5 Translated Yosuke Tanaka Poems

By , , and | 1 May 2019
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5
Barcelona


A book of poems,

a broken escalator,

a compass needle.


A life passes, embracing insecurity. To persist,

to forget, to persist,


I am a mimosa blooming. Broken

mimosa, burning red mimosa, mimosa.


Barcelona,

Wednesday on Las Ramblas.


Inexplicable shapes of parks and churches appear.

Thick honey drips. On the street corner

bench.


As young lovers embrace,

Diagonal,

Diagonal,

We passed this appealingly named underground station, towards the sea.


The summer buses ran.

There was the pleasure of sex.


But you know.

Time flowed lightly, lightly, lightly, lightly.

Then,


Bikinis,

 (Bikini.


ash,





バルセロナ


一冊の詩集

こわれたエスカレーター

方位磁針。


不安定をかかえながら時が過ぎる。保続する、

忘れる、保続する、


私はミモザの花が咲いて。こわれた

ミモザだ、燃える真っ赤なミモザ、ミモザ。


バルセロナ、

ランブラス通りの水曜日。


不可解な、わけのわからない形象の公園と教会がある。

濃密なはちみつが垂れる。街角の

ベンチに。


わかい恋人たちは抱擁しながら、

ディアゴナール、

ディアゴナール、

魅力的な名の地下鉄の駅を過ぎ、海のほうまで。


夏のバスが走った。

きちんとしたセックスがあった。


でもね。

時は軽く軽く軽く軽く流れた。

それから、


ビキニ、

（ビキニよ。


灰、1






    

  1.  From I’d Love to Go to Mont Saint-Michel. Translated by Paul Hetherington and Andrew Houwen ↩
    2.
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Paul Hetherington has published 12 collections of poetry and six poetry chapbooks. A volume of his prose poems, Moonlight on Oleander, will be released by UWAP in June, 2018. He won the 2014 Western Australian Premier’s Book Award (poetry) and was shortlisted for the 2017 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. He was a finalist in the 2018 international Aesthetica Creative Writing Competition (UK) and the 2017 international Bridport Prize Flash Fiction competition (UK). He is Professor of Writing in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra, head of the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) and one of the founding editors of the international online journal Axon: Creative Explorations. He founded the International Prose Poetry Group in 2014.

More by Paul Hetherington on Cordite Poetry Review →
Andrew Houwen is a translator of Dutch and Japanese poetry. His translation, with Chikako Nihei, of the prize-winning post-war Japanese poet Tarō Naka’s Music: Selected Poems was published with Isobar Press in 2018, with some of the poems appearing in Modern Poetry in Translation, Shearsman, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Cha, Tears in the Fence, and Poetry Salzburg. Together with Nihei, he has also published translations of tanka poetry by Kunio Tsukamoto, and his co-translations, with Yosuke Tanaka, of Paul Hetherington and Shane Strange’s poems were published in Gendaishitechō in 2019.

More by Andrew Houwen on Cordite Poetry Review →
Shane Strange lives in Canberra. His writing has appeared in various print and on line journals, including Overland, Griffith Review, Burley and Verity La. He is currently studying at the University of Canberra, where he also tutors and lectures in Creative Writing.

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Yosuke Tanaka is the author of three poetry collections: A Day When the Mountains Are Visible (Shichōsha, 1999); Sweet Ultramarine Dreams (Michitani, 2008); and I’d Love to Go to Mont Saint-Michel (Shichōsha, 2018). Since 1989 he has served as the editor of Japanese poetry magazine Kisaki and is a regular poetry reviewer for Gendaishitechō, Tanka Gendai and Shikaku. His co-translations, with Andrew Houwen, of Paul Hetherington and Shane Strange’s poems were published in Gendaishitechō in 2019. When he is not writing poetry, Tanaka works as a molecular cell biologist.

More by Yosuke Tanaka on Cordite Poetry Review →

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