"Tokyo lines up when it must, but after the last train has departed, poets walk the rails and squeeze through the trap doors under the platforms. We untangle power lines hanging over like mysterious myriad-stroke kanji. Between the city slices we let some poetry bleed out." ​ And we make invisible poems so you can complete your ToPoJo Vol.11 yourself with one final touch. On page 86 of the Tokyo Poetry Journal Volume 11: Tokyo City / Slice, you will find an empty page. Why? Because just like this city, nothing is ever complete. Shinjuku Station has construction work going on every day, passag ..read more

Committed to sharing and uplifting the myriads of poetic voices across different languages, nationalities, genders and generations, the Tokyo Poetry Journal shined an additional spotlight on women in poetry on March 25 in honor of International Women's Day and Women's Month. The event took place at the cozy Ryozan Park Lounge in Sugamo. Tokyo Poetry Journal editor emeritus Barbara Summerhawk kicked off the night reading poetry by the Iranian poet Nassarine as well as poems by Yosano Akiko recited from memory. We also heard some of her own fantastic poetry, before introducing a new f ..read more

ToPoJo collaborated with More Than Music (MTM) for a musical-poetry event at the cozy Whiz Cafe in Kanda during a nippy, winter January night. ToPoJo founders Jeffrey Johnson, Taylor Mignon, and Barb Summerhawk led off the 3-tiered program in the upstairs narrow, wooden floored room with a great ambience and loaded with supportive, enthusiastic poetry lovers. Jeffrey, backed by musician son Leo, read from his work in an even-toned voice. Half the fun was enjoying the father and son riffing together. Taylor followed that warmly-applauded duo by reading a poem of Tsuji Setsuko that Taylor had tr ..read more

Born in the pandemic, Tokyo Poetry Journal Volume 10 took much longer to emerge from the chaos we’ve all been in. Created as a ray of light in dark times of the 2020 mid-pandemic summer, V10 was delivered to the world one year later. On July 24, 2021, we gathered in the safest place one can go in a metropolis right now – the park. ToPoJo editors, contributors and loyal supporters came together to read poetry, play music, dance and bask in the afternoon sun. Uncharacteristic for Japan’s sweltering summer, the day of Topojo Vol.10 Lazy Launch was one with a fluttering breeze. Readers included O ..read more

Ukiyo-e print by Ryusai Shegeharu. (1830) The majority of poetry is written in solitary contemplation, or as our friend William Wordsworth would say “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” However, poets are playful social beings too and some of the greatest works of literature have been born out of co-writing or collaboration in various forms. ToPoJo loves teaming up with musicians and artists of all kinds for every volume and event. We highly value collaboration, our journal is a testament to that. ToPoJo editor ..read more

Meeting Jeffrey Johnson on the street in Setagaya on a sunny afternoon in October, you’d be forgiven for assuming he’s a moderately normal, well-adjusted man. He sports a neatly trimmed goatee and is dressed in the quietly suave manner befitting a professor of literature at Sophia University: well-fitted jeans, a black T-shirt, spotless white sneakers. We actually talk about the weather for the first couple minutes, I kid you not (my fault; I was totally the instigator of this). But soon we have ascended the sketchy, graffiti-splattered elevator to a rooftop café called A-Bridge, settled in w ..read more

––––Jordan A. Y. Smith [interview + poem by Gander / translation by Nakagawa and Chozick] Dancers Eiko Otake and Koma Otake were born in Japan and lived there until 1976, when they moved to NYC to pursue their dance career as a duo––which led to a stellar four decades plus change during which they have performed at venues including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Their fame abroad––evidenced by numerous prizes abroad, including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Scripps Award––has now exceeded that in their native Japan, though they began by training there wi ..read more

- words by Jeffrey Johnson, photos by Zoria Petkoska K. Maybe it was the summer heat, maybe the end of school, the semester, or the beginning of Obon … Some readers didn’t show, the place was half-filled with regulars … doubt creeps in … Then Marcellus Nealy kicked things off with panache and broke the heat (no ice to be found) and the first round of readers, Rachel Ferguson, Tatiana Sulovska, Zoria Petkoska K., and Joy Waller, read their poems from Vol 13, each had a calming effect on me. The heat was transformed into a warm welcome. Marcellus, the masterful MC and even better reader, raised ..read more

Year 2933 (translated into early third millennium Global English) The scattered encrypted chunks of retrieved data from The Great Internets Extinction of the 22nd century have been mined extensively for clues about the lives of our ancestors. Along with the physical dig sites, they were recently transferred to our department for literary extractions, as humans are preferred over AI for this work. While still sorting through, and having heated debates over what is considered literature and what not, we want to share some of our early findings. We have restored damaged poems from the early 21st ..read more

Volume Introduction: Poetry and Translation for Techonfuckits Jordan A. Y. Smith, ChatGPT, Midjourney (NOTE: this version of the Introductory essay is the "extended" version, including ChatGPT's answers as to the benefits and dangers of reading Tokyo Poetry Journal. There is also a link to the ,Buzzfeed Quiz, where you can try to guess which poems inspired Midjourney's image-generating AI to create.) This volume of ToPoJo is a follow up to our Volume 4: Heisei Generations, the first of its kind – a volume dedicated to living Japanese poets from all sorts of poetry walks, award and publishing ..read more