DYSTOKYO: Book Launch (Tokyo, 2025)

Tokyo Poetry Journal
Jun 9
3 min read

Updated: Jun 9

Text by: Silje Ree

Photos by: Roy Berman

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The neon lights and industrial interior of The Den in Koenji perfectly matched the aesthetic of "Dystokyo," Zoria Petkoska K's and Simon Kalajdiev's innovative art and poetry book published via Tokyo Poetry Journal Publications.

At the book launch and exhibition, Simon’s art seemed like it has always been on The Den's walls.

The bar was filled with people as electronic music artist Ross Verik opened the event with newly created music inspired by the book. Zoria and Simon created the content of the book on their commutes or otherwise on the move around Tokyo and so, recordings from the train and its passengers served as the inspiration for Verik’s work. The art, the sound and the poetry immersed us in DYSTOKYO — to be overloaded only to repeat it all over again, no way out. No need to.

Zoria opened the event, reading from the book accompanied by Verik's music.

As the tunes faded into nothing, Silje Ree read Zoria's poem "#JOMO" in both English and Norwegian. Joy Waller followed with an enthralling performance of "Bandwidth Offerings".

Left to right: Silje Ree, Joy Waller, Chris Mosdell, Miki Yuuri

Legendary lyricist visiting from New York, Chris Mosdell, read an extract from his book that brilliantly blended in with Zoria's "sharpened and bleeding (…) blade-edge voice" punctuating the cyberpunk atmosphere.

President of Kotoba Slam Japan Miki Yuuri closed the first half of the event with a powerful performance of one of the poems from "Dystokyo" in Japanese, translated by ToPoJo editor Jordan A Y Smith.

The performances so wonderfully compliment Simon's "deconstrucrtive-disintegrative elasticated dysto-habitats" (Mosdell, 2025) and throughout the night, my eyes kept returning to it, wanting to fully immerse myself in the "sensory overload tank" that is DYSTOKYO, (and Tokyo itself, in many instances).

Simon opened the second set of the night by sharing his art's creation method and message, as well as how "Dystokyo" came to be. He and Zoria were initially working on two separate projects, before recognizing their overlap in themes and deciding to join forces in the creation of the book.

Zoria then read a poem from a traffic cone, an art object of poetry and painting they have created as a team with Simon, and announced a change of genre in the performances to follow.

Next, writer and voice actor Michael Rhys performed his cyberpunk story “New You” with a surprising twist that left the audience gasping. Robot Bastard followed and read from "Dystokyo" while making music on the spot and singing some of the verses as lyrics.

The night came full circle with a music performance by Ross Verik where he also used excerpts from Zoria's poems as lines in his lyrics.

The night can be described as nothing less than a success. It is one of my favorite events so far. The readers and performances paid a worthy homage to the book. With "Dystokyo," Zoria and Simon have created a truly striking universe that makes us face ourselves and our daily habits. Making us question where are we actually going as a community and whether we do want to live in the world that we are slowly creating.