Mike Freiling

Mike was born in San Francisco and attended USF as an undergraduate, where he first became interested in poetry at readings by Allen Ginsburg, Gary Snyder and others of that generation. At USF he also became interested in Japanese literature, as he and his friends read anything by Yukio Mishima that they could get their hands on. As a grad student at MIT, Mike found the time to study poetry under David Ferry at Wellesley, and was a co-founder of Rune, which eventually became MIT’s official literary magazine (http://runemag.mit.edu/index.php).

In 1977, Mike was named a Luce Scholar (http://www.hluce.org/lsprogram.aspx), with an appointment at Kyoto University. During his scholarship year, Mike managed to learn enough Japanese to produce a translation of the Hyaku Nin Isshu as his final report to the Luce Foundation. In 2014, Mike returned to Japan for the first time in 25 years, and began writing a series of poems that recorded his experiences at different shrines and temples in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Kanazawa. He now spends about 3 months of the year in Japan, writing poetry in both English and Japanese.

Today, Mike is at work on several writing projects. Iceplant is a collection of poems about growing up in San Francisco’s Sunset District in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. Dewdrop explores cross-cultural themes common to both Eastern and Western spirituality. Tanuki Tales are short prose stories intended to make spirituality interesting and accessible to those who are outside of any institutional religious tradition. Mike is also engaged with a team of poets and native Japanese speakers in translating a recently discovered manuscript of haiku that were written collectively by Issei Japanese in the World War II detention centers of Oregon and Idaho.