The Capilano Review issue 4.6 (spring 2026) : love bends / the mover: The Roy Miki Issue

The texts and artworks in this issue come together within and across many of Roy’s varied communities: artistic, activist, academic, and Asian Canadian among all of these, considering subjects like asiancy, archives, and, crucially, Roy’s imperative to action as a few more principles within his astonishingly imaginative praxis. The alliterative synchronicity here all the while attempts to return readers to the materiality of language that roots Roy’s work. As Michael Barnholden, editor of Miki’s Flow: Poems Collected and New, affirms: “Roy’s first language was language.” (“Editor’s Note,” Emily Fedoruk and Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross)

I’m very pleased to be able to go through the latest issue of The Capilano Review [see my review of the three fiftieth anniversary issues--3.46-3.48--here; my review of 3.41 here; my review of 3.34 here; my review of 3.33 here; my review of 3.32 here; my review of 3.31 here; my review of 3.30 here, etc], produced as “love bends / the mover: The Roy Miki Issue,” celebrating the work and influence of the late Vancouver writer, teacher, activist, archivist and editor Roy Miki (1942-2024) [launching in Vancouver, by the by, on July 17]. As editors Emily Fedoruk and Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross write as part of their introduction: “In circling the too-many possible places from which to ‘begin’ this note, we have often returned to the words of so many others who are forever moved and changed by Roy Miki.” They reference Phinder Dulai, for example, who offered this piece up at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics not long after Miki died. Literary activity, or even cultural activity generally, seems so rarely acknowledged in Canada (only occurring, if at all, once someone retires or dies), so these moments of homage, especially in memoriam, become essential for any kind of creative ecosystem.

For those unaware of Miki’s literary output, specifically his poetry, you should pick up Flow: Poems Collected and New, edited by Michael Barnholden (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2018) [see my review of such here], a book of some six hundred pages, covering all five of his published poetry collections—saving face: poems selected, 1976-1988 (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1991), random access file (Red Deer AB: Red Deer College Press, 1995), Surrender (winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry; Toronto ON: Mercury Press, 2001), There (Vancouver BC: New Star Books, 2006) and Mannequin Rising (New Star Books, 2011)[see my review of such here]. certainly well known as an editor and critic, from his years of West Coast Line to a collection of essays, a bibliography of George Bowering and editing Roy K. Kiyooka’s posthumous selected poems [see my review of such here] and bpNichol's posthumous critical writings, Miki is perhaps still best known for his years fighting for and finally achieving redress from the Canadian federal government for the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. One can best describe his decades of writing, editing, activism and teaching as a community-based focus on questions about identity, citizenship, race, and place.

dear roy,

 

this break between our years

makes the arch of a bridge you ride

into vaporous clouds (“dear roy,” shō yamagushiku)

This special issue of The Capilano Review offers work by Michael Barnholden, Carolyn Nakagawa, Yoriko Guillard, Larissa Lai, Nicole Markotić, Cindy Mochizuki, Fred Wah, Yilin Wang, Echo Quan, Tiziana La Melia, Vivek Sharma, Gloriah Amondi, Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, Sena Cleave, shō yamagushiku, Wayde Compton, Daphne Marlatt, Rita Wong and Ranbir K Banwait, whether as direct tribute or response, or as indirect continuation of Miki’s decades of attention and labour. A play of language across language; a cross-section, that suggests and even explores further depths. The issue includes direct responses, but also pieces from those who might walk one of the many paths, so to speak, that Miki worked so hard to forge. Cindy Mochizuki, for example, provides “a textual and visual response” to Miki’s poem “Flow Nation,” from his collection, There. Larissa Lai offers “Rising Mist: Five Haibun for Roy” which are quite stunning (and hopefully part of an eventually-forthcoming collection, certainly). Wah offers some further lines of thoughtful lyric, of reminiscence, as does Nicole Markotić, providing an intimate detailing of Miki and Miki’s lyric in Winnipeg, upon first meeting him there. On his part, Wayde Compton provides the first part of an extended epic-in-progress, “Epistles to Oya: An Epic,” that stretches across an incredible canvas:

In the commander’s quarters, gathering
washing, she stopped, and her shape 

formed in the ornate lead-framing looking-
glass across the mantle: her self a 

stutter, a ripple in silver, foxed, a flash
of seeing; and in her cradling 

arm, swaddled warm, the worn
leather at her hip as she worked, the two 

oblong in the moment, together ahead
of missing, of breaking. And above 

his bed a painting, a flattery, this
commander, his eyes shadows, his face 

a simmer, a smear of power, at his neck
a chain, a locket on it, a spiral 

engraving of a ram’s horn there in
gold, a circling 

back upon itself. It hung
in paint as in life
covering his heart.

