of Women

Naoko Fujimoto was born and raised in Nagoya, Japan, and studied at Nanzan Junior College. She was an exchange student and received a BA and MA from Indiana University. She is the author of the poetry collections We Face The Tremendous Meat On The Teppan, Where I Was Born, and Glyph:Graphic Poetry=Trans. Sensory, as well as four chapbooks. She is associate and translation editor of RHINO and translation editor of Tupelo Quarterly. She organizes an online community at Working On Gallery and is a Bread Loaf Translation full scholarship recipient and the 2023 Visiting Teaching Artist at the Poetry Foundation.

"Of Women gathers the poems of twenty Japanese women, many unnamed, from the 7th to 12th centuries, who wove longing, politics, beauty, and defiance into the compact form of waka. Fujimoto makes brilliant use of a “thick” approach, contextualizing her elegant translations with haibun-style reflections and visual art that both honor and explode the forms of the originals. In these pages, forgotten voices are reclaimed and reimagined, speaking with clarity and grace to our time."

• Contents:Sei Sho¯nagon 4 Fujiwara no Teishi, Empress Teishi 8 Gidousanshi no Mother, Takako 12 Murasaki Shikibu 16 Ko¯kamonin no Betto¯ 20 Izumi Shikibu 24 Koshikibu no Naishi 28 Ukon 32 Daini no Sanmi 36 Mother of envoys for the Japanese missions to the Tang dynasty 40 Empress Sho¯shi 44 Dewanoben 48 Akazome Emon 52 Fujiwara Michitsuna no Mother 56 Ono no Komachi 60 Taikenmon'in no Horikawa 64 Ise 68 Ise no Taifu 72 Empress Jito¯ 76 Saemonnokamikitakata 80