Volume 11
Tokyo lines up when it must, but after the last train has departed, poets walk the rails and squeeze through the trap doors under the platforms. We untangle power lines hanging over like mysterious myriad-stroke kanji. Between the city slices we let some poetry bleed out.
This volume of poetry distills TOkyo TOday/TOmorrow, what the city hints at, what morse code shoes are tapping on the vacuumed train station stairs, what is lost in bilingual conversation and between one too many konbini chuhais. Taylor Mignon and Zoria Petkoska’s collaborative poem “Collapsing Chuhai” encapsulates some of this ToToTo-scape.
This volume was a long time coming. From Drunk Poets See God in Gari Gari, when said poets would wander into Shibuya walking after midnight. From poetry collaborations taking root in Yoyogi Park. From gatherings to write poems to the full moon, shrouded in clouds. From burning poems only to recreate them with fiery inspiration. Everything you find in this city is a trigger.
––from Editors' Letter, by Zoria Petkoska and Mat Chiappe
Poetry and Translations by: Mat Chiappe, Alvin Wong, Zoria Petkoska, Taylor Mignon, Sarah Caulfield, Andrew, David Severn, Jordan A. Y. Smith, Simon Scott, Andrew Hanson, Carl Walsh, Alan Ojeda (tranlsated by Griselda Perrota), Seira Duncan, Kana Hozoji, Kathleen Hellen, Misumi Mizuki (translated by Andrew Gebert), Nagae Yūki (translated by Jordan A. Y. Smith), Terayama Shūji (translated by Marc Sebastian-Jones), Matthew Zuckerman, Trish Shishikura, Christian Hernández, Barbara Summerhawk, Ibaragi Noriko (translated by Andrew Houwen and Peter Robinson).
Reviews of works by Tanikawa Shuntaro and Miho Nonaka.
Art by Simon Kalajdjiev (cover), Erica Ward, & Apolo Cacho.
Plus a chance to "collect the invisible poem"....