Amelia Fielden

Australian poet, Amelia Fielden, has a Master of Arts degree in Japanese Literature, and is a professional translator who also writes original English verse in the traditional Japanese tanka form. Specializing currently in the work of contemporary Japanese women poets, Amelia has translated sixteen such collections to date. In 2007 she was awarded the Donald Keene Prize For Translation of Japanese Literature by Columbia University, USA, for Ferris Wheel: 101 Modern and Contemporary Japanese Tanka (Cheng & Tsui, Boston). Amelia's own tanka have been widely published in journals and anthologies,and awarded internationally. Six collections of her original poetry have appeared between 2002 and 2010, the most recent of them being Baubles, Bangles & Beads (2007) and Light On Water (2010). Also published in 2010 was Weaver Birds, a bilingual collaborative tanka diary created by Amelia and Japanese born Canberra poet, Saeko Ogi.

Sample

from Journeys

at the edge
of the station platform
a pigeon
unfolds its wings to fly,
and I will too, I will af

鳩ひとつ駅のホームの片隅に
飛び立たむとす吾も飛ばむ吾も
エンジンの響き高まり離陸する
一瞬思ふ旅立ち近く s

I think of that moment
when the jet-engine revs
higher for takeoff —
my departure date
is approaching

sixty years
of flying, still thrilled
by the instant
when the plane roars, rises
slanting into the sky

大空を斜めに昇り機のうなる
今も昂ぶる六十年経て

直線に切り取られたる東京の
空につながるキャンベラの空

so narrow
sliced vertically
the Tokyo sky
is joined to the sky
of Canberra

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