Chasing the Clouds is the first full-length publication in Ireland of the poems of Dublin-based poet Eriko Tsugawa-Madden, drawing on two collections previously published in Japan, as well as new poems. The book is a long-overdue introduction to a poet of grace, compassion and deep affection for the world.
“Eriko Tsugawa-Madden’s poems manage the deft feat of being microscopic and panoramic; equally at ease when honing in to transform the petals of one flower into a swirling cosmos, or zooming out onto wider horizons to confront, with richly humane anger, the horror of historical atrocities … Her tone is deliberately underplayed, but conjures, with vivid clarity and precision, miniature still life portraits, shot through with insight and compassion.”
– Dermot Bolger (on Lull in the Rain)“Eriko Tsugawa-Madden manages to convey the special moment of seeing with a genuine sense of surprise and wonder.”
– Gerald Dawe (on Bride of the Wind)“Many lost things re-emerge. Each memory is composed of a substance that vanishes as fleetingly as snow, but whose outline, like that of a bowl, refuses to fade. The poet seems to trace such outlines—though not so closely that the essence of the bowl might be lost—by arranging her words with great care, so that the outlines persist.”
– Nobuaki Tochigi (on ‘a bowl of snow’)
typhoon
I learned to count when I was four.
I counted dead fishermen,
lined up on the sandy shore,
covered with straw mats.
Ichi . . . Ni . . . San . . . Shi . . .
I could count big numbers,
pity there were only four.
I counted them,
like the shadows of fenceposts
I used to pass on the sandy hill.
I was told to stay at home,
but I sneaked out the back door.
I saw them through the high grass on the dunes.
I counted fish washed ashore from the wrecked ship.
Salmon, Sea trout, Mackerel.
Ichi … Ni … San … Shi …
Some perfect, some not. Torn.
Villagers collected them in rusty buckets.
How many fish could I get?
I got none.
On the sandy hill, the grasses swelled and bent madly.
My skirt puffed.
The Sea was angry with me,
his mouth, teeth and tonsils,
spitting foam, seething,
exhausted by his own ill temper.
I shivered.
The ship’s black belly rose and fell,
stranded below the yellow cliffs
like a beached whale
now breathing feebly.
Is he dying?
I started counting to his death.
Ichi … Ni … San … Shi …
These and those I counted,
after the Typhoon.
*
insect killer
I killed an insect
with a pencil tip.
I killed a tiny one,
when people still said I was pretty.
How wrong they were.
I was ugly.
Another time I crushed one
under some paper
and I examined the fluid stain
with the face of a solemn fortune teller.
I killed one with my forefinger, too.
It was easy and
I was indifferent,
while people still said I was pretty.
How wrong they were.
I was ugly and knew it.
The insect looked as if in a hurry
to go somewhere, but it never got there.
There must have been a snapping sound
of death, a distant firework.
One of the air sacs in my lung
also collapsed each time.
*
hanging washing
On a fine day
when I hang clothes,
I feel that I too am drying myself
under the sun
after being washed
utterly clean.
Tossed about by the soapy water,
rinsed well
wrung out
creases stretched
then on the line
under the sun.
Flies and butterflies come to bask
for a moment.
I’m inside out
stark naked.
Pinched a little
by the pegs.
Chasing the Clouds
Eriko Tsugawa-Madden
ISBN PB 9781915629609
140 x 216 mm
October 2026
Cover artwork: ‘Moving Still’ – Triptych.
Mokuhanga- Woodcut, 178 x 110 cm (2024)
By Kate MacDonagh.
www.katemacdonagh.com
Photograph: Dickon Whitehead
