Photo/Illutration Hiromi Ito presides over a poetry workshop at the Waseda International House of Literature in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward on Nov. 27. Cheers broke out from among the participants when the poet made comments such as, “This one is worth a soul-stirring award,” and “This is for a terrible abruptness award.” (Provided by Waseda University)

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series on “Authors Alive!” book-reading and other events to mark the opening of the Waseda International House of Literature known as the Haruki Murakami Library.

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Famed poet Hiromi Ito shared both the fun and the difficulty of writing poetry at a recent hands-on workshop at the Waseda International House of Literature in Tokyo.

As a bonus, renowned author Haruki Murakami joined to recite works by the participants during a presentation.

The event was the fifth in a series of public sessions titled “Authors Alive!” to mark the Oct. 1 opening of the facility, more commonly known as the Haruki Murakami Library, which stands on Waseda University’s main campus in the capital’s Shinjuku Ward.

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The logo of the “Authors Alive!” events (Provided by Waseda University)

“We will be working on linked poetry,” Ito declared sonorously in opening her session on Nov. 27, making some participants uncomfortable as they apparently doubted their writing prowess. 

The participants, including Waseda University students, were divided into four groups of four persons. Each group was assigned to a table. Group members shared a large sheet of paper and took turns jotting down words on it.

Ito told the four groups to start their poems with, “You’d better hurry/ I can’t stay here for long,” lines taken from “Kishidancho Goroshi” (Killing Commendatore), a Murakami novel released in 2017.

The participants were told to continue with their own verses, but many were seen with their hands not moving, indicative of writer’s block.

The workshop had actually started the moment the participants arrived at the library.

They were given pieces of paper at the reception counter. Ito took them around inside the library, and the participants took notes of what caught their eye, such as a “big staircase,” a “tunnel” and the verb “dance.”

Ito told them to expand images from the words that they collected during their strolls.

“Please give your thoughts to something in your own mind that you wish to remember,” she said. “Write about things that you never took notice of earlier.”

Ito also shared part of her knack for writing poetry.

“You should do away with conjunctions to the best of your ability,” she said. “Conjunctions allow connections to be formed by the writer’s own logic, so they obstruct the participation of others.”

The poet added that the most important thing is to relax.

“It’s not your own work but a collective work of everyone in your group, so you should free yourselves up,” she said. “Grow up in the Japanese culture and you end up serious. Oh, no, you should let the tension out of your shoulders.”

Ito made the rounds of the tables.

One participant was seen frozen with a pen in her hand. Ito told her to think about the next verse outside the venue, saying, “Go to the restroom or any other room so you can ‘get lost.’”

She extolled another, whose text appeared to have thrown off a lexical consistency, “Yours is very good because linked poetry is all about a fistfight.”

All four linked poems that were completed showcased an unrestrained romping in the use of language.

“You have to face yourselves when you write poetry, and you sometimes get stuck when you are used to writing it,” Ito told the participants in concluding her session.

“But you can free yourselves up when you work on linked poetry in a group. Please don’t forget the fun you have had today and continue to go on pursuing the art of poetry.”

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