Description

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For the first time in English, a selection from the highly acclaimed Japanese poet, photographer, performance artist, and filmmaker

Yoshimasu Gozo's groundbreaking poetry has spanned over half a century since the publication of his first book, Departure, in 1964. Much of his work is highly unorthodox: it challenges the print medium and language itself, and consequently Alice Iris Red Horse is as much a book on translation as it is a book in translation. Since the late '60s, Gozo has collaborated with visual artists and free-jazz musicians. In the 1980s he began creating art objects engraved on copper plates and later produced photographs and video works. Alice Iris Red Horse contains translations of Gozo's major poems, representing his entire career. Also included are illuminating interviews, reproductions of Gozo's artworks, and photographs of his performances.

 

Translated by Jeffrey Angles, Richard Arno, Forrest Gander, Derek Gromadzki, Sawako Nakayasu, Sayuri Okamoto, Hiroaki Sato, Eric Selland, Auston Stewart, Kyoko Yoshida, and Jordan A. Y. Smith. Introduction and notes by Derek Gromadzki. Edited by Forrest Gander.

About the Author

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Gozo Yoshimasu, born in Tokyo, has given performances worldwide, and has received many literary and cultural awards, including the Takami Jun Prize, the Rekitei Prize, the Purple Ribbon, and the 50th Mainichi Art Award for Poetry.

Forrest Gander was born in the Mojave Desert and lives in California. He taught at Harvard University and Brown University. Gander is a translator and the author of many books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. He has received a Pulitzer Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Whiting, and United States Artists Foundations.

Praise For…

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Gozo’s poems often explore, like Basho’s, moments in journeys that are at once physical and spiritual. His work sprawls, expanding and contracting like the universe.
— Forrest Gander

Born in 1939, influential and innovative, Gozo is widely known for his visual art and performances.
— Boston Review

He became famous for his avant-garde work, which employs chance operations and other techniques, pushing Japanese poetry in radically new directions.
— Guernica