Anything but Human

Anything but HumanThe land is furrowed deep with worry. The angsana trees are turning orange with pain. This collection emerges, squeaking and poorly oiled, from this rubbish heap weve all piled up. It revels in the transfixing beauty of this last age of man. These poems have dwelt too close to the nuclear waste facility. These poems have traversed through fields of madness for grains for truth. These poems attempt to wring the last dregs out of language. Anything but

whose Purgatorio won the 2022 National Translation Award in Poetry

happiness soon feels a world away

none of these factors is either definitive or destiny

and how far we have or have not come in thinking through Singapore's colonial legacy

The great questions that have occupied China's brightest minds were not about who and what we are

inherent in the wood

honest to the core

The desire for being encompassed by the image

a creative writer

until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back

Since its first publication in 1972

New York Times Magazine)