Category: Featured Writers (Page 25 of 26)

Writers in focus

Introducing Karen Lee Tawarayama

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

Harold Stewart’s beloved old walls

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

Two Poets Event

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, Kyoto poet

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

Allen S. Weiss: Manifesto for the Future of Landscape

Manifesto for the Future of Landscape (photos by Allen S. Weiss) The dry garden of Ryōan-ji is one of the most analysed and photographed works of art in the world. Thus, well before my first visit in November 2006, I felt I knew the garden intimately, and was thoroughly prepared to elaborate on the knowledge …Read More

Steiner on woodblocks and writer’s block

For the inauguration meeting of Writers in Kyoto, held in late March, we invited Any Chavez to enlighten us on her experience as a journalist in Japan. She is well-known amongst foreign writers here, though not many of us have ever met her as she lives on a tiny island in the Inland Sea. With …Read More

Marc Keane on Kyoto

Garden designer Marc Keane is known for his lucid writing about Japanese nature and culture.  He lived for 18 years in Kyoto, working first as a research fellow at Kyoto University and later as a landscape architect with his own design office in downtown Kyoto.  He taught at the Kyoto University of Arts and Design, …Read More

Eric Johnston, on being a news reporter in today’s world

Eric Johnston is a well-known figure from his writings in The Japan Times and his involvement in a wide range of Kansai activities.  He’s used to interviewing people of course, but here WiK reverses the tables and asks him some questions for a change… What do you write about? As a full-time reporter based in …Read More

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