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      • 09/09 : Nine Japanese Female Poets / Nine Heian Waka
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  • Graphic Poetry
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    • 31 Facts about GLYPH
    • Warashibe Documentary >
      • First Erasure
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      • Create a first graphic poem
      • How to Approach Image
      • line-breaks
      • Visual Erasure Poetry
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    • Vol. 7 >
      • Irene Adler
      • Yuka Tsuchiya
      • Susan Preston
      • Camila Valladares
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      • Rosanna Young Oh
      • Rowena Federico Finn
      • Jesse Kercheval
      • Natalia Carrero
      • Genevieve Kaplan
      • Maggie Queeney
      • Katrina Bello
      • Heather Beardsley
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      • Lisa Schantl
      • Danielle Pieratti
      • Karla Van Vliet
      • m. mick powell
      • Lauren Ari
      • Robert Lifson
      • Marcello Sahea
      • Allan Haverholm
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      • Angela Quinto
      • Dennis Avelar
      • Anne McGrath
      • Francesca Preston
      • Kelsey Zimmerman
      • Lúcia Leão
      • Claire Bauman
      • Ann Hudson
    • Vol. 3 >
      • Tanja Softić
      • Kylie Gellatly
      • Ananda Lima
      • Lea Graham
      • Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
      • Ina Cariño
      • Aaron Caycedo-Kimura
      • Steven and Maja Teref
    • Vol. 2 >
      • Celia Bland and Kyoko Miyabe
      • Gail Goepfert and Patrice Boyer Claeys
      • Scoot Swain
      • Nancy Botkin
      • Amanda Earl
      • Meg Reynolds
      • Gretchen Primack
      • Frances Cannon
    • Vol. 1 >
      • Octavio Quintanilla
      • Luisa A. Igloria
      • Sarah Sloat
      • J. D. Schraffenberger
      • Natalie Solmer
      • Dara Yen Elerath
      • Kristen Renee Miller
      • Rodney Gomez
  • Translation
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Order from willow books
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"Where I Was Born" - Poetry Full-Length Book 
​The winner of the Editor's Choice
​Cover Art by Minami Kobayashi
​Published by Willow Books
What does it mean when death is so present in the landscape of life that one’s mind moves swiftly from the passing of a great-grandparent to the smell of the neighbor’s grilled food and thoughts of hunger? What does it mean when loss is so integral to life that one pauses to think of a lover or licks tangerine juice from one’s fingertips while comforting an ailing family member? Fujimoto’s book engages these questions as she takes us through a landscape of continual loss. The loss of one culture for another, the loss of sanity and health brought on by illness and war, and the loss of illusions and passions that come when the outer facts of life do not join up with inner longings. In her delicate and unassuming style, Fujimoto records the small, daily moments of family life, wherein so much pain is born out of so much love. Her playful, emotionally keen and contemplative book “Where I Was Born” is one to be read and held close to the heart. - Dara Elerath, MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts
I squinted my eyes as a satellite would look for new life,” says the speaker in Where I Was Born, Naoko Fujimoto’s disarmingly honest first full-length poetry collection. Indeed, the poet leaves no stone unturned. In this sumptuous sensory feast, Fujimoto trains one observant eye on family—examining losses and loves that resonate with each of us, even as they remain uniquely her own—while keeping another watchful eye on history’s long shadow across generations. Hiroshima, the marble from a Ramune soda bottle, and a grandmother’s Japanese calligraphy collide with Lake Michigan, Dove soap, and a couple’s first apartment in Lawrenceville, Illinois—alchemizing a global poetry that is as riveting, musical, and iridescent as “the silver sheen of snails after June rain. - Angela Narciso Torres, author of Blood Orange​
Naoko Fujimoto’s sensuous poems in Where I Was Born speak to the “Death of little things,” the griefs that accumulate inside families, across ordinary days, in the course of living regular lives. Thus the title points not only to a place, but to a condition, one in which the speaker must learn to accommodate loss—of birth country, of parents and grandparents, of unborn children, of time and opportunities, of dreams, of body parts, of voices, of names, of maps, and of the trail of breadcrumbs that might lead us out of the woods. In these brillliant and often-clipped lines, the world is unreal and unreliable: “There is / an extra season of endless fields. / The postcard fell from the refrigerator.” The poet invites questions, searching for some sort of definite knowledge: “Did someone jump? . . . . Will I go to war? . . . . Can you sleep with Grandfather’s bones? . . . . Wanna die? . . . . ‘Keep digging for what?’ . . . . What did you expect?” Yet this speaker does not give up on the world, even when the answers are distant and hard to see: “I squinted my eyes / as a satellite would look for new life.” This is a beautiful and necessary book. - Linda Dove, Author of This Too, O Dear Deer, and In Defense of Objects
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The First Three Pages of "Where I Was Born"
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  • Books
    • Poetry >
      • We Face The Tremendous Meat On The Teppan
      • GLYPH: Graphic Poetry = Trans. Sensory
      • Where I Was Born
      • Mother Said, I Want Your Pain
      • Cochlea
      • Silver Seasons of Heartache
      • Home, No Home
    • Translation >
      • of women
      • 09/09 : Nine Japanese Female Poets / Nine Heian Waka
    • Textbook >
      • Marvels
      • The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature
  • Graphic Poetry
    • What is Trans. Sensory
    • Gallery of Graphic Poems
    • Teppan Text Collage
    • Listen to graphic poems
    • 31 Facts about GLYPH
    • Warashibe Documentary >
      • First Erasure
      • First Found Poem
    • Study Guide >
      • Create a first graphic poem
      • How to Approach Image
      • line-breaks
      • Visual Erasure Poetry
  • Working On Gallery
    • Vol. 7 >
      • Irene Adler
      • Yuka Tsuchiya
      • Susan Preston
      • Camila Valladares
    • Vol. 6 >
      • Rosanna Young Oh
      • Rowena Federico Finn
      • Jesse Kercheval
      • Natalia Carrero
      • Genevieve Kaplan
      • Maggie Queeney
      • Katrina Bello
      • Heather Beardsley
    • Vol. 5 >
      • Lisa Schantl
      • Danielle Pieratti
      • Karla Van Vliet
      • m. mick powell
      • Lauren Ari
      • Robert Lifson
      • Marcello Sahea
      • Allan Haverholm
    • Vol. 4 >
      • Angela Quinto
      • Dennis Avelar
      • Anne McGrath
      • Francesca Preston
      • Kelsey Zimmerman
      • Lúcia Leão
      • Claire Bauman
      • Ann Hudson
    • Vol. 3 >
      • Tanja Softić
      • Kylie Gellatly
      • Ananda Lima
      • Lea Graham
      • Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
      • Ina Cariño
      • Aaron Caycedo-Kimura
      • Steven and Maja Teref
    • Vol. 2 >
      • Celia Bland and Kyoko Miyabe
      • Gail Goepfert and Patrice Boyer Claeys
      • Scoot Swain
      • Nancy Botkin
      • Amanda Earl
      • Meg Reynolds
      • Gretchen Primack
      • Frances Cannon
    • Vol. 1 >
      • Octavio Quintanilla
      • Luisa A. Igloria
      • Sarah Sloat
      • J. D. Schraffenberger
      • Natalie Solmer
      • Dara Yen Elerath
      • Kristen Renee Miller
      • Rodney Gomez
  • Translation
    • Conveyorize Art of Translation
    • Waka/Haiku Workshops
    • 和歌英訳
  • About