Echo Quan offers an intriguing sequence of text and photography, another form Miki had been exploring himself across a number of years. Translator and poet Yilin Wang offers three poems, the first of which, “mother tongue,” begins: “what is your mother tongue after you were / hoisted away from china at the age of four, and only // recovered the brushstrokes of your grandma;s name / by chance a decade later?” Highlights are almost too numerous to mention. I was also intrigued by the multiple pages of drawings, and again and again now that we know we know we know, by Sena Cleave, introduced with this short statement by the artist:

The curved lines in and again and again now that we know we know we know take after Roy Miki’s use of parenthesis in his poetic work. in poems like “Dome’s Story” and “The Fronds on Galiano,” I noticed how Miki would open parentheses without later closing them – sometimes opening multiple in a single poem – evoking a margin that continuously grows. Reflecting on Miki’s writing and activism (the latter of which he has described as a continuous process of change and negotiation) during the current rise in anti-migrant policies, I began drawing parentheses with coloured pencils, repeating and layering them until the parentheses took on a structural role in the composition, similar to how a stitch functions in embroidery, or how a row of thread functions in weaving. and again and again now that we know we know we know continues my inquiry into textiles, agriculture, and other repetitive forms of labour, using materials such as thread, fabric, and pine needles to think through themes of precarity, sustenance, and persistence.

Literature, I’ve heard it said, is less a continuous thread than a constellation of interconnected hubs, from which so much activity emerges, and Miki was one of those very important touchstones for multiple generations of writers, academics, readers and thinkers, well beyond his years teaching at Simon Fraser University (although a number of these contributors can be counted as some of Miki’s former students). As well, this is not the first special issue on Miki and his work, as the late journal that he founded, West Coast Line, produced a special issue, titled “Miki,” as issue #57 (42.1: spring/summer 2008), guest edited by Fred Wah [see my review of such here]. As Wah beings in his introduction to that issue, a consideration that could be equally applied to this current volume:

This issue of West Coast Line is a tribute to its founder, Roy Miki. It is not intended as collection of anecdotal or hagiographical testimonials but, rather, a collection of writing from some of the writers who have cohabited Roy’s extensive cultural community over the past 40 years. Writing was solicited to reflect not only the moment of production but also to reflect to Roy a partial sense of the threads of his own creative and intellectual milieu which he has generated through a lifetime of writing, thinking, and activism.

Roy Miki, Flow: Poems Collected and New, edited by Michael Barnholden

All Roy Miki’s collected poetry and critical writing swirls around one historical maelstrom, but without sinking into it, the general terms of which Giorgio Agamben pessimistically diagnosed as “the new biopolitical nomos [law, custom] of the planet” (176): the concentration camp. Miki lived through one specific form of its apparatus as a Canadian child, his family forcibly removed from Haney, B.C. to Ste. Agathe, Manitoba during the Second World War, the repercussions of which, due to displacement and financial loss, internment, and coerced racialized identity as Japanese Canadians, instigated a context and reality of social trauma for tens of thousands of people. Today, the optimistic legal outcome and renown of his social justice and cultural activism remain of precedent-setting significance for all, and in particular for communities still extricating themselves from Peacekeeping Canada’s sordid domestic history of conflating race with citizenship and democracy with unacknowledged racism. (Louis Cabri, “Floward”)

New in the series of “collected poems” editions that Vancouver publisher Talonbooks has been producing over the past few years (including collections by Fred Wah [see my review of such here], Daphne Marlatt, Phyllis Webb, Nancy Shaw [see my review of such here], Roy K. Kiyooka and Artie Gold) is Vancouver poet, editor, literary critic and cultural activist Roy Miki’s Flow: Poems Collected and New, edited by Michael Barnholden (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2018). Flow: Poems Collected and New encompasses some six hundred pages of work by Miki, covering all five of his published poetry collections—saving face: poems selected, 1976-1988 (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1991), random access file (Red Deer AB: Red Deer College Press, 1995), Surrender (winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry; Toronto ON: Mercury Press, 2001), There (Vancouver BC: New Star Books, 2006) and Mannequin Rising (New Star Books, 2011)[see my review of such here]—as well as a healthy selection of uncollected work under the header “Cloudy and Clear (2018).”

