poet, and the
Sakujitu Tanka Society, Kitakubo is active in writing and
performing. To date she has published the following tanka
collections:
- I Want to Tell You in the Words of Waves (1999,
Artland)
- When the Music Stops (2002, Nagarami Shobo)
- "Will" (2005, Kadokawa Shoten)
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At Ms. Fielden's home in Australia.
The moment we decided about English/Japanese publication.
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As a performance poet, she has appeared more than 20 times,
commencing with her poetic perform in the Marathon Reading
at Hama Rikyu Garden in Tokyo in 2000. In September 2005,
Kitakubo gave a reading to music of her own tanka for the
audience at the launch of Amelia Fielden's Still Swimming
collection in Camberra, Australia .
Kitakubo and Fielden are scheduled to perform their work
together at the Haiku and Tanka Festival in Vancouver,
Canada, in May 2006.
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An Interview With Mariko Kitakubo*
By Robert D. Wilson
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RW: You've said that "tanka, because
it is lyric poetry, and so difficult to translate, has
had a rather limited and halfhearted acceptance outside
of Japan." Why is this so?
MK: The lack of translations, or poor
translations, in particular of contemporary Japanese tanka,
have hindered its globalization somewhat.
RW: Mariko, why are the views regarding
the translation of tanka poetry from the Japanese language
into other languages polarized in contemporary Japanese
tanka society?
MK: Regretfully, many contemporary Japanese
tanka poets are either indifferent, or negative, about
the introduction of tanka in translation to the other cultures.
As I explain in the Foreword for my book On This Same Star, "Myself,
I would probably have baulked at the idea of having my
work handled by a different translator. But Amelia Fielden
is a poet with a deep understanding of Japanese culture,
and a linguistic expertise based on many years study of
Japanese language and literature. Moreover, from our discussions,
which have included such technical aspects of tanka as
the importance of the final phrase, and the frequent use
of problematic onomatopoeia, I have become convinced of
her ability to translate in a way which is both totally
faithful to the original tanka, and also poetic in English." There
are very few translators working at Amelia's level of excellence.
RW: The Australian translator and poet,
Amelia Fielden, has translated your book of tanka into
the English language. The two of you worked closely, bringing
to life what I feel is an extraordinary book of poetry.
How hard was it to collaborate, to come to an agreement
on the final version of a poem, to ensure its faithfulness
to the original?
MK: As I said earlier, Amelia is exceptionally
well-equipped to translate tanka, because she is both a
professional Japanese translator of many years experience,
and a respected poet. Before working on my collection,
Amelia had already published six critically acclaimed books
of contemporary Japanese women's tanka in translation.
Moreover, Amelia and I are very good friends.
I can confide in her because I trust her on a personal,
as well as a professional level. The experience of having
her translate On This Same Star was a very enjoyable one
for me. We found we could work together harmoniously. The
method we adopted suited us both. Perhaps it would be interesting
for you if I summarized this:
Initially, Amelia read through my whole collection by herself,
making rough, first-draft translations and noting down
things which she did not fully understand, or had questions
about. Then I sat down with her for many hours and we read
all the tanka again, together. I discussed with her, in
Japanese, the intended meanings and nuances of each poem,
and we compared these interpretations with her draft translations.
Amelia's particular queries, we talked over in even more
detail.
On the basis of this first set of discussions, Amelia prepared
a second draft of the translations with some revisions.
Subsequently we repeated our collaborative efforts until
we were thoroughly satisfied that we had accomplished a
book of translations worthy of publication.
Our collaboration was, I believe, a pleasure for us both.
The translation of some tanka of course took more time,
and more discussion, than others. But we never had any
disagreements about final versions, even of particularly "difficult" poems.
Amelia is dedicated to ensuring that the translation is
faithful to the original, and I have absolute confidence
in her work.
RW: In the book's Foreword you state: "The
translation of tanka not only involves the accurate transmission
of a poem's 'story,' but must also show cognisance of that
which lies behind the written word." Please explain.
MK: When I compose my tanka, I do not
write down on paper everything I would like the reader
to feel and understand. I cannot spell out my 'message'
in detail, or in its entirety, in such a concise form of
poetry. So, much meaning is often hidden within the words
or expressions of tanka.
RW: You write tanka with a voice that
is completely your own. They are lyrical, sometimes surreal,
and have the rare ability to share with the reader the
essence of how you feel. Take for example the following
two tanka:
- when I contemplate
the copious blood-flow
of our world's peoples,
an avalanche begins its slide
in a part of myself
(translated by Amelia Fielden)
and
What inspired you to write these two poems? What
was your state of mind?
MK: The first expresses my anti-war sentiments.
Everyday we hear awful news of fighting and tragedies somewhere
or other, "an avalanche begins its slide / in a part
of myself," is the way I feel inside when I contemplate
the disasters and turmoil which are so sadly prevalent
in our world.
About the second tanka: if I had been born a hundred years
ago, I wouldn't have encountered you. Although I can't
possibly see and touch all the animate beings which co-exist
with me, I treasure our co-existence.
RW: How long have you been writing tanka
and who has been your primary influence?
MK: I have been writing tanka now for
14 years. Two poets in particular, Mr. Shuji Terayama and
Mr. Kan Kasugai, have had a great influence on me.
RW: As a follow-up, why tanka? Why not
some other genre of poetry?
MK: Because I love the traditional 5/7/5/7/7
sound-unit rhythm of Japanese tanka.
RW: What advice do you offer for English-speaking
poets who write tanka?
MK: Please observe short / long / short
/ long / long rhythm, because that rhythm is the basis
of all tanka. Also, please take care that the ending of
your poem is not "weak," or too short. The last
two lines are very important, and no other line should
be longer - in terms of syllable count - than the final
line.
And then enjoy expressing yourself in tanka!
*Translated by Amelia Fielden
Mariko Kitakubo is a poet who lives in Tokyo. A member
of the Association of Contemporary Tanka Poets, and the
Sakujitu Tanka Society, Kitakubo is active in writing and
performing. To date she has published the following tanka
collections:
I Want to Tell You in the Words of Waves (1999, Artland)
When the Music Stops (2002, Nagarami Shobo)
Will (2005, Kadokawa Shoten)
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