From the weighted depths of stark observance and reflection, Victoria-based poet and researcher Shō Yamagushiku has unleashed his stunning, lyrical debut poetry collection, shima.
Speaking from both a narrative that spans his own life as well as an ancestral, mythic parallel, his collection is described as a “mosaic of the emotional, psychic, and generational toll that exile from a pillaged culture impresses on a poet and his community.”
It officially launched on Tuesday, March 26th, and is currently available for purchase in local bookstores such as Munro’s Books, Russell Books and Bolen Books.
“shima started with questions about ancestry and how to make sense of the things in my life,” he said in an interview with Victoria Buzz.
As a 4th generation Japanese-Canadian, he felt removed from this part of his identity and wanted to use this collection as a means of bridging those gaps.
“My family had never really returned to the island that my great-grandparents are from, so [shima] chronicles that journey back to their ancestral village [in Okinawa, Japan].”
As the collection began to take shape, he confessed that it became less of this relentless urgency to understand and morphed into an opportunity to free himself from the pressure of finding his then-idea of a ‘complete identity.’
He chose to listen to the silences between the stories rather than hoping his family’s history would spill out before him, digested and ready to use. He realized it’s always more complicated than that and there are ways to tap into diasporic consciousness without having all the answers.
“The writing process [became] a way to free myself of some of the constraints of the people that came before me…and how to bring Japanese culture into my life here [in Canada],” he said.
“The texture of my life is different now…[and] the poems are a part of that. There are things that feel reconciled.”
When asked how he’s feeling upon the completion and release, he sighed and said there are mixes of relief, excitement and elements of restlessness as he re-reads the poems.
Now that shima has been launched, he’s in the process of selecting poems for readings, which comes with its own string of challenges that writers often face.
He shared that, at times, the gravity of the words can escape him if he’s not necessarily in the mood for that particular poem. It adds an essence of unpredictability, but also satisfaction, as it signifies that the collection has taken on a life of its own.
“It becomes a living thing and changes…sometimes they’re like open doors and sometimes they close themselves off,” he shared.
An open door for him during that moment is on page 27 of his collection. As he was reading it earlier in the day, it brought that sense of vibration and liveliness that occurs when you find something that feels fated.
Within this poem, he is embodying the ocean as both a separation from his ancestry and as well as a bridge that connects these two halves of both past and present.
Structurally, many of his poems capture the ferocity and beauty of movement in the natural world as a way to pay homage to his ancestral home.
Whether it’s whirlpools in the oceans or the raging precipitation of a typhoon. As you come across these poems in the collection, you’re forced to shift with the poem, moving your body as if on the same journey as the elements themselves.
The separation into sections is also very intentional, growing closer to his ancestral village with each one—a peeling of layers.
The final section, “yanbaru-yuu”, represents where he pictures his ancestral village in Okinawa, Japan.
“Yanbaru is the rainforest region…when I think about where they were from, it feels like the collective of the rainforest makes the most sense in terms of making sense of them.”
Yamagushiku hopes that this collection succeeds in transporting his readers and helps unlock a sense of spiritual understanding in relation to their own lives.
If you wish to hear some of his work read aloud, he will be performing some readings in April and May at local bookstores.
He is also hoping to make an appearance at Victoria’s beloved Victoria Festival of Authors as well, so stay tuned for that!
Yamagushiku is a writer and researcher as well as a poet—much of his work involves projects relating to Japanese-Canadian research.
He has been published in The Capilano Review, Yellow Medicine Review and Okinawan Journal of Island Studies, and his work has won the Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize.
