I want to get rid of Kanoko/I want to get rid of filthy little Kanoko/I want to get rid of or kill Kanoko who bites off my nipples.

A landmark dual collection by one of the most important contemporary Japanese poets, in a "generous and beautifully rendered" translation.

Now widely taught as a feminist classic, KILLING KANOKO is a defiantly autobiographical exploration of sexuality, community, and postpartum depression. Featuring some of her most famous poems, Ito writes in a defiantly autobiographical manner: Kanoko is Ito's oldest child.

WILD GRASS ON THE RIVERBANK won the 2006 Takami Jun Prize, which is awarded each year to an outstanding, innovative book of poetry. Set simultaneously in the California desert and Japan, this collection focuses on migration, nature, and movement. At once grotesque and vertiginous, Ito interweaves mythologies, language, sexuality, and place into a genre-busting narrative of what it is to be a migrant.

"Japan's most prominent feminist poet" - Poetry Foundation

About the Author

Ito Hiromi is one of the most important poets of contemporary Japan. She is often credited with revolutionizing postwar Japanese poetry with her work focusing on sexuality, childbirth, and women's bodies - including Killing Kanoko. She later moved to the U.S., and has since focused on migration and the psychological effects of linguistic and cultural alienation. She is the author of over ten collections of poetry, which have won the prestigious Gendai Shi Techo Prize and the Takami Jun Award; numerous essay collections and translations; and several novellas and novels, which have won the Noma Literary Prize, the Hagiwara Sakutaro Prize and the Izumi Shikibu Prize.

Jeffrey Angles lives in Kalamazoo, where he is an associate professor of Japanese and translation at Western Michigan University. He is the author of Writing the Love of Boys (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) and the award-winning translator of dozens of Japan's most important modern Japanese authors and poets.

Reviews

"Japan's most prominent feminist poet" - Poetry Foundation

"Whether Ito's strong voice overwhelms or inspires, there is no denying her power. Any student of Japanese literature must experience her bold, groundbreaking, unrelenting genius." - Japan Times

"Bizarrely alluring, the narrative poem reconstitutes femininity, immigration, sex, and nature, with defamiliarization being the first step in an innovative push forward." - Publishers Weekly

Awards
Winner of Takami Jun Prize 1980 (Japan).



Book Information
ISBN 9781911284420
Author Hiromi Ito
Format Paperback
Imprint Tilted Axis Press
Publisher Tilted Axis Press