I staged “Gozo: The Medium is the Messenger,” a poetry and multimedia performance at Theatre B at the University of Iowa. In this performance, I read poems in multiple languages and writing systems, such as Japanese (kanji, hiragana, and katakana), English, and French, among others. With stones hanging from my mouth and a sheep bell around my neck, I created music and language using a hammer, fetish objects, my bare hands, and breath work, while painting on large, yellow sheets of paper. In river-like movements, photographer Toko Shiiki captured the performance on film.

The poem “Burning” featured fiction writer and translator Kyoko Yoshida (translation by Takako Lento); “The Old Poet” featured poet and translator Sawako Nakayasu (translation ibid); “The Love Tree” featured poet and translator Derek Gromadzki (translation by Eric Selland); and “from Devil’s Wind” featured Gromadzki, Yoshida, and Nakayasu together with poet and translator Forrest Gander and scholar Kendall Heitzman (translation by Brenda Barrows).

The aforementioned artists and I performed with the University of Iowa’s “Laptop Orchestra,” directed by composer and clarinetist Jean-François Charles. This included improvisational musical performances on the setar, live electronics, guitar, Buchla analog synthesizer, and electric bass.