On Two Shores / 二つの岸辺: New and Selected Poems - Hardcover

Takahashi, Mutsuo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1910251577 ISBN 13: 9781910251577

Publisher: Dedalus Press, 2019

Synopsis

Mutsuo Takahashi was born in Japan in 1937, and educated at Fukuoka University of Education. An eminent playwright and poet, he has published many collections of haiku and tanka and more than twenty collections of free verse in his native Japanese. On Two Shores draws to some extent on that earlier work but also features more recent poems, including more than a dozen written during and after a tour of Ireland in the summer of 1999, a trip which, according to Nobuaki Tochigi in his Introduction, led to Takahashi's "regaining his faith in poetry". On Two Shores is translated into English by Mitsuko Ohno and Frank Sewell. The book is presented in two 'halves', with the English translations mirroring the Japanese originals.

About this title

Review

"The poetic dialogue between Ireland and Japan began with one Nobel laureate (W.B. Yeats) and continues with another (Seamus Heaney). But we rarely get soundings from the Japanese side, which is why this book is so valuable and gratifying. Allusions to leading Irish poets, both living and dead, are built into the poems: Mostly these derive from Takahashi himself, but are sometimes enhanced by the translators. This bilingual edition allows us, too, to be enriched by the poet’s Irish journey." - David Burleigh, The Japan Times, 2006

About this edition

• Publisher: Dedalus Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1910251577
• ISBN 13: 9781910251577
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 148