Applause for a Cloud

Author: Sayumi Kamakura

Translator: James Shea

Publisher: Black Ocean (2025)

In this groundbreaking bi-lingual collection, Japanese poet Sayumi Kamakura transforms the haiku into a contemporary vehicle for exploring life’s most intimate moments and vast mysteries. Moving between her home in Japan and travels in Morocco and Italy, between her husband's illness and the global pandemic, Kamakura crafts precise observations that ripple outward into profound revelation. While honoring haiku's attention to nature and seasonal change, she breaks free of its constraints to forge a new path—where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and where stillness speaks volumes.