Why do We Write?
More Mysterious,
Why do We Read What we Write?
Why are there Chants, Prayers, Songs?
Poems?
Words are There To Be Spoken.
Words are There To Be Heard.
Magic of The Word.
Magic
Of
The
Word.
Why do We Write?
More Mysterious,
Why do We Read What we Write?
Why are there Chants, Prayers, Songs?
Poems?
Words are There To Be Spoken.
Words are There To Be Heard.
Magic of The Word.
Magic
Of
The
Word.
Yuri Kageyama and Hirokazu Suyama Jackson at The Container gallery in Tokyo for a poetry reading. January 2016. Photo by Junji Kurokawa
Hirokazu Suyama Jackson (tablas) and I did a reading of excerpts from the multi-media performance piece I wrote NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA: MEDITATION ON AN UNDER-REPORTED CATASTROPHE BY A POET at The Container gallery, which is in a hair salon in Daikanyama, Tokyo.
Thanks to novelist and GLASS magazine writer Peter Yeoh and John Carpenter of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for kindly organizing and having us at the event.
A MOTHER SPEAKS (an excerpt from NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA)
Poetry by Yuri Kageyama
Please listen and tell the world.
How our children in Fukushima are getting thyroid cancer, one by one.
My daughter is one of them.
Pediatric thyroid cancer is rare.
The chance for getting it is under one in a million.
One in a million.
But in Fukushima, it’s 112 out of 380,000 children tested, and the tally is growing.
This is Fukushima after Three-Eleven.
Beautiful Fukushima, where rice paddies stretch between lazy mountains.
Beautiful Fukushima, where snow falls everywhere like fluffy rice.
Beautiful Fukushima, where, when spring finally comes, cherry trees explode in pink chiffon.
But this is Fukushima after Three-Eleven.
No other place in Japan is like that.
No other place in the world is like that _ except for the Ukraine and Belarus.
But they say these cases are turning up because we are looking so much harder, testing all the children in Fukushima.
The authorities say they are playing it safe.
When no one really feels safe
After Three-Eleven in Fukushima.
My little girl got surgery and so her tumor was removed.
And the doctor told me: Aren’t you so lucky?
Aren’t you so lucky we did those tests to save your child?
If we hadn’t, the cancer might not have been found.
But I don’t feel lucky.
I don’t feel lucky at all.
Yuri Kageyama and Hirokazu Suyama Jackson at a Poetry reading in Tokyo
MYTHICAL MONSTER (an excerpt from NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA)
poetry by Yuri Kageyama
The Catfish sleeps
Buried in the mud
Of meltdown metal
A black-light coastline
Fifty reactors
Tomari to Genkai
The Catfish moves
And the Earth rumbles
Sways its tail
And skyscrapers crumble
Swishes a whisker
Bridges, roads shatter
The Catfish grows
Bigger and bigger
Eight snake faces
Eight dragon tails
Volcanic eruption
Yamata no Orochi
The Monster lives
Our daughters and sons
Every year, a sacrifice
Hundred eight brave samurai
They’re all dead,
Trying to kill it
Hirokazu Suyama Jackson and Yuri Kageyamat at a poetry reading in Tokyo
in NY in 2015 and COMING TO SAN FRANCISCO in JULY 2017
NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA: Meditation on an Under-Reported Catastrophe by a Poet
written by Yuri Kageyama
directed by Carla Blank
Debuted at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York Sept. 11 – 13, 2015.
Music directed and performed by Melvin Gibbs, with Hirokazu Suyama, Sumie Kaneko and Kaoru Watanabe.
The Cast:
Takemi Kitamura (Miu)
Monisha Shiva (Poet)
Shigeko Suga (Yu)
Lighting by Blu
Film by Yoshiaki Tago
A pensive and provocative theater of dance, poetry, music and film:
Fukushima is the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Radiation is still spewing from the multiple meltdowns, reaching as far as the American West Coast.
Some 100,000 people were displaced from the no-go zone. But the story barely makes headlines.
