Lit Mags

The See-Through Heart of the Swallow

Seven tanka by Shizuka Omori, translated by Yuki Tanaka

The See-Through Heart of the Swallow

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Seven Tanka

About the Author

Shizuka Omori was born in Okayama City in 1989. She is the author of three tanka collections: Burning the Palm of a Hand (2013), Camille (2018), and most recently, Hectare (2022), which won the Tsukamoto Kunio Award. She has received numerous awards and is recognized as one of the leading tanka poets of her generation. She lives in Kyoto and serves as an editor for Tō, a longstanding tanka journal. Yuki Tanaka is the author of a debut poetry collection, Chronicle of Drifting, published by Copper Canyon Press in April 2025. His poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He has also co-translated, with Mary Jo Bang, A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo Takiguchi, published by Princeton University Press as part of the Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation. He lives in Tokyo and teaches at Hosei University.

More about the author

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The Commuter, arriving every Wednesday morning, is our home for poetry, flash prose, and graphic narrative. Sign up for The Commuter newsletter to get every issue straight to your inbox, or join our membership program for access to year-round submissions. EL’s lit mags are supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership Literary Magazine Fund and the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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