Mariko Kitakubo on Poets Cafe

The following interview of Mariko Kitakubo by Lois P. Jones originally aired on KPFK Los Angeles (reproduced with permission).


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Biographical Information—Mariko KitakuboMariko kimono

Mariko Kitakubo was born in Tokyo and currently lives in Mitaka-city, Tokyo. She is a member of the Tanka Society of America, Eucalypt (Australian tanka journal), Association of Contemporary Tanka Poets, Kokoro no Hana, Japan PEN club, Japan Tanka Poets club, and the Tanka Online Project. Mariko has published five books of tanka including two bilingual ones, On This Same Star and Cicada Forest. She has also produced a CD of her tanka titled Messages. Mariko is an experienced performer who has presented her poetry on at least 109 occasions, 58 of them overseas. She hopes by this to encourage more poetry lovers worldwide to appreciate and practice tanka.

http://tanka.kitakubo.com/english

__________

cutting my foot
on a tree-root
I felt
the desolation of Descartes
slowly slide into me

for whom then
did I blossom?
I cast my gaze
over the light and shade
of the distant past

a warm teardrop
as I waken
from the dream
of being held back
from the brink of a cliff

as if
falling down
into the galaxy,
I would fall
into your heart

dipping my toes
into the blue water
of the inlet,
I felt my body
surge with life

Simply Haiku, Summer 2007 vol.5, no.2