Excerpts from Grace Notes, by Ken Rodgers WORDS For Yuri, 1983 The universal love-poem has no words By the window a deep and full cup drinks: technicolor red and yellow tulip turning to the light Living clay on the sun’s wheel SHAKKEI, AT ENTSU-JI The garden is empty; an airy room without walls. The view across …Read More
Tag: poems
Japan Sitting in an office, staring through the long windowsOf the next building’s offices, I see cold sky,I see black mountains flat on it like stencils. Through lower windows in that same slabI see a line of office window river panels,The river brownish blue, and surpassingly calm, Intricately-placidly rippled by, one guesses,A subtle wind, a …Read More
William Altoft is a teacher in Bristol UK, who has links to Kyoto and draws inspiration from the Japanese tanka form. The following were written on the Bristol harbourside, as pictured below. (For more see his homepage here.) I Tower peaks; quartet sleeps; the gull’s braced, as am I – the lock-gate, leading southward, …Read More
A SINGLE THREADJames Woodham a single threadthe spider’s leaving light travelling along it breeze sliding it back a whiteness of wings –from the shore a heron liftsaway on water *********** egret takes to airwingtips grazing the lakegliding on shadow *********** a piece of the dusk breaks off and takes to the airbecoming heron leaves hardly movingfrom the depths of the blue …Read More
a year in review — a haphazard collection of unruly short verse by Lisa Wilcut SPRING blossoms assembling to view springtime crowds below–– beckoned by sake, smoke and laughter the whole body of the bird on the ledge vibrating with the effort of each note down to its last …Read More
The Abyss I’m standing quite still on the edge of an abyss,As wide and as deep as the heart itself is,And though I’ve not noticed its vastness till now,I know it’s been there since before time began. And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t run away,For it opens wherever I go,Yawning and gaping, like …Read More
Another SinceWe metThere has beenNo oneElseFor me but youTookAnotherAnd cameTo regretIt. ************ By the River I sat on the banks of the darkening river, By the broad, slow stream, where the water runs deep, And the grasses of Autumn grew over my heart, Entangling me, rooting me there. I saw the leaves fall to the …Read More
Kyoto Writing Competition
WiK Anthologies
The Nature of Kyoto (2023)
Eds. Lisa Twaronite Sone & Robert Weis
Foreword by Pico Iyer
Structures of Kyoto (2021)
Eds: Rebecca Otowa & Karen Lee Tawarayama
Foreword by Judith Clancy
Encounters with Kyoto (2019)
Eds: Jann Williams & Ian Josh Yates
Foreword by Juliet Winters Carpenter
Echoes (2017)
Eds: John Dougill, Amy Chavez, & Mark Richardson
Preface by Alex Kerr
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