Time of Sky &
Castles in the Air

Ayane Kawata

Translated by Sawako Nakayasu

2010 • 144 pp. • $18.00 • ISBN: 978-1-933959-08-5
Cover art by Mauro Zamora

• Three Percent: Best Translated Book Award Finalist. March 2011.
• Asymptote review. January 2011.
• Poets.org review. Fall 2010.
• New Pages review by C.J. Opperthauser. November 1, 2010.
• Galatea Resurrection review by Eileen Tabois. April 30, 2010.
• How2 features Ayane Kawata.

Time Of Sky & Castles In The Air is the first full-length translation of Ayane Kawata’s poetry to be published in English. This single volume contains Kawata’s first book of poems, Time of Sky (first published in Japanese by Kumo Publishers, 1969), and her sixth, Castles in the Air: A Dream Journal (first published in Japanese by Shoshi Yamada, 1991).

In Japan, Kawata's work is noted primarily for its stark, vivid depictions of life — not  so much life as lived by a specific person, but more the sense of "living-ness."  To the Japanese eye and ear, Kawata's poetry cuts through to the "overwhelming  mysteries" that lie beneath everyday activities, and it does so with necessity. Hers are aggressive poems that look frankly at what it means to be a Japanese  woman both inside Japan and away.

—Malinda Markham

59

As if in a dream
Ferociously
I see larks in a sky without larks

—from Time of Sky

Running posture

I am being chased and so I run, though the problem lies not in the fact that someone is chasing me, but in the posture with which I run away.

—from Castles in the Air – A dream journal

The publication of this book is made possible, in part, by support from: