Two of our more popular postings – on the great Japanese poet, Nanao Sakaki – and on Allen’s poem, “Birdbrain” – coalesce here with this lively recording of the two of them reading it (that poem) together, (Allen, the English, Nanao, the Japanese), tweaking it with contemporaneous Japanese references. The occasion is, October 30, 1988, a major anti-nuclear protest march on Kansai Electric‘s head office in Osaka. Allen was visiting Japan.
The reading took place at Nakanoshima Koen, behind Osaka City Hall, and was filmed, edited, and (we thank him for it!) uploaded by Ken Rodgers.
How To Live On The Planet Earth, Nanao’s Collected Poems in English, lovingly gathered by Blackberry Books has recently (just this month) been published. For more about that see here.
and see here and here for transcription of a vintage radio-interview between Nanao and Allen.
a year before i got there.
thanx for this