Poetry in Kyoto

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The following event is open to the public.  Reservations are not required.  Please help circulate / share the information with friends and colleagues.

JAPAN INTERNATIONAL POETRY SOCIETY

Literary reading and discussion:  Goro Takano and Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

Date:            Saturday, January 30, 2010

Venue:        Campus Plaza Kyoto, Dai 3 enshu-shitsu, 5th floor:

http://www.consortium.or.jp/contents_detail.php?co=cat&frmId=585&frmCd=14-3-0-0-0

Time:    12:20 - 13:50 (additional discussion will convene at a nearby venue from 14:00)

Admission:        500 yen

Host:            JIPS (Japan International Poetry Society)

Contact:        For further information, Keiji Minato <cage-m@tempo.ocn.ne.jp>

Goro Takano and Jane Joritz-Nakagawa will read excerpts from their 2010 books published by Blaze Vox (Buffalo, NY, USA). A discussion will follow the reading.

Takano's novel "With One More Step Ahead" has been described as " an amazing post-national post-apocalyptic encyclopedic philosophical trans-genre literary critical untranslated novel with poems about post-war Japan, African America, Hawai`i, film, Japanese literature, television news, dementia, paralysis, a sex cult, the atom bomb, gender, race, culture, the corporate state and much more."

Joritz-Nakagawa's fifth book of poems, "incidental music" has been called " an atonal surround sound of turbulent registers. In this work there is dissonance and friction at the level of figuration . . . chaos threatens time, and despair close to oblivion is unraveled in paradoxical lines, yet there is a bold confidence emitted, a pact is made to keep going. Amidst the rumble is an evanescence that can’t be collapsed into a flat plane.”

TAKANO GORO,  born in the city of Hiroshima, is assistant professor at Saga University, Faculty of Medicine, where he teaches English / Japanese literature. He graduated from the  University of Kyoto (Law and International Politics), obtained his  M.A. from the University of Tokyo (American Literature), and his PhD from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (English / Creative Writing). From 1991 to 1998, he was TV program director at  NHK.

JANE JORITZ-NAKAGAWA, born in suburban Illinois, is Associate Professor at Aichi University of Education, where she teaches gender, pedagogy, British and American poetry, and EFL.  Her M.A. in linguistics is from the University of Illinois at Chicago and B.A. in Creative Writing (poetry specialization)/Literature from Columbia College Chicago. In addition to five volumes of poetry, she has published numerous essays and interviews and other works in journals and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and Japan.