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Sonja Arntzen

 

Member profile details

Membership level
Associate
First name
Sonja
Last name
Arntzen
City
Vancouver
Province
British Columbia
 

ABOUT

Profile picture
Biography
Sonja Arntzen taught classical Japanese poetry and literature for twenty-five years. Currently Professor Emerita of the University of Toronto, but living on Gabriola Island in B.C, she continues to research and translate works of classical literature, particularly women’s poetic diaries of the 10th to 11th Century. Her most recent translation is The Sarashina Diary (Columbia University Press, 2014 Since 2005, she has been publishing her own English tanka and haiku in journals such as Gusts, Eucalypt, Kokako and Red Lights. With Naomi Beth Wakan, she also produced two books of “response tanka,” Double Talk (2010) and Reflections (2011). In 2017, her “Glossa on Leonard Cohen’s Anthem” made the long list of the CBC Literary Awards Contest.
 

PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITION

Books and other publications
Ikkyû_and the Crazy Cloud Anthology: A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan, Revised and Expanded. Melbourne, Australia: Quirin Press, 2022

The Sarashina Diary: A Woman’s Life in Eleventh-Century Japan, co-authored with Itō Moriyuki. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014 (Abridged “Readers Edition”, 2018).

The Kagerō_Diary: A Women’s Autobiographical Text from Tenth Century Japan. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1997.

Ikkyû_and the Crazy Cloud Anthology, University of Tokyo Press 1986, 196 pp. Second Printing, 1988.

Ikkyû_Sôjun, A Zen Monk and his Poetry, Western Washington College Press, 1973, 170 pp.

Double Take: Response Tanka, co-authored with Naomi Beth Wakan. Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, 2010, 81 pp. (my contribution 50%)

Reflections: Response Tanka, co-authored with Naomi Beth Wakan. (Self-published) Gabriola Island, B.C., Pacific Rim Publishers, 2011, 99 pp. (my contribution 50%)
Awards and other achievements
2011 Journal of Renga and Renku Shisan Contest: Honourable Mention: for “Rhubarb Pie”

2016 San Francisco International Rengay Contest (Haiku Poets of Northern California), First Prize for “Weighing In” with co-author, Michael Dylan Welch

2017 CBC Literary Award for Poetry, Long List Inclusion for “Glossa for Leonard Cohen’s Anthem”
Poetic forms and styles
  • Haiku
  • Long poem
  • Print poetry
Additional writing experience
tanka
Translations
English, speak, write and read French but have never published in French
I also translate classical Japanese texts into English and have written some academic articles in modern Japanese
 

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Contact poet directly
email address: sonja.arntzen@utoronto.ca