Abstract

“A view found anywhere intersects with a view that can be seen only here.”

This is the first collection of both tanka and prose by the popular poet Taishi Okano, who writes in order not to forget the emotions of days that might otherwise slip away unnoticed.

Centered around various locations as themes, this book presents prose inspired by the gaze with which he composes his poems, along with notes ("seeds") from before the tanka took shape, and 150 completed tanka poems—all woven together to create a portrait of a certain summer town.

It is a new kind of book that makes you feel as though you are right there, connected to that place.

By encountering places once more, poetry and prose, emotion and memory, resonate with each other—evoking both a sense of nostalgia and the emergence of new landscapes.

We invite you to step into the world of tanka, and through the poet’s eyes, use these poems and seeds as a guide to draw the map of a certain summer town in your heart.

Author’s Information

Born in Osaka in 1980. In 2014, he published his first tanka collection Siren and Rhinoceros, followed by his second collection Tayasuminasai in 2019 (both from Shoshi Kankanbou). His third collection Music was released in 2021 (Nanaroku-sha), and his fourth collection Happy Recent News was published in 2023 (Ohta Publishing). He has also contributed to numerous collaborative works. Among them, the co-authored collection Like the Light That Pours Through the Door’s Peephole (Nanaroku-sha, 2018) has been an exceptional success, with over 20,000 copies sold.

He is currently serializing “Let’s Tanka!” in the Kansai-based monthly magazine Meets Regional. In 2023, he also served as a selector and instructor for NHK Tanka.