Sayumi
Kamakura’s Applause for a Cloud uses the haiku form to attend to everyday life with a
cosmological acuteness, invoking wonder on macro and micro scales.
Sayumi Kamakura juxtaposes a surreal dailiness with a
cosmological acuteness, invoking wonder on macro and micro scales. The
paradoxical frictions in her work resolve into moments of lucidity just as
often as they perplex. Although she writes in the haiku tradition, her poems
detour from the conventional parameters for haiku, such as syllabic
restrictions and a fixed seasonal reference. Her flexible approach to the
long-standing form allows her to explore new emotional frequencies across a
range of subject matter. The book’s four sections—everyday life in Japan,
experiences in Morocco and Italy, her husband’s cancer diagnosis, and
reflections on the pandemic—reveal the preoccupations of a poet invested in
rendering her experiences with a mix of traditional and contemporary motifs
alongside a subtle wit. The natural world is always close at hand, yet Kamakura
does not merely depict phenomena. She creates moments of stillness that usher
the reader into her inner world.
