Between East and West

Abstract

Among the 85 poets anthologized in Our Shared Japan (De Angelis and Woods 2007), some have encountered the country only through the spread of Japanese cultural forms, especially English translations of haiku, while others have lived in Japan or visited to give lectures or readings. Morrissey and Woods are younger poets who have established a poetic reputation while living and working in Japan for two years in the 1990s, while Fitzsimons is a younger poet and an academic who has been living in Tokyo since 1998. Their inside-experiences of Japan have led them to distance themselves from a view of Japanese culture based merely on aesthetic values and emphasizes their personal experiences of coming to terms with cultural dislocation and estrangement. This chapter will explore their poems with Japanese themes, published between 2001 and 2002. Although Selina Guinness’s Irish Times review of Woods and Morrissey took a supercilious view of their collections, which she considered ‘a travelling companion’ suitable for backpackers – presumably equivalent to the Lonely Planet guides – I will argue that their poetry, together with that of Fitzsimons, should be reconsidered as something more than a travel diary, which instead testifies to the liveliness of Irish cultural internationalization. I will show that their writing records a cross-cultural shock and a condition of suspension between two cultures.