Ikuyo Yoshimura
Gifu, Japan

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Ikuyo Yoshimura was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1944. She graduated from Doshisha University and then received her M.A. from Aichigakuin University. She and her husband the writer Eddy Yoshimura live in Gifu, in central Japan. She is an Associate Professor of English at the Asahi University.

She began writing poetry in a college. Her poem "Small Pictures" was first published in 1966. At the same time she was interested in the Beat poets of the '60s whose poetry was influenced by Japanese haiku. Haiku is a kind of environmental nature literature that can reflect the real moment of sympathizing between man and nature. To write haiku we must have a keen awarness toward our way of living. R.H. Blyth has told : "Haiku shows us what we knew all the time, but did not know we knew; it shows us that we are poets in so far as we live at all".

She is member of Japan Contemporary Anglo-American Poetry Society, the Historical Society of English Studies in Japan and the Tokai British & American Literature Society. Her recent publications include "At the Riverside" (1990) "Renaissance of the Works of R.H. Blyth" (Matsgaoka Library 1995), "Linked Poems by College Students" (ed. Ogaki Women's College 1995), and "The Life of R.H.Blyth" (Dohosha Shupan 1996).

She has published numerous articles on haiku in English. She is the recipient of several haiku awards, including the Aichi Prefecture Prize for Haiku in English, the Special Merit Book Award given by The Australia Day Council, and the Haiku Four Seasons Award given by Newsweek.

She conducted The Writing English Haiku Circle "Evergreen" in Gifu, Japan.

 

Contact

Ikuyo Yoshimura
ikuyo.yoshimura@nifty.com

 

Copyright Ikuyo Yoshimura, 2000