Eric Selland is an American poet and translator living in Tokyo. He is the author of Object States (Theenk Books, 2018), Beethoven’s Dream (Isobar Press, 2015), Arc Tangent (Isobar Press, 2013), Still Lifes (Hank’s Original Loose Gravel Press, 2012), and The Condition of Music (Sink Press, 2000). His translation of The Guest Cat, a novel by Takashi Hiraide, was on the New York Times bestseller list in early 2014, and his translation of poems by Kiwao Nomura, The Day Laid Bare, was chosen as a Recommended Translation by The Poetry Book Society, UK, for their winter 2020 season. His most recently published book-length poetry translation is of Kusudama by Minoru Yoshioka (Isobar Press, 2021). Selland has co-edited an anthology of twentieth-century Japanese experimental poetry with poet and translator Sawako Nakayasu, which is scheduled to appear from New Directions Books in 2024. He makes his living as an independent translator of Japanese economic research reports.
Isobar books:
Isobar translations:
Kiwao Nomura: The Day Laid Bare
Minoru Yoshioka: Kusudama
Introduction:
VOU: Visual Poetry, Tokio, 1958–1978
To visit Eric’s blog, The New Modernism: Japanese Modernist & Avant-Garde Poetry, Translations, Explorations, click here.
