Renshi (Paperback)

Master poets Ooka Makoto, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Kim Yong-Jik were joined by Canadian Roseann O’Reilly Runte in Tokyo on a very warm August day in 1991 to compose a linked-verse poem. It was also the day the Soviet Parliament was stormed, foreshadowing the end of the Cold War. Not knowing the future, the poets chose to celebrate the lasting power of words to survive discord and violence. They believed the beauty of poetry would inspire and transcend time, national and linguistic borders. They followed an ancient Japanese poetic form called Renga and they wrote simultaneously in English, French, Japanese and Korean.

This volume includes the original recording made by the poets, artwork inspired by the poems by Sylviane de Roquebrune and music by Casey Sokol.

The Renga form dates from medieval times when poets came together at a castle to compose in the course of a single day linked verses that responded to each other, creating a poetic dialogue. We believe this to be the sole Renga ever composed completely in four languages at once.

Roseann O'Reilly Runte (Author)
Roseann O’Reilly Runte, awarded the François Coppée poetry prize from the Académie française has served as professor, university president and head of the Canada Foundation for Innovation. She currently dedicates her time and thoughts to writing and consulting. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Ooka Makoto (Contributor)
Makoto Ooka, poet, novelist, journalist, and critic, authored over 250 volumes of work, taught at Meiji University, the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and lectured at Harvard, Princeton, and the Collège de France. He served as director of the Japan Artists Association, chair of the Japan Contemporary Poets Society, chair of the Japan P.E.N. Club, and chair of the Japanese Arts Academy. He received the Cultural Merit Award, was inducted into the Japanese Arts Academy, and was made Officier (Officer) in l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France. He was
awarded the prestigious International Golden Wreath at the Struga Poetry Evenings.

Shuntaro Tanikawa (Contributor)
Shuntaro Tanikawa, poet, translator, novelist, and professor, wrote over sixty volumes of poetry, including Floating the River in Melancholy, which was translated by William Elliott and won the American Book Award. His first novel, Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude (1952) is still widely read. He translated Charles Schulz’s Peanuts as well as the Mother Goose stories and Hans Christian Andersen’s tales for children. His works, such as Coca-Cola Lessons, Listening to Mozart, and Ordinary People are well known. He wrote songs for television, radio, and film of which some, like “Firebird,” are the theme song for the eponymous film. He wrote epic, lyrical, narrative, and satirical verse and visited every continent except Antarctica. He was a professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and was awarded the prestigious International Golden Wreath Prize at the Struga Poetry Evenings.

Kim Yong-Jik (Contributor)
Yong-Jik Kim, professor in the Department of Korean Language and Literature in the Faculty of the Humanities at Seoul National University in South Korea, poet, and translator of Chinese verse, published several volumes on modern Korean poets, poetry, and the analysis of poetry principles. He received many awards, including the March 3 Culture Prize, the Republic of Korea Literature Prize, the Sejong Culture Prize, and the Modern Literature Prize. He was president of the Literary Translation Institute of Korea, the Modern Korean Literature Society, the Korean Comparative Literature Association, and the Korean Society for Poetics.