INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Through the Museletter connection, I got in touch with poet Joshua Auerbach, who edits the new journal Vallum: contemporary poetry. For a look at the look of Vallum, view their Web site at vallummag.com. I’m acting as advisor for a special section entitled “Japanese Imaginings.” For more info, visit the magazine’s “upcoming theme issues” page, or send me an email at poetrymignon@hotmail.com.

MIGNETTES: RECENT PUBLICATIONS

• Δ Delta: Revue internationale pour la poesie experimentale
  Number 18, avril 2003, edited by Tanabe Shin, mostly in Japanese. This little mag shows how Japan is in the forefront of visual poetries. It regularly features visual works on fine, glossy paper: the works of Takahashi Shohachiro, Sawada Shin’ichi and the editor himself, all who were important members of one of the pioneering experimental poetry clubs in Japan, VOU. Add to the fusion Yarita Misako’s Cubist-like photos with the word, and Julien Blaine’s contributions with guests such as Clemente Padin, and Diosthenis Agrafiotis’ attractive vispoem “delta,” and you’ve got a visual menage. Delta also contains lexical poetry and essays.

  Δ Delta
  3-Daisanyayoiso
  29-29 2-chome, Shirasagi, Nakano-ku
  Tokyo 165-0035 Japan

• Inside the Kamakura Buddha: Poems by Wallace Gagne
  (Printed Matter Press, 2003) Wallace is one of Tokyo’s hottest political polemicists. Though he is in his element in the political mode, he also takes on the Buddha. Here are the first two stanzas from the title poem:
  
  You’re the biggest friggin’ Buddha I’ve ever seen.
  Bar none. Ten thousand tons of bronze and concrete
  enlightenment.
  You’ve been sitting there for 800 years, they say.
  In the lotus position.
  
  You used to be inside a building, until a
  Texas-sized typhoon blew it away: 200 mile an hour
  winds; tidal wave bigger than a Hollywood disaster;
  thousands swept out to sea.
  But you just sat there, the awakened one.
  Cool dude.
  
  
• In Quest of Draco and the Ecliptic: Henry Miller’s Interspatial Literature
  (Stroker Press, 2003) Stroker editor Irving Stettner has moved shop from Saitama, Japan to the US. His newest title is In Quest of Draco and the Ecliptic: Henry Miller’s Interspatial Literature by Honda Yasunori. $6.95. Enquire about signed limited editions.

  Stroker Press
  174 Huntsville Road #5
  Dallas, PA 18612

• Hummingbird: Magazine of the Short Poem
  Vol. XIII, No. 3, March 2003, edited by Phyllis Walsh, $4.00. $15 annual subscription, $20.00 overseas. This issue features work by Yvonne Hardenbrook, alongside Japan-based poets Sanford Goldstein, Cid Corman, Michael Fessler, and senryu by Gengoro. Also on board are John Vieira, charlie mehrhoff, Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Bob Arnold, H.F. Noyes, vincent tripi, James L. Weil, and Alec Finlay. Here’s one by Yvonne:
  
  left behind
  by the passing shower
  a puddle of birds

  Hummingbird
  Phyllis Walsh, Editor
  P.O. Box 96
  Richland Center, WI 53581

• Sketches for Kochi, poems by Taguchi Tetsuya and photos by Kawasaki Miho
  (Stone River, 2002) Email tit49@hotmail.com for information on how to get a copy. Here’s “Arakura Tunnel”:
  
  through a tear-dripping
  tunnel we drove
  and then pulled over
  
  purple plain
  in a purple country
  
  I drink bitter coffee
  with a girl who drinks
  my bitter darkness
  
  wet grass
  in a
  purple country
  
  
• Blue Beat Jacket
  No. 20, October 2002, edited by Keida Yusuke. US$10 (10 IRCs), 1,000 yen. Special Lawrence Ferlinghetti issue, with many of his poems published here for the first time, with assistance from the Vojo Sindolic Beat Archive. Though Yusuke could use a copy editor, the mag is lively and a must for Beat lovers and scholars. Yusuke translates into Japanese “Look Homeward Jack: Two Letters,” and also provides a bibliography of Ferlinghetti’s work translated into Japanese. Also contained are works by Steve Dalachinsky, Gerald Locklin, Sam Hamill, Herschel Silverman and A.D. Winans. Be quick -- the issue is limited to an edition of 100 copies.

  Blue Beat Jacket 20
  1-5-54 Sugue-cho, Sanjo-shi
  Niigata 955-0832 Japan

• Catch and Release, poems by Arthur Binard
  Winner of the Nakahara Chuya Prize, 2001, 1700yen / $19. Each year, Yamaguchi City awards the prize to “a volume of contemporary Japanese free-form poetry deemed outstanding in its freshness of sensibility and expression.” Arthur the polyglot composes directly in Japanese and this volume is translated by Dorothy Britton. You can read more on Arthur in my column in The Japan Times, written when he won the prize. Here’s the first poem in the volume, “Words”:
  
  “Speak!” I command,
  and when they won’t,
  I crack my whip.
  
  I make them line up, roll over
  and jump through the hoop
  of a conclusion.
  
  No matter how tame
  they may seem, remember,
  at any moment they can
  turn on you.
  
  
• Let Those Who Appear, poems by Shiraishi Kazuko
  

  Compare prices  to buy the book • Let Those Who Appear

  (New Directions, NPD 940, 2002) For reviews of this long-awaited second offering of Kazuko’s poems from New Directions, see Sato Hiroaki’s article online in The Japan Times and mine, upcoming this summer in Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.

MIGNETTES: READINGS & AN EXHIBIT IN TOKYO

• At Temple University Japan, on May 30 at 7 pm, on the 3rd floor in the library, Canadian fiction writer and critic Gregory Strong will read excerpts from his works. Frank Spignese is scheduled to read at Temple University on June 27.
  
  
• At Bobby’s Bar in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, several Canadians will give readings. Email me and I’ll send more information as it comes in.
  
  
• At Keiyudoh Books in Takanawa, Tokyo, an exhibit of the visually appealing poetry of Kitasono Katue is scheduled from July 20 to August 15. Check the Web page at www.keiyudoh.com for details (if you can read Japanese).

ON THE INTERNET
Tokyo-based artist/poet Jesse Glass is coediting a project for Generator Press. The Generatorpress.com Web site carries translations of Korean modernist poetry, English versions of Ayukawa Nobuo’s poetry by Leza Lowitz, visual poetry from all over, including Tanabe Shin’s superlative works mentioned above, translations of a poem by Yarita Misako, tanka by Terayama Shuji, and haiku by Issa, all provided in English by John Solt, as well as English versions of Torii Shozo by myself.

Speaking of my translations of Torii Shozo, more are offered on the e-zine Milk, edited by Larry Sawyer.

Taylor Mignon