Angles, Jeffery

[Jack]

Jeffery Angles is the translator for our September 2024 group read,The Book of the Dead by Shinobu Orikuchi.

"Jeffrey Angles (ジェフリー・アングルス) (born 1971) is a poet who writes free verse in his second language, Japanese. He is also an American scholar of modern Japanese literature and an award-winning literary translator of modern Japanese poetry and fiction into English. He is a professor of Japanese language and Japanese literature at Western Michigan University. Among his awards are the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 2009 for his translation of Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako by Chimako Tada and the 2017 Yomiuri Prize for Literature in the poetry category for his own Japanese-language poetry collection Watashi no hizukehenkosen ("My International Date Line")."
(From Wikipedia, accessed 09/18/2024)

He is the translator for our previous buddy read of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again by Shigeru Kayama:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I have greatly enjoyed his English translations of the works of Itō Hiromi (and their recorded joint readings).

[Jack]

Angles Major Works:

Translations:
Arai, Takako (2019), Jeffrey Angles (ed.), Factory Girls: Selected Poems of Takako Arai , translated by Jeffrey Angles; Jen Crawford; Carol Hayes; Rina Kikuchi; You Nakai; Sawako Nakayasu, Notre Dame, IN: Action Books, ISBN 9780900575846
Itō, Hiromi (2009), Killing Kanoko: Selected Poetry of Hiromi Itō, Notre Dame, IN: Action Books, ISBN 978-0-9799755-4-7
Itō, Hiromi (2014), Wild Grass on the Riverbank, Notre Dame, IN: Action Books, ISBN 978-0-9898048-4-4
Hiromi Itō; Hirata Toshiko; Takako Arai (2016), Jeffrey Angles (ed.), Poems of Hiromi Itō, Toshiko Hirata & Takako Arai, Newtown, Australia: Vagabond Press, ISBN 978-1922181749
Itō, Hiromi (2020), Killing Kanoko / Wild Grass on the Riverbank, London: Tilted Axis Books, ISBN 978-1-911284-42-0
Itō, Hiromi (2022), The Thorn Puller, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-1-4529-6985-5
Ōsaki, Sayaka (2023), Noisy Animal, Newtown, NSW: Vagabond Press, ISBN 978-1-925735-48-2
Orikuchi, Shinobu (2016), The Book of the Dead, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-0816688104
Tada, Chimako (2010), Forest of Eyes: Selected Poetry of Tada Chimako, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-26051-1
Takahashi, Mutsuo (2010), Intimate Worlds Enclosed, Sakura: Kawamura Memorial Art Museum
Takahashi, Mutsuo (2012), Twelve Views from the Distance, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-0816679362
Takahashi, Mutsuo (2019), Locus Amoenus, Tokyo: Heibonsha, ISBN 978-4582620665
Takahashi, Mutsuo (2023), Only Yesterday, Marfa, TX: Canarium Books, ISBN 978-1-7344816-5-5
Tawada, Yoko (2017), Time Differences, 1913–1938, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 978-0-8248-3242-1

Author:
Angles, Jeffrey (2011), Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishōnen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-0-8166-6970-7
Angles, Jeffrey (2016), These Things Here and Now: Poetic Responses to the March 11, 2011 Disasters, Tokyo: Josai University Educational Corporation University Press, ISBN 978-4-907630-54-6.
Angles, Jeffrey (2016), Watashi no hizukehenkōsen わたしの日付変更線, Tokyo: Shichōsha, ISBN 978-4783735403

Editor:
Angles, Jeffrey; Rimer, J. Thomas, eds. (2006), Japan: A Traveler's Literary Companion, Berkeley: Whereabouts Press, ISBN 978-1-883513-16-0
"Special issue on Hiromi Itō, U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, vol. 32.", U.s.-Japan Women's Journal. English Supplement, Tokyo: Josai International University, 2007, ISSN 1059-9770

[Jack]

A few interviews:

https://ourculturemag.com/2023/10/08/... - after publication of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again

https://www.poetryinternationalonline... - on translation of Japanese poetry

https://raintaxi.com/mutual-unconscio... - joint interview with Ito Hiromi

[Jack]

Lecture:

11/1/2017 University of Chicago, The Arts and The Nuclear Age Lecture Series.

https://youtu.be/_FVjXeQ5maw?si=199TM...
(Accessed 07/31/2025)

“Jeffrey Angles is a professor of Japanese and translation at Western Michigan University. He is the award-winning translator of dozens of Japan’s most important modern Japanese authors and poets, including Arai Takako. He also writes poetry, mostly in Japanese.”

Jack’s note: about 12 minutes into the lecture, he discusses the three major genres of Japanese poetry. He writes primarily in the third genre “chi”, modern verse or international verse.

Angles then goes on to discussion the post 3/11 poetic response to the triple disaster.