“All the Things That Make Heaven and Earth” is for my father and his parents who lived at Minidoka, the concentration camp in Idaho for Japanese Americans during World War II. The poem is also for my oldest son, who is just now starting to learn about who they were and where they lived.
"A poet laureate can help commemorate events, invigorate local programming and advocate for the arts. As Harjo said, 'We will survive with poetry.' But D.C. has not had a poet laureate since the 2017 death of Dolores Kendrick."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"Real poetry, Itō reminds us, doesn’t only come from a poet simply saying something—it also comes from the ways that the poet resists the ordinary processes of saying. The writer unlocks new potential by subverting, manipulating, and defamiliarizing the patterns that structure our logic and expression. Poems need to be more than a series of simple, ordinary statements strung together."
