Tracing the Lines

Passionate critic, principled citizen, attentive reader and editor, and energizing teacher -- Roy Miki is all these and more, a poet whose writing articulates a moving body of work. The two main areas of his passionate research and writing -- social critique and poetics -- inform each other in these essays compiled to mark a milestone in the life of an important public intellectual. Contributors from across North America take Miki's literary and artistic achievements as a starting point for analytical and creative reflections on key artistic, social and political movements of the second half of the 20th century. Essays on poetics by Daphne Marlatt, Fred Wah, George Bowering, and Michael Barnholden, among others, explore topics from voice, to love, to translation. Mona Oikawa, Dave Gaertner, Phinder Dulai, and Cindy Mochizuki write on social justice, placing Miki's redress work in relation to the politics and art of other historical reparations. Ashok Mathur, Aayaka Yoshimizu, Mark Nakada, David Fujino, and Hiromi Goto present various views of biotext, a term introduced by George Bowering in the late 1980s that refers to autobiographical text in between poetry and fiction. Jerry Zaslove, Susan Crean, Alessandra Capperdoni, and Smaro Kamboureli discuss the public intellectual's relationship to institutions from the university to city hall. The collection ends with an interview with Miki on interrelations between his photographic and poetic practices. Miki's history reflects that of the West Coast's literary world. Not only did he found the influential literary journal West Coast Line, but he has researched and written works on poets Roy Kiyooka, George Bowering, and bpNichol. Miki taught many of the poets and academics now working and writing on the West Coast.