Dr Alan Cummings from SOAS's Department of East Asian Languages and Culture returns for another workshop translating Karan Kurose, the Japanese poet, monk and TV poetry show judge. Kurose writes tanka, often including many disparate elements from the poetic form’s 1300-year history in the same poem, using archaic terminology alongside slang derived from contemporary sub-cultures.

There is no need to know the language being translated, just come along!

Get a Season Pass for all 6 Workshops In This Series Here.

Poet

Karan Kurose was born in Osaka in 1977 is the chief priest of Gannenji Buddhist temple, in Toyama. He studied with the modern tanka poet Ken Kasugai (1938-2004). He has published three volumes of poetry. He works as a poetry judge for a tanka TV programme on Japanese national television, and for the Mirai Tanka Society.

Bridge Translator

Dr. Alan Cummings is Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS, University of London. His research interests include kabuki dramaturgy and post-war performance. Recent publications include Haiku: Love (British Museum Press, 2013), and Money is all that matters in the world in Jones & Watanabe (eds.) and A Tokyo Anthology: Literature from Japan's Modern Metropolis 1850-1920 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2017).

Workshop Facilitator

Clare Pollard is an award-winning poet and the editor of Modern Poetry In Translation. As a writer, Clare is very concerned with bearing witness to the times in which we live. Her work has frequently engaged with contemporary concerns. Her third collection Look, Clare! Look! (2005) was made a set text on the WJEC A-level syllabus. Her latest collection is Incarnation (Bloodaxe, 2017).