About Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

Originally from the US, poet and activist Jane Joritz-Nakagawa is now based in central Japan. Her poems and essays have appeared widely in the international small presses. Her first poetry book, Skin Museum, was published in 2006; her second poetry collection, Aquiline, in the northern Fall of 2007. She works as an associate professor at a Japanese national university of education, where she teaches courses in American poetry, pedagogy, gender, and intercultural studies.

What others say about Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

Without the least strain, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa takes readers on a carnivalesque tour of American culture in language that splices together the strange heights and depths of the terrain. Her ear is tuned to what makes the language live and there’s eye candy too: lithe cuts and jumps that make each line worthy of notice. Exhibit C is a rare pleasure.
            —Maxine Chernoff

Jane Joritz-Nakagawa’s poems partake readily in the pleasures of freshly arranged particles and atoms of language. Frequenting a realm of happy appropriation, she daringly reorders and disrupts conventional poetic expectations—and she often conducts this pretty quickly. Readers, be alert.
            —Pam Brown

Jane Joritz-Nakagawa’s new collection, Exhibit C, is startling in its complex simplicity and innovative dazzle. To give a brief example, one of a series of poems that examines American “folk/lore (failure)” and (or) nature, “Evil Nature 5,” opens with a dadaesque image, moving deftly past the absurd to the trenchant: “The head finally wad(dl)es through/ / As if written by / / “bird on a wing”// . . . (as the scene dissolves into chaos) i // brandish my tear”! I love the chasms, the flights, the seriousness with which the poem closes—and I love this bold, smart poetry!
            —Cynthia Hogue