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Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma

author, poet, teacher, and performer

  • Books
    • THE KURAL: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural
    • The Safety of Edges
    • Give, Eat, and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar
    • Body and Earth
    • A Feast for the Tongue
    • Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo
    • Other Writings
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October 13 at MindFair Books

September 12, 2019

MindFair Books in Oberlin, Ohio

Oberlin’s wonderful local bookstore, MindFair Books, will be hosting a reading of my new book, The Safety of Edges, at 1pm on Sunday, October 13, 2019. It’s a particularly delightful honor to be able to read in the town where I went to college.

You can read more about MindFair Books on their website and read more about the book on mine.

I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

June 15 at Elliott Bay

May 15, 2019

Elliott Bay Book Company

The venerable Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle will be hosting a reading of my new book, The Safety of Edges, at 7pm on Saturday, June 15, 2019. I’m delighted and honored to present my work at a bookshop that from the time I was a child growing up in Seattle epitomized the best of literary havens.

You can read more about the reading on the Elliott Bay website and read more about the book on mine. There’s also an article in the June 6 edition of the Seattle Gay News.

I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

Vintage J & B Edges Interview

March 6, 2019


Jeanne Dougherty and Bill Wood

Interview with Jeanne Dougherty and Bill Wood on Vintage J & B.


https://thomaspruiksma.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Poets-Pantry-Tom-Pruiksma.mp3

As part of The Poet's Pantry, I talked about The Safety of Edges with Jeanne and Bill and shared a few poems from the book.

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The Safety of Edges Released

February 14, 2019

Book cover for "The Safety of Edges," poems by Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma.

I’m thrilled to announce that Marrowstone Press has released my new book of poems. The Safety of Edges is my first full-length collection, and since the work is dedicated to David, my publisher thought we should release it on Valentine’s Day. You can learn more about it, watch a video of me reading the book’s opening poem, and listen to an interview in the books section of this website.

The book’s first reading and signing will be at the Vashon Bookshop on Thursday, March 14, at 6:00pm. Other readings are scheduled and being scheduled through the rest of the year, including appearances at the Vashon Literary Conference and the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Please check the the list of upcoming events and appearances for updates.

If you’d like to be notified about special events and other forthcoming books, please do sign up on the mailing list.

Once again, my deepest thanks to everyone who helped make this book possible. May it reach every heart to whom its poems may sing.

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Avvaiyar Podcast

January 28, 2019

A few years back, at the request of Liz Borstein, I recorded a podcast on Avvaiyar.


Book cover of "Give, Eat, and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar," translated by Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma
https://thomaspruiksma.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Muse172-Avvaiyar-Podcast.mp3

Here's the video clip I mentioned in the podcast. It comes from my show, By Heart: A Celebration of Words, Magic, and Memory.

To go straight to the Avvaiyar poem itself, forward to 3:46.


https://youtu.be/cr_YUg7-sXs

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Welcome to the Dance

January 28, 2019

Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma reciting "Welcome to the Dance"

For the 2016 Strawberry Festival, Leah Mann, along with Friends of Mukai, the Vashon Chamber of Commerce, Vashon Center for the Arts, Chautauqua Elementary School, Vashon-Maury Land Trust, and 4Culture, organized a Bon Odori dance at the 2016 Strawberry Festival to honor Vashon’s Japanese-American past and to remember the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. To open the dance, she asked me to write and recite a poem.

You can read more about the event on the Vashon Beachcomber.

Opening Remarks

I’ll have to admit it is both wonderful and a bit strange to see a Bon Odori dance at the four-way stop here on Vashon. Growing up, I only really participated in O Bon, as we called it, on Maui, where my mother was born and raised, and where my mother’s family moved from Okinawa, now part of Japan. My memories of O Bon are of going with my Grandma and Grandpa, and my aunties and uncles, and my cousins and cousins and cousins and cousins, to a cemetery on the ocean just past the town of Paia, where my Great-Grandfather once had a barber shop. We’d go to the family tomb—the haka—hang paper lanterns, and honor our ancestors with incense, water, tea, food, and prayers. Then we’d dance in the Bon dance as the sun set into the sea.

I’ve brought a fan with me that my auntie used to use in dancing, in memory of those dances, and in honor of the continuing practice.

All of this could feel far away from Seattle, where I spent most of my childhood—with the exception of a few times and places. Like the days when our mother took us to Uwajimaya—the old one, with the blue tile roof—and I’d rush up to the gift shop to the explore the aisle with the origami paper, marveling at all the colors and kinds they carried.

In honor of that memory, I also brought a single crane, the first origami figure I learned to fold. It later became a poignant reminder for me of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the story of a young girl who catches leukemia after the bombing of Hiroshima and decides to attempt folding a thousand paper cranes, believed to help a person to heal. Her plight and determination moved me as a child, and still do.

So these are the memories that were awakened in me as I composed this poem for our own Bon Odori here on Vashon. It’s called “Welcome to the Dance” and takes its form from the syllabic pattern of the Japanese waka, “short poem”: a 5-syllable line, followed by a 7-syllable line, followed by another 5-syllable line and two 7-syllable lines.

Welcome to the Dance

As children we danced
in the graveyards of Maui
my sister and I
having come from Seattle
the mainland visiting our

Grandma and Grandpa
Nakamura actually
Nakandakari
but changed like so many names
entering America

itself a name changed
crossing the wide sea and we
knew it as normal
as natural as breathing this
dancing with the living and

being with the dead
we do not dance for sadness
my grandfather said
but for joy like the daughter
who sees that her mother now

dances in the dance
beyond life and death—it seemed
so far from our home
in Seattle where I read
the story of Sadako

and her cranes struck down
before reaching one thousand
by the terrible
bright light of Hiroshima
turned to cancer in her veins

how can we dance I
wanted to know when the world
has known such horrors
bombings displacements and im-
prisonments of whole peoples

in the places they’d
come to call home I had no
answer and I have
no answer save the answer
that dances in the dancing

itself—we dance
because we can because we
have it in our bones
because all of our sorrows
are all of our joys hidden

in the dance between
the living and the dying
and the being here
together welcoming all
things and people and feelings

like Sadako whose
cranes are ours to keep folding
one thousand little
lights that together are not
little like the lanterns at

O Bon glowing in
the darkness gracing the tombs
of the dead who are
living—here in our hearts here
in our dance here in our lives

lighting the crossroads
lifting to the sky like birds
and their wings dancing
for joy and sorrow alike
for all that the dancing brings

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Interview with C. F. John

January 28, 2019

An interview with C. F. John, coauthor of Body and Earth.

Body and Earth: Notes from a Conversation
By C. F. John and Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma

Elements Media Initiative, Kozhikode
Kerala, India

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KVSH Interview on Body and Earth

January 28, 2019

Interview with Chris Austin on Voice of Vashon, KVSH 101.9 about Body and Earth

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In the KVSH Studio
https://thomaspruiksma.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2016-03-09_MostlyTrueRadio_InterviewTomPruiksma_Edited.mp3

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