“News From Fukushima” is a solemn reminder and a literary prayer for Japan.
It explores the friendship between two women, juxtaposing the personal and the intimate with the catastrophic.
[caption id="attachment_1735" align="aligncenter" width="640"] NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA, written by Yuri Kageyama, at La MaMa. From left to right: Shigeko Suga, Monisha Shiva, Takemi Kitamura. All Photos above by Tennessee Reed.
NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA: Meditation on an Under-Reported Catastrophe by a Poet, written by Yuri Kageyama. Directed by Carla Blank. Music by Melvin Gibbs, Hirokazu Suyama, Sumie Kaneko and Kaoru Watanabe. In photo: Monisha Shiva as The Poet. Photos by Yuri Kageyama.
Programs for NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA: Meditation on an Under-Reported Catastrophe by a Poet at La MaMa in New York. Program design by Annette Borromeo Dorfman. Photo by Yuri Kageyama.
And we get a little writeup in the local paper. The New York Times, among other local papers, including Steve Cannon’s “A Gathering of the Tribes,” listed our performance in its Calendar and Spare Time sections. The San Francisco Chronicle also highlighted our work in its Entertainment section.
Our NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA: Meditation on an Under-Reported Catastrophe by a Poet gets a mention in The San Francisco Chronicle.
聴かせて魅せるニュース!『NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA: 報じられない福島の大惨事を詩人が詠いあげる』でMelvin Gibbsがベースを奏でる。
News that enraptures and engages through Sound. A Poet sings of the unreported calamity at Fukushima in NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA, and Melvin Gibbs plays bass. _ Katsumi.
“Yuri Kageyama, with her epic poem, Fukushima, has earned a place among the leading world poets. This poem proves that the poet as a journalist can expose conditions that are ignored by a media that is in the pocket of fossils fuel and nuclear interests. While black collaborators at MSNBC and other media outlets make money for their employers by promoting and gender and class civil war among blacks, stories about how the Fukushima disaster threatens the health of world citizens are neglected, maybe because General Electric, which still has interests in NBC, built the nuclear reactors at Fukushima. Is the Yuricane making up things? Fukushima has had far worse complications than the Chernobyl disaster. Check this out.”
_ Ishmael Reed.
KAMIKAZE
A poem by Yuri Kageyama
with
Yuuichiro Ishii on Guitar
Okaasan
Boku wa ashita shutsugeki shimasu.
I take off on my mission tomorrow.
I am so sorry I have not been a good son, leaving you so soon.
It’s such a peaceful evening _ so quiet I can almost hear the fireflies glowing.
I don’t know why, but I am filled with happiness, well, maybe not happiness, since I must say goodbye.
But this feeling fills my heart, all the way to the top of my pilot helmet, like a stretching sky without a single cloud.
I will fly my Zero, and fly and fly.
Into that perfect rainbow circle of hope.
photo by Eba Chan
Photos by Eba Chan.
Who: Rock Legend Morgan Fisher plays host to a collaboration with Poet Yuri Kageyama and the Yuricane _ Hirokazu Suyama Jackson (drums), Yuiichiro Ishii (guitar) and Nobutaka Yamasaki (keyboards) in Morgan Salon No. 5
What: The Spoken Word, Improvisation, Film, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Swing, Funk, Life and Death and other Meanings and Moments.
Where: At Morgan’s. A fine minute walk from Daitabashi Station (Keio Line near Shinjuku) 2-2-4 Izumi Suginami-ku Tokyo 168-0063
When: SAT June 13, 2015 7 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.)
Another Who: SPECIAL GUEST Trupti Pandkar vocals.
Why: Why not?
My Poetry and Music with Morgan Fisher.
Poster by Annette Borromeo Dorfman.
Photos by Eba Chan.
Photos by Eba Chan.
The Warning _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama
Writers
Beware:
What defines
A Square?
Those Who keep
Looking Around
To see Who’s
Giving them
The Glare,
Wooing approvers
With Sexual favors,
Unlike
The Poet
Who Listens
Only
To
That Voice
Within