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Spencer will be conducting a free write at the WT library on Thursday, July 5th at 4:00 PM. Don't miss this exciting opportunity to get some words on the page! Free and open to the public. Spencer will be reading along with some fine poets next Wednesday at Featherstone (on MV). Weather looks good so far for this outdoor evening of poetry. He will also be co-hosting a workshop on July 5th. Eric attended the awards ceremony for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Fellowships at the beautiful State House in Boston. Our friend Alexis Ivy won the $12,000 prize in poetry for her sonnets about the homeless. Other awards went to poets Daniel Johnson and January Gill-O'Neill (poetry) and Tory Fair (drawing). On March 25, 2018, Eric and Spencer launched the bilingual version of Kiriu Minashita's "Sonic Peace" at a packed event at the Gen Sou En Teahouse in Brookline, MA. The event included a video of Ms. Minashita reading her work, as well as a "Book Talk" by Spencer and Eric. Here are some photos from that event! (Photo credit: Margaux Novak) During my long stay in Japan from  2014-2017, I had the pleasure of meeting Juliet Carpenter, an influential translator who has brought over 60 works from Japanese to English, most notably Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara. Carpenter has recently published  the first volume of a history of Sakamoto Ryoma, and while researching she came to Kochi, and I met with her during her visit.

Ryoma is not hard to find in Kochi; there is a statue of him outside the train station, the airport is named after him and you can buy cookies with his face on them. He was critical in the early part of the Meiji restoration, and helped demand the adoption of a representative style government in Japan but he was assassinated before the process was fully completed.  He is regarded as a national hero in Kochi, and almost all who I met while living there wanted to see greater recognition for him in mainstream Japanese history. I'm sure there are many in Kochi who are excited to see that there is an authoritative biography coming out in English.

This informative interview with the translation team can tell you a lot more! Spencer was featured in this article from the main newspaper in Kochi, Japan for his work providing Japanese schoolchildren with opportunities for travel to America.

Click here to view this month's World Literature Today. It's a special issue on "Dystopian Visions" and they've published three of our translated Minashita poems, plus our translation of the afterword to her book. Check it out & let us know what you think!

I have a poetry feature this month in Softblow. It is a beautiful online journal based in Singapore. I recommend everybody submit some poems to them! From their website:

"We strive to focus the eye back on the poem. This journal does not pretend to exist for a general reading audience. It is for unswerving lovers of poetry who also appreciate how far poetry has come over time."


Click here to view the Fresno Bee's heartwarming video interview with Spencer Thurlow-- who brought a group of Japanese students to Fresno, California last week. The kids are extremely adorable!

Eric E. Hyett & Spencer Thurlow are delighted to announce that our American translation of "Sonic Peace" (the award-winning first book of poems by contemporary Japanese female poet Kiriu Minashita) has been accepted for publication by LA-based Phoneme Media. The book will appear in a Japanese/English bilingual edition in July, 2017.

Ms. Minashita, who has called our translations "very exquisite," is also thrilled, as this will be her first translated book in English. We are certain that Phoneme Media is a wonderful choice for this work. They have brought out 18 books to date, all of them translations, in addition to producing short films featuring their translated authors. From their website: "Phoneme Media is a nonprofit publishing and film production house, fiscally sponsored by PEN Center USA, committed to discovering international writers, translators, and artists, and connecting them to new audiences around the world."

I was so excited to have my poem selected for this contest. I look forward to walking across my poem with my mom!

Click here to view the link

Poem appeared in Cincinnati Review, using lines from contemporary Japanese poet Kiriu Minashita, translated by Eric and Spencer! Click here to view the link.