Names and Rivers

A bilingual Japanese-English presentation of Shuri Kido's poetry, co-translated by Pulitzer prize-winner Forrest Gander

Shuri Kido, known as the “far north poet," is one of the most influential contemporary poets in Japan. Names and Rivers brings the poems of Shuri Kido to readers in North America for the first time, thanks to star translator team Tomoyuki Endo and Pulitzer Prize winner Forrest Gander. Drawing influence from Japanese culture and geography, Buddhist teachings, and modernist poets, Kido presents a mesmerizing view of the world and our human position in it. This is a world “that isn't ours"—where the trees are sirens while the people are silent, where snow lingers while language crumbles. Names and Rivers is made of crossings, questionings, and mysteries as unanswered and open as the sky. Bilingual Japanese-English production.

Shuri Kido, known as the “far north poet,” is one of the most important poets in Japan. He has translated many English poems into Japanese and has introduced works by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot to Japan. Kido has been a critic and columnist for various magazines and newspapers and has a profound knowledge of Japanese culture.

Tomoyuki Endo is an assistant professor at Wako University in Tokyo. He has collaborated with Forrest Gander on the translation of poems from Shiraishi’s My Floating Mother, City (New Directions), and was the supervisor of English subtitles for Gozo Yoshimasu’s movies Thousands of Islands and The Reality behind What We See.

Forrest Gander is a translator, cross-genre writer, and former professor at Brown University. He is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, and United States Artists Foundations.