Tapa Notebooks

Sawako Nakayasu writes and translates poetry, and also creates performances and short films. Her book Mouth: Eats Color – Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-translations, & Originals is a work of both original and translated poetry. She has received fellowships from the NEA and PEN, and her own work has been translated into Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish, Arabic, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Two books are forthcoming in 2013: Book of Ants (Les Figues Press), and a translation of Sagawa Chika’s Collected Poems (Canarium Books). More information can be found on her website.

Sawako Nakayasu writes: 

The following are the time markers that frame this book:

• “received Wednesday, March 30 at the LOUNGE #18 reading event.”
  [during my 2011 residency at the University of Auckland]
• “Wednesday, March 11, 2011
  March 16 10:45pm”
  [first entry]
• “End. “August 2012 September 2012”
  [last entry]

My stay in Auckland itself was bookended by two major earthquakes: we arrived just days after the Christchurch earthquake, and then as we were packing our bags, the 3/11 earthquake in Japan and the subsequent nuclear disaster forced us to postpone our return. To be honest, it took me a while to write into a notebook that had been presented to me in such a particular context, especially since so much of my writing practice had shifted to the computer and other digital devices over the last few years. What finally made its way into this tapa notebook are exerpts and fragments from my diary word file (and as I type these words I am made aware of the fact that I have never even told anyone that I was doing such a thing!). I originally thought I would include the dates from which they were taken, an idea that lasted for only a few entries before the system broke down and the writing strayed, meandered, took its own course. So, what results is a notebook of fragments that originated sometime between March 2011 and August or September 2012.
 

Links

• Sawako Nakayasu home page
• Sawako Nakayasu at LOUNGE 18
• Poetry off the Page students at the University of Auckland re-translate Sawako Nakayasu’s poem ‘An Ant in the Mouth of Madonna Behind Locked Doors,’ March 2011
  

Photo

Sawako Nakayasu at LOUNGE 18, March 2011.
Credit: Tim Page

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Last updated 5 March, 2013