SEAWALL NOTES

1

Cast line

    initiates

perambulation

Figures emerge

    ease of

permutation

Inclinations

    brought

to moment

2

Lone heron

    waives

breakfast signs

Flutter wings

    pose

take flight

3

Diffuse light

    low

hanging

Cloud lining

    fog hint

supple lens

Miki’s is a poetry that might have emerged through an interest in studying literature, but developed as an indirect means to articulate and engage with some of his other literary and cultural works, including his lengthy battle for redress from the Canadian government for Japanese Canadians. It becomes fascinating to see how Miki’s poetry, then, exists in parallel, or even in response to his other works, existing entirely in tandem with his critical and cultural works. In the introduction to his lengthy interview at the end of the collection, “Inter View,” editor Michael Barnholden speaks to what he calls the “multiplicity” of Miki’s work:

            Since then I have come to see that multiplicity is the key to all of Roy’s work: there’s a lot going on and Roy always wants to get it right. He’s also a public intellectual through his writing, editing, publishing, and teaching. A quick look at his bibliography suggests a seemingly impossible breadth and depth. Sure, there is the poetry, but there is also the scholarly work on William Carlos Williams, bpNichol, Roy Kiyooka, and George Bowering, a couple of volumes on groundbreaking literary criticism, activist archival, and political work, even a children’s book written with his wife, Slavia Miki. And to those accomplishments we must add editor of Line magazine, later merging with West Coast Review to become West Coast Line, and publisher of a chapbook series, pomflit, with Irene Niechoda. And of course there is his long and storied career as a teacher. A list of students he has influenced, who have gone on to accomplish much with his help and guidance, would be lengthy. I consider myself lucky to have been among that company. Oh yes, and when he retired from teaching full-time, he taught himself digital collage technique.

I quite like that the collection ends with an interview with Miki, a focus on his own words on his work that I appreciate, providing multiple insights and entrances into his writing and thinking:

M: Those early poems in saving face are connected to scholarship because they have an archival component. You are looking at an archival document, your parent’s internment ID card, and the poem begins to compose in ten parts. Once you find that method of composition, it seems to me that your scholarly pursuits lead to your poetic pursuits. They inform your poetic pursuits in many ways.

R: Yes, I’ve tried not to separate the two activities. Poetry as research and research for poetry have been mutual concerns. An obvious connection can be seen in the various poems I’ve written using found language from my archival research. Sometimes I’ve simply restructured some found text in poetic lines, as for instance, “higher learning,” albeit with the addition of a title. Other times I’ve inserted found texts in a poem.

What becomes clear very quickly, as any reader of Miki’s already knows, his is a poetry of syntax and politics, and one that engages with collage, overlap and collision, writing out short phrases, images and sketches intended to interact with and against each other. The perception of a single image is forced to shift in even the most subtle ways through the interaction of what might follow. Since his retirement from teaching, this collage-element has simply become more overt with his work in digital collage, something he has incorporated into his poetry, and are included as part of the collection. His work had long been grounded in image, even incorporating photographs from his personal archive in early works, but, over the years, the blend has become more complex, overt and far more subtle. Despite all of this engagement and multiplicity, there is something wonderfully understated about Miki’s writing, something that, unfortunately, has possibly caused his poetry fly under the radar of a wider Canadian readership, even against the fact that his Surrender won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. And yet, Miki’s poems are, in their own way, a forceful, consistent calm against a series of raging storms, and very much worth engaging, and sinking slowly into. “without reading,” he writes, in the poem “KIYOOKA,” “there is // no body[.]” The poem continues:

dis     sem      blance

paternal sputter

let the utter &

outer skin

to skin

The Capilano Review 3.32 : Summer 2017

Our point of departure for this issue was “translation,” in scare quotes because we’ve grown weary of the imperialism of the concept. At some juncture, we began calling it “polyvocal translation,” later shifting to “polymorphous translation,” to mark an element of perversion or disavowal in the concept, along the lines of: we know that this is not English, and yet it is.

