Japan has long had a literary tradition of describing nature. Examples include Saijiki (Seasonal Almanac), Monrui shōko (Names of Things), Hokuetsu setsu-fu (Chronicle of Snow in Hokuetsu) and Sketches of the Chikuma River.
Hiromo Itô has been an avid reader of these works since her youth and have been influenced by them. In her new, yet untranslated work, ‘Natsu-ra: A Seasonal Chronicle of Observations’, she intends not only to observe and describe the daily changes of the seasons, but also to incorporate ideas concerning environmental issues and the nature of life and death. - As I have done in the past, I aim for a style that lies somewhere between poetry, essays and fiction, says Itô.
Program
The event will include a reading by Hiromi Itô of excerpts in Japanese from ‘Natsu-ra: A Seasonal Chronicle of Observations’, accompanied by Norwegian translation by the literary translator Ika Kaminka, and followed by a discussion of the work in English.
The event is part of the East Asian Lunch Seminar, and takes place in the informal and cozy Literature salon in Humanities and Social Sciences Library (sub level).
About
Hiromi Ito emerged in the 1980s as the leading voice of Japanese women’s poetry with a series of sensational works that depicted women’s psychology, sexuality, and motherhood in dramatic new ways. In the late 1990s, she relocated to southern California, and since then, she has written about migrancy, relocation, identity, linguistic alienation, aging, and death. She has won many of the top literary prizes in Japan, including the Hagiwara Sakutarō Prize, Murasaki Shikibu Prize, and the Tsubouchi Shōyō Prize. She has four volumes in English to date: the collection of early poems Killing Kanoko (Action Books, 2009), the book-length, surreal narrative poem Wild Grass on the Riverbank (Action Books, 2014), and the semi-fictionalized memoir about her transpacific life, The Thorn-Puller (Stone Bridge Press, 2022), and the book of poetic essays about plants Tree Spirits Grass Spirits (Nightboat, 2023). She has also been translated into German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Chinese, Polish, and other languages.
Ika Kaminka is a freelance translator based in Oslo, has translated many works by Hiromi Ito, among which are: «Ete, pule, drite, føde, drepe, blø» (2016) and "Eg er Anjuhimeko" (2017). «Tornetrekkeren: nye fortellinger om den fableaktige jizô fra Sugamo» («Togenuki Sugamo-jizô engi») came out from Solum bokvennen in 2023.