Join Takao Kaneko for a chill haiku talk and Q&A session at Mawby Room—wisdom and poetry vibes!

Wisdom for Life (生きるための名言集) is the first English publication of haiku and writing by the Japanese poet Takao Kaneko 金子隆夫. Join us at Kellogg College for the first presentation of his poetry in Britain, with Kaneko joining live from Tokyo.

Kaneko goes each day to Kobo-Syu, a support centre for disabled people in Saitama. He used to make handmade washi postcards there. Then a member of staff asked whether she might read the diary he kept. He agreed, and she found "a person looking out at the world with an extraordinary degree of affection". Writing became his work.

最高です

あなたに会えて

うれしいよ

I am feeling great.

I am so happy now that

I could meet you

The English translations are by Dr Laurence Mann, Lecturer in Japanese at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford.

PROGRAMME

11:00 – 13:00 Lecture and Q&A, with Takao Kaneko joining live from Tokyo on Zoom

From 13:00 Luncheon

"Kaneko does not write about disability. He writes about the business of being human."

— Naomi Wakao, Art of the Rough Diamonds

Presented by Art of the Rough Diamonds, a non-profit organisation based in Tokyo, with Kellogg College and Curio Books + Culture. Supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.

Also on Saturday 31 October: a reading and free discussion at Curio Books + Culture, Little Clarendon Street.

More about the book, the haiku and the people behind it:

https://kaneko-ard-oxford.netlify.app

Description supplied by the event organiser.