Kiwao Nomura
Kiwao Nomura was born 20 October 1951 in Saitama Prefecture is a Japanese poet, writer, critic, and lecturer. He is considered one of the driving forces behind contemporary Japanese poetry.
Kiwao Nomura

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- Name
- Kiwao Nomura
- Born
- 20 October 1951
- Birthplace
- Saitama Prefecture, Japan
- Occupation
- Poet
- Nationality
- Japan
- Education
- Meiji University · Waseda University
- Honours
- Hanatsubaki Award for Contemporary Poetry
- Languages
- Japanese
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q6418858 · wikipedia · Kiwao Nomura
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
The documentary record
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Institutions cited
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Not stated by the sources cited: nationality
Complete reading chain (JSON)In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Kiwao Nomura • Born — 20 October 1951 • Birthplace — Saitama Prefecture, Japan • Occupation — Poet • Language — Japanese • Website — http: www.kiwao.com/index2.htm
Documentary record
Kiwao Nomura appears in the authority records of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek as a writer (born 1951). Kiwao Nomura was born in 1951.
Literary style
Literary style
The work of Nomura "plays with language in radical and diverse ways, employing subtleties of rhythm, semantics, image, gender, punctuation, and repetition, often all within the same short stanza." Forrest Gander, co-translator of Kiwao Nomura’s poetry, noted in an interview, "What we find in innovative Japanese poetries like Gozo Yoshimasu's and Kiwao Nomura's has, as far as I know, no equivalents in contemporary poetry in English. The mix of the philosophical and the whimsical makes for a tone that is absolutely weird to Westerners." According to Poetry International Web, "In all such experiments, Nomura shows himself to be very much in search of a center of gravity where the almost ritual repetitions and revisitations of captivating sounds and (often erotic) images dissolve of their own accord into the night, darkness, nothingness, the end of a delirium." Publishers Weekly concludes that Nomura's poems "succeed through astonishment, shock, and disorder, almost in the manner of Kathy Acker or William S. Burroughs."
Books of poetry translated in English
Books of poetry translated in English
• Spectacle & Pigsty: Selected Poems of Kiwao Nomura. Translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Forrest Gander. Richmond, CA: Omnidawn Publishing, 2011.. • The Day Laid Bare. Translated by Eric Selland. Tokyo & London: Isobar Press, 2020..
Books of poetry in Japanese (a selection)
Books of poetry in Japanese (a selection)
• 川萎え [Dried River], 1987 • 反復彷徨 [Repeated Roams], 1992 • 特性のない陽のもとに [Under the Sun without Character], 1993 • 風の配分 [Distribution of the Wind], 1999 • ニューインスピレーション [New Inspiration], 2003 • スペクタクル [Spectacle], 2006 • plan14, 2007 • Z O L O, 2009 • Cafe spiral ou une heure en enfer [with images by Kenji Kitagawa]
Collaborative books of poetry
Collaborative books of poetry
• 馬を野に放つ. (co-authored by Jan Lauwereyns, with images by Kris Martin; bilingual edition with a Dutch translation by Jan Lauwereyns) [Loose a Horse in the Field] Ghent, Belgium: Druksel, 2011.
Awards
• Rekitei Prize for Young Poets • Takami Jun Prize • 2012 Best Translated Book Award, Spectacle & Pigsty • 2020 The Japan Poets Association 38th Modern Poetry Prize for 薄明のサウダージ(Twilight Saudade, 2019)
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Kiwao Nomura, revision 1373207424 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Lauwereyns, Jan. Slang spreekt, slang bijt. DWB. 153. 5–6. 739–747. 2008.
- 2.Fleischmann, T. It's Pigsty I. The Rumpus. 14 December 2011.
- 3.Morrison, Rusty. An Interview with Forrest Gander. Omnidawn.
- 4.Lauwereyns, Jan. Kiwao Nomura. Poetry International Web.
- 5.Publishers Weekly. Spectacle & Pigsty.
References
Citations
References
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Secondary witness
People, houses and institutions
Knowledge graph
People, houses and institutions
Teachers, collaborators, publishers and institutions recorded against this person, each on a stated basis.
Studied at
2- Meiji UniversityOrganisation
Established from a fact already recorded on a verified source.
- Waseda UniversityOrganisation
Established from a fact already recorded on a verified source.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 24 August 2026.
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