Kiji Kutani - A Poet's Portrait of Himself

September 22, 2007 When I was 5 years-old, my mother gave me a copy of Shuntaro Tanikawa’s Mimi o sumasu (Listening). I was amazed to find that the poetry book had so much white space on its pages, and decided that the margins must be for readers to write something. So I drew dinosaurs and wrote poem-like words in the margins.

In the winter when I was 15, I bought a book of literary essays by Genichiro Takahashi in a used bookstore in my town and, quite by chance, came across with a poem by Hiromi Ito called ‘The Snow’. I was impressed, wondering if I might also be able to write like this. My grandmother then gave me a word processor as a gift for high school entrance, which prompted me to write many studies in that spring through the early summer, but none of them were kept. They were quite different in style from my present poems, frequently using words I invented myself.

One of these days, I discovered in a bookstore near the highschool Shi no zasshi (The Poetry Magazine) published by a poetry publishing house called midnight press. I submitted a poem titled ‘Coquettish Glance’, which I had written at the end of the summer holiday. It was selected by the poet Tetsuo Shimizu and published in the magazine. For the next 2 years, I kept on submitting my poems to the major poetry magazines.

Encouaged by Kohbun Okada of midnight press, I published my first collection of poetry Yorumo Hirumo (Day and Night) in the winter of 2003, shortly after my entrance to a university. The book won the 9th Nakahara Chuya Prize in the following year.

In the fall of 2007, my second collection Futatsu no shukkonka no aida ni kaita 24 no si (24 poems which I wrote in between 2 songs of wedding celebration) will be published.