Two Poems | Hirata Toshiko | Granta

Two Poems

Hirata Toshiko

Translated by Eric Hyett & Spencer Thurlow

‘If I go to the window, / it could easily turn into bullets or rabbits.’

Hirata Toshiko

Hirata Toshiko is one of Japan’s best-known contemporary poets, as well as a renowned playwright and author of seventeen novels. She is associated with the 'women’s boom' in contemporary Japanese literature. Her collection, Shinanoka (Tokyo, Shichōsha, 2004) which will be called, in English, Is It Poetry? earned Hirata the Hagiwara Sakutarō Prize for poetry.

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Translated by Eric Hyett

Eric Hyett is a poet, writer and translator from Brookline, Massachusetts, USA. Eric’s poetry appears in magazines and journals, recently the Worcester Review, Cincinnati Review, Barrow Street, the Hudson Review and Harvard Review Online. With Spencer Thurlow, Eric co-translated Sonic Peace by Kiriu Minashita, (Phoneme Media, 2017), which was shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association’s 2018 National Translation Award, as well as the Lucien Stryk Prize for Asian Translation.

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Translated by Spencer Thurlow

Spencer Thurlow is the current Poet Laureate of West Tisbury, Massachusetts, USA, where he leads community readings, workshops, and more. His poetry or translations have appeared in World Literature Today, Cincinnati Review, Comstock Review, Worcester Review and others. With Eric Hyett, Spencer co-translated Sonic Peace by Kiriu Minashita, (Phoneme Media, 2017), which was shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association’s 2018 National Translation Award, as well as the Lucien Stryk Prize for Asian Translation.

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