Author: John Dougill (Page 43 of 45)

 Işıl Bayraktar is currently MEXT (Japanese education ministry) research student engaged in doctoral research at the Graduate School of Sociology at Kyoto University on family change and aging in Turkey and Japan. She keeps a blog and also writes travel notes, short stories and book reviews for several Turkish journals and books. Here Isil reports on an …Read More

Greetings to the WiK community! Please allow me to introduce myself as yet another member of the group who has fallen head over heels in love with the beautiful city of Kyoto. I joined the Writers in Kyoto group because of my passion for writing, as well as my eagerness for networking with others who …Read More

The Australian Hal Stewart (1916-1995) left an indelible mark on Kyoto literature with his By the Old Walls of Kyoto (1981), a year’s cycle of landscape poems with prose commentaries.  The poems were inspired by the Jodo Shinshu faith, and many of the prose pieces are insightful investigations of Kyoto history.  In one such piece …Read More

WiK’s summer solstice poetry reading, in keeping with the year’s longest day, was an engaging event which brought high quality English-language poetry to one of Kyoto’s most traditional areas, the Gion geisha district.  The occasion was given an auspicious start by a large and energetic anti-government demonstration which passed along Kawabata Street in front of …Read More

Edith Shiffert has lived in Kyoto since 1963 and published some twenty books of poetry.  She is currently 99 years old and resident in a rest home. Below is Dennis Maloney’s introduction in John Einarsen’s beautifully illustrated tribute to Edith, Kyoto: The Forest Within the Gate. I first met Edith Shiffert in Kyoto in the …Read More