Mate burilado

The late José Watanabe (1946–2007) is one of Peru’s most beloved contemporary poets. Along with his numerous articles, children’s books, and screenplays (that include the screen adaptation for Mario Vargas Llosa’s La ciudad y los perros), Watanabe’s publications feature seven original volumes of poetry. The latter is brought together in the posthumous Poesía completa (2008)—from his alpha Albúm de familia (1971), to the omega Banderas detrás de la niebla (2006). Included in the anthology is Watanabe’s rendition of Sophocles's Antígona, performed by el Grupo Yuyachkani, the radical theater troupe that won Peru’s National Human Rights Award in 2000. Watanabe is a main contributor to La memoria del ojo: cien años de presencia japonesa en el Perú (1999), a “photographic history” that narrates scenes of everyday life, loss, and northward “relocation” of approximately eighteen hundred Japanese Peruvians to internment camps in Texas during World War II.

Michelle Har Kim lives in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles. She is a 2016 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, and has translated poems by José Watanabe for Guernica, Epiphany, and the Asian American Literary Review.