Mari Kashiwagi, Japan
The Poems
Butterfly/Rainbow
Rainbow shimmers
a memory of Butterfly
having been here
*
On Butterfly’s shoreline
Rainbow slumbers
*
What Rainbow
could not articulate
a butterfly
*
Sky’s
reincarnation as a rainbow
Butterfly
*
Butterfly is
tuning Rainbow
*
Rainbow
rises
Butterfly
alights
[English translation by Takako Lento]
Nectar’s Root
Apple
growing
outward
being
split
by
Nectar
welling
*
touched into swaying
Nectar
says
Me
*
Nectar meets Nectar
pressed
into
singing
*
Apple
touches
Nectar
what its flower has seen
resonates
*
in order to be forgotten
from within
Flower
opens
outward
*
Nectar
enters
into
the heart
of
rain
to be beaten
against the earth
*
scent
trails from
flowers
disorienting
*
Wishing
to
bloom
to
be
something
different
[English Translation by Takako Lento]
The Poet
Mari Kashiwagi was born in Erlangen, Germany, and raised in Japan. She is a Japanese poet and art curator. She won an award of the prestigious poetry magazine, Gendaishi Techo (1995), and International Micro Poetry Award Silver Prize from the Boao International Poetry Festival (2021). Excerpts from her second book, Nectar’s root as far as its Resonance reaches (2008) are presented in the Poetry International Web. Her third collection Butterfly (2020) is in Japanese with an English translation by Takako Lento. As an curator, she has curated more than a dozen exhibitions on Japanese and Chinese ceramic arts, and written two books. She has been invited to read at the Struga Poetry Evenings festival (North Macedonia, 2014), InterLese (Germany, 2016), and The Princeton Festival (USA, 2018), and also invited to the numerous online festivals and readings in the world. Her poems are translated in 11 languages so far.