Born in WinterA Conversation with Shizue Ogawa Alice-Catherine Carls (bio) and Shizue Ogawa (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution For Shizue Ogawa, creating is more important than publishing and selling, and yet her readership has been steadily growing in Japan and internationally. Her poetry paints the world with serenity and wonderment without hiding its underground turmoil. Born on the plains of Hokkaido's eastern Kasai District, she remains very close to nature. Her work promotes cultural understanding among nations; its themes and forms bridge the literary traditions of East and West. [End Page 58] Alice-Catherine Carls: Your poetry flows freely with a light step. When did you start writing poems, and when did you decide to publish your first book? Shizue Ogawa: I was about fifty years old when I published my first book. My philosophy professor in college was the first person to read my poems. Since then, he has told me many times, "Go out into the world with poetry." At first, I did not understand the meaning of what he was saying. Decades have passed since then. I was not conscious that I was writing poetry. Poems became part of life quite naturally. But I was writing. Some of my poems from that time remain. I was not interested in saving what I wrote. When I had a basket full of poems, I disposed of it without reading them again. One year the professor suffered a heart attack. At that time, he said, "I will not die until you publish a book of poems." I hurriedly began translating the poems I had into English. I should have made one book to give to the professor, but I decided to make three or four books, one for my parents and one for my home. I took the manuscript to a company that publishes private editions. When I asked the person in charge to make four books, he was surprised. He said, "Making four books costs the same as making three hundred books." I thought, "What am I going to do if I make three hundred books?" I did not even know that I would be donating books to libraries. After I learned to use computers, I became aware that what I write is not to be thrown away but to be preserved. My poems became a collection of Japanese-English bilingual poems because I was an English teacher. The poems were easy to write, but it took me a long time to complete the English translation. Carls: Can you give us examples of early poems' themes and purpose? How many did you write? Were they for a special occasion, or simply to express your feelings and thoughts at a particular time? Ogawa: When I started writing, I was not aware that I was writing poetry. Not even now. I don't have a clear memory of the theme, the purpose, how many books I wrote, or on what occasions I wrote them. I never thought of it as expressing my emotions and thoughts in writing. The oldest surviving poem is from a high school newspaper. I remember it well. It was March 1964, and I was about to enter my final year of high school. Our house burned down in the middle of the night, about ten minutes after a conflagration burned most of the town center. My house was close to the source of the fire. The flames raged and created stronger winds. People could not talk to each other because of their dry throats caused by the heat. Families with their hair standing on end ran around. I ran up to my room on the second floor. I was still studying at that time, so I had a book and a pencil on my desk. I stood in a room where the temperature was getting hotter and hotter, and I thought, "I will never be able to come back to this room." A friend's letters and an album were the only things that I could hold in my arms. I ran downstairs. My mother was trying to get the children in the car and drive away. The windshield of her...
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Sep 1, 2023
Soumhya Venkatesan 
Open Access
