My Floating Mother, City: An Evening with Kazuko Shiraishi

Born in Vancouver in 1931, Kazuko Shiraishi is one of Japan’s foremost poets. Influenced by abstract art, experimental literature, and avant-garde jazz, she is beloved by readers around the world for her humane vision: through her poems she "meets her living self/pretending to be a dead body but fully alive." The new collection, My Floating Mother, City, contains poems from her most recent books published in Japan, including The Running of the Full Moon (2004) and My Floating Mother, City (2003), which received the Bansui Poetry Award and a Cultural Award from the Emperor of Japan. Also included in the book are three long sequences including “Sendai Metro, Greece Street,” translated for the first time into English, and “Little Planet,” translated on a paper napkin by Allen Ginsberg. The program includes collaboration with a jazz trumpeter Itaru Oki. Moderated by Forrest Gander, author and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Brown University. Followed by a reception.