Applause for a Cloud

SayumiKamakura’s Applause for a Cloud uses the haiku form to attend to everyday life with acosmological acuteness, invoking wonder on macro and micro scales.

Sayumi Kamakura juxtaposes a surreal dailiness with acosmological acuteness, invoking wonder on macro and micro scales. Theparadoxical frictions in her work resolve into moments of lucidity just asoften as they perplex. Although she writes in the haiku tradition, her poemsdetour from the conventional parameters for haiku, such as syllabicrestrictions and a fixed seasonal reference. Her flexible approach to thelong-standing form allows her to explore new emotional frequencies across arange of subject matter. The book’s four sections—everyday life in Japan,experiences in Morocco and Italy, her husband’s cancer diagnosis, andreflections on the pandemic—reveal the preoccupations of a poet invested inrendering her experiences with a mix of traditional and contemporary motifsalongside a subtle wit. The natural world is always close at hand, yet Kamakuradoes not merely depict phenomena. She creates moments of stillness that usherthe reader into her inner world.

Translator: James Shea

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