Sawako Nakayasu

Sawako Nakayasu is a transnational poet and translator who has lived in Japan, France, China, and the US. Her books include The Ants (Les Figues Press) and Texture Notes (Letter Machine), and recent translations include Tatsumi Hijikata’s Costume en Face (Ugly Duckling Presse) and The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa (Canarium Books), which won the 2016 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. Other books include Hurry Home Honey (Burning Deck) and Mouth: Eats Color – Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-translations, & Originals, which is a multilingual work of both original and translated poetry. Her translation of Takashi Hiraide’s For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut (New Directions) received the 2009 Best Translated Book Award from Three Percent. Nakayasu has also appeared on Japanese television as a poetry judge, performed in a re-enactment of Yvonne Rainer’s Grand Union Dreams (dir. Yelena Gluzman) as well as in Cornelius Cardew’s Paragraphs 4 & 7 from The Great Learning (dir. Tomomi Adachi).

Year

2006

Website

sawakonakayasu.net

Location

Providence, RI USA