TOPOJO General Guidelines

Tokyo Poetry Journal seeks original, unpublished poetic works related to Japan. While we most actively solicit work from Tokyo and Kanto-based poets, writers and artists based throughout and outside of Japan are also sought. We are interested in poetry, visual poetry, photography and other forms of artwork.These should have a connection to Japan, but could simply be a passion. (The term Yaponesia is Japan’s equivalent to Turtle Island, the Native American Indian creation myth popularized by Gary Snyder.) We are not usually interested in previously published work.

While most contributors submit works from within Japan, the respective contents of the texts themselves do not necessarily need to relate, or be set in Yaponesia. We also hope to publish works from the Kansai area as well as Zainichi, Ainu and Ryukyu contemporary poetries, and visual works throughout Japan-at-large. We aim to present a variety of voices from LGBT, minorities to the “common” person, whether Japanese; especially the “Other.” We are committed to presenting works from equal gender groups, in spite of the high foreign male demographics in Japan. For this endeavor, we ask more women to send us your work. We welcome work from visiting artists and writers to Japan and offer a stage for visiting poets from outside of Japan, as an outlet and introduction for people in the Kanto area, enhancing cultural exchange.

As Jean Cocteau wore many hats as a playwright, actor, director, writer, artist and designer, while all calling them poetry, so do we interpret poetry in a broad manner. Thus philosophical, dramatic, musical (in the form of memoir or artistic musical scores, lyrics and reproductions or ephemera), and prose poetical works, may be considered poetry through our broad perspective. Though we currently only present illustrations, visual poetry and photography in chiascuro, we consider them as on an equal footing with the lexically poetical works offered here.

Though we may have special issues or sections on Yaponesian modernism, for example, we present contemporary Japanese poetry bilingually in each issue and at the semi-annual journal launches; we aren’t living in a vacuum and we don’t necessarily consider ourselves expatriates.

We hope to showcase our exceptional combined spoken word – music events through podcasts and respective video recordings of our poets. We place a comparable amount of importance to these events as to our journal.

We seek work which displays original use of language and presentation of content. We are interested in avant-grade or experimentally adventurous work, and socially engaged poetic material. While we may not be interested in traditional forms of verse per se, the staff take turns bearing more editorial responsibility, so individual esthetic tastes may vary. Natural lyrical rhyming with unpredictable rhyme schemes are welcome for consideration. Submissions longer than four pages A4, except in special cases such as articles (to be queried to the editors first), will be ignored. We aren’t interested in cliched haiku and we think most short poetry in English isn’t haiku at all. We are on staunch, vigilant alert against stereotypes such as cherry blossoms, geisha, Godzilla, capsule hotels and samurai. Simple verse of poetic homage praising the Japanese seasons or people will be relegated to the bin, unless you present an original angle. Kyoto may be the capital of temples, geisha, tea ceremony and a general retro timelessness, but in the Kanto area we also like to wax wafu anachronistically. We look forward to hearing from you.

– -Taylor Mignon, with Barbara Summerhawk, Jeffrey Johnson and Jordan Smith