“Sonic Peace” 「音速平和」 by Minashita Kiriu 水無田気流

Eric Hyett and Spencer Thurlow with Minashita Kiriu: Tokyo, August, 2017

Spencer Thurlow and I met at a poker game in Boston in 2012, and have worked together ever since on a number of literary translation projects.

Together, we translated “Sonic Peace,” the award-winning first book by contemporary Japanese poet Minashita Kiriu. The book was published in a bilingual edition in December, 2017 by LA-based Phoneme Media. Our American translation of “Sonic Peace” made the Shortlist for the 2018 National Translation Award. We are excited to share Minashita’s work, as well as our own, with an English-speaking audience.

Translating “Sonic Peace” together was among the hardest things either of us had ever done. Spencer was living in Kōchi, Japan at the time, so we worked together via twice-weekly video calls (late nights in Boston; mornings in Japan). Minashita’s work is densely beautiful, and we felt compelled to share her post-apocalyptic, dystopian message with an English-speaking audience.

We finally met Ms. Minashita at the very end of the project, and she told us our American translation is “very exquisite.” We are grateful to her for endorsing our work.

https://www.amazon.com/Sonic-Peace-Kiriu-Minashita/dp/1944700404/