Please join us for a poetry reading by Takako Arai, who will be in Pittsburgh for two readings Sep 18-19. She is in the U.S. as part of The University of Iowa’s prestigious creative writing residency, the International Writers Program. Her work has been translated into English by Jeffrey Angles and Sawako Nakayasu as Soul Dance (Mi'Te Press), Four from Japan (Litmus Press), Poems of Hiromi Ito, Toshiko Hirata, and Takako Arai (Vagabond Press), and Poet to Poet: Contemporary Women Poets from Japan (Recent Work Press). 

Takako Arai was born in 1966 in Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture to a family engaged in textile manufacturing, a traditional industry in Kiryu. Arai is known for writing socially engaged poetry. She writes in particular about the lives of working women as they are affected by such forces as globalization, economic decline, and the 2011 triple disaster in northeastern Japan.

Ms. Arai will read a selection of her poems in Japanese and with English translation. 

On September 19, Ms. Arai will give a public reading at City of Asylum as a guest of this year’s Pittsburgh Poetry and Jazz Festival.  Alphabet City, 40 W. North Avenue, Pittsburgh PA 15212  September 19, 7 – 9 PM

flyer

https://iwp.uiowa.edu/residency/participants-by-region/Japan

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/takako-arai

https://www.alphabetcity.org/events/oliver-lake-ft-alicia-ostriker/