            Translation is no more innocent than poetry. Neither of these is a value in itself, any more than “Canada” is. They too have not been nice for 150 years, to “translate” the pernicious Roots slogan. We don’t need to look elsewhere for poetry with blood on its hands: the “Confederation Poet” and bureaucrat Duncan Campbell Scott might be a better example than the Nobel Prize winner and bureaucrat Alexis Leger (St. Jean Perse), or the Stalinist Neruda. Of the current celebratory slogan, the filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril says: “Every single time I see a Canada 150 logo I want to take a Sharpie and add a couple of zeros to the end of it” (quoted in The Guardian Weekly, 02.07.17). (Ted Byrne and Catriona Strang, “Editor’s Note”)

As the editor’s note describes, the latest issue of The Capilano Review (3.32 : Summer 2017) surrounds ideas of translation, both the complicated and the straightforward, including some of the difficulties that emerge when attempting to shift any writing or idea from one language and culture into another. The responses, questions and straight translations are incredibly rich and varied, as Sonnet L’Abbé writes in her poem “CV”: “Let not my colonized verse be called la misanthropie.” There is some really fascinating work in this issue, including an interview with Jean-Christophe Cloutier, editor of Jack Kerouac’s French language writing, Deborah Koenker’s Tortilla Portraits, further of Sonnet L’Abbé’s “Sonnet’s Shakespeare” sonnets (which appears as a trade collection with McClelland & Stewart in 2018), and further of Michael Barnholden’s work on and translations of Louis Riel’s poetry, specifically one of his final compositions, the poem/lyric “Riel’s Composition”/”Riel’s Song.” Both Cloutier’s and Barnholden’s work can’t help but shift consideration for their individual subjects, and most of the work in Cloutier’s volume of Kerouac’s French writing, published in 2016 as La vie est d’hommage, the introduction to the interview writes, was “not known to exist until quite recently.” As Cloutier responds as part of the interview:

All this to say that we can detect the “doubleness” that you allude to in your question all over the map during Kerouac’s formative years. The country is going through it, in the midst of the Great Depression, but Kerouac is living all sorts of personal tragedies and dramas of a particular sort as the son of French-Canadian immigrants in an adopted nation, learning an adopted language. In fact in Visions of Cody, Kerouac gives us a formal enactment of his doubleness through the “split” page where his “French-Canadian side” speaks on the left column and the Anglophone side translates the speech into English on the right column. He calls this, in his 1951 journal, his “Canuck dualism crap.” Isn’t that great? And as I say the doubleness is palpable in Visions of Gerard: we can detect both an effusive pride, love, and nostalgia for French-Canadian culture and manners of being, yet simultaneously a disgust, a shame, a desperation to get away from the hermetic snare of it. To give you an example, he writes with such tenderness and warmth about family suppers, everybody at the table, including his beloved brother Gerard, and explains one of his fondest memories involving the gliding of bread into homemade gravy, a process he and his brother had baptized “passes.” Kerouac also makes sure the reader understands this is a French word, and that it had also a particular pronunciation: “because of our semi-Iroquoian French-Canadian accent passe was pronounced PAUSS so I can still hear the lugubrious sound of it and comfort-a-suppers of it, M’ué’n pauss.” I’ve always loved this passage because of its familial intimacy, and because of the perfect way he found to “sound-spell” the phrase “donne moi une passe,” rendering it phonetically as “M’ué’n pauss.” Now we can really hear it, we can properly reimagine the scene and conjure up the history as it was lived and remembered.

What is fascinating to me through working my way slowly through the work contained in this issue is the realization that even translation shouldn’t be seen as benign or innocent, and the implications of translation can be quite complicated, and even damaging, if done poorly or thoughtlessly. As the editors discussed in their introduction, the idea of translation was their “point of departure,” opening the issue to a wide range of possibilities, from poetry to straight translation and images to memoir, including three powerful memoir-esque prose poems by literary translator and legal worker Lida Nosrati, that include:

In the interest of time

Let us not dwell on the fact that you’ve been humiliated chronically, your language criminalized, your child a guest at the holding centre because such facts are inconsequential anyway. Let us instead discuss the effects of acute humiliation on your del-e bi’arezoo (wishless heart), treat life as a non-adversarial process, for argument’s sake, and try our best to rebel in reverse for no apparent or noble cause. Let us focus on learned helplessness, on normal responses to abnormal events, and remember that absence is proof of nothing, that chance is damaged beyond repair, that your fear is billable, and your evidence sufficiently normalized. Let us be courteous but not nice. Let us have the last word, and demonstrate that reason was unlawful, not unreasonable.