about the author
Machi Tawara (俵万智), poet, writer, translator, educator, and critic, is perhaps best known for her work in reviving the traditional art of tanka. Tanka, a five-line Japanese poetic with 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure, is meant to capture the essence of a scene or emotion. Hailing from Osaka Prefecture, Tawara began writing while working as a high school teacher, publishing her bestselling work, Salad Anniversary (サラダ記念日), in 1987. With millions of copies of her works sold in Japan and abroad, Tawara has an incredibly active and international following that has contributed to the popularization of tanka in the 20th and 21st centuries. She currently holds various writing and translating positions for international and Japanese publications.
about the translator
DoubleSpeak’s staff is a group of poetry lovers and language aficionados. We hail from Baltimore, MD; Pleasanton, CA; Georgetown, TX; Chicago, IL; Rockville, MD; Brooklyn, NY; Sacramento, CA; Chapel Hill, NC; Portland, OR; Philadelphia, PA; Atlanta, Georgia; as well as Toronto, Ontario; Asturias, Spain; and Tokyo, Japan. On Thursday nights, you can find us in the Kelly Writers House reading through beautiful poetry submissions. Whether we’re playing multilingual Scrabble or commenting on submissions in rhymed couplets, we’re drawn together by our shared passion for language and translation.
Thank you to all of our proofreaders in the DoubleSpeak community who made this group translation possible!
