Creativity has always benefited from outside influences, adding unexpected flavours and perspectives. Poet Alex Corrin-Tachibana has a unique voice that resonates with many undertones of a cross-cultural inspiration. From the publication of her first collection Sing me down from the dark (Salt, 2022) to the honour of being longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2023, she can look back on some successful years. In our special interview, poet and editor Natalie Crick asks Alex a few questions about her creative process.

Your debut collection explores cultural differences. After living in Japan, what are some of the most striking differences between life in Japan and life in the UK?

Of course, I can only speak from the experience I had during the time I was there (1996-2006), but a big difference was a strong emphasis on etiquette, things like nodding and bowing and set phrases when you enter or leave a house, and a tendency towards uniformity.

I noticed this when I went out with friends, and we all shared meals or had the same set meal. 

There was also a marked attention to detail, such as restaurants bringing water and refilling it regularly before your cup was empty and having hot towels and toothpicks on the table. And the diet of course was very different.  I mainly cooked with a rice cooker and stove because there was not a conventional oven and ate a wonderful variety of fish, some of which I did not know the names for in my own language.

Would you hope to return to Japan in the future?

Yes, absolutely, depending upon a few logistical issues, but for a visit rather than to live there.

You have an MA in Japanese Language and have taught international students during your career. Are there any other languages you would like to learn?

Not at this stage in my life.  If I was younger perhaps.

I feel I am fully engaging with and exploring my mother tongue through writing poetry, which is very satisfying. If I visit Japan, I would like to brush up my Japanese beforehand.

Your memories of Japan and your experiences there have clearly influenced your writing. Are there any other countries or places that have been inspirational to your poetry?

Yes of course.

Visits to Spain are also mentioned in my collection and I also have a strong attachment to Scotland where my ancestors on both sides hail from. The East Lothian coast, Gullane and Aberlady, have featured in my poems and continue to be a source of inspiration.

Kalamazoo, Michigan, was also part of the inspiration or backdrop to a zuihitsu I wrote recently called ‘Skinship’, as I thought about the connotations of that Anglo Japanese word in Japan, but also about giving birth to my son in America.

Themes of home and abroad and cross-cultural relationships are striking in your writing. What else inspires you?

Nature often permeates my poems because it yields imagery in a very innate way. I am also interested in exploring challenges facing women at different stages in their lives, in family history, and in family dynamics, particularly between mother and daughter.  

I am also inspired by people and fragments of dialogue as well as by trying out new forms and working within formal constraints and have been exploring less familiar Japanese forms recently.

Some of the poems in your collection feature Japanese words and phrases. Do you enjoy using different languages in your writing and do you think this is an effective writing technique?

Yes, I also have a few Spanish words in my collection based on trips and connections there.

I think it can be a great tool if employed thoughtfully. For example, inclusion of foreign words might help reinforce the alienation a foreigner could feel in another culture whilst kanji, hieragana and katakana (the Japanese scripts) might add something aesthetically to the page. And in terms of sounds too of course if the poem is performed.

The publication of your debut collection, Sing me down from the dark, must be one of the ‘highs’ of your writing career so far. Have there been any ‘lows’? 

There haven’t been any lows where writing is concerned because I don’t take anything for granted and don’t focus only on publications or competitions but more on trying to get individual poems the best they can possibly be, not as a hobby but as a way of life now. I also get immense pleasure from teaching for organisations such as The Writing School and The Writing Well and have made some amazing friends within the writing community which brings me a lot of joy.

If you had to choose, which is your favourite poem from Sing me down from the dark and why?

Extremely hard. But perhaps the title poem because once I had written it, I adored the title and knew I wanted it to be the title of my collection. I was also pleased with the turns in that poem in terms of different tones, moving from humour to something uncomfortable, to some deeper, a more sort of universal human feeling perhaps, reflected in the imagery of the nightingales ‘once caged for their song’ who were determined ‘to fulfil their migratory urge’. I hope that poem left the reader unsettled and perhaps wanting more.

 What are you currently reading? 

Dipping into lots including:

Kimiko Hahn’s Narrow Road to the Interior, Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book, The Columbian Anthology of Japanese essays, Michael Longley’s Collected Poems and Footbridge to Enchantment: Nigel Tranter’s Country Notebook (set in Aberlady, East Lothian).

What are your writing plans?

I am working on a second collection, envisaging a trip to Japan, and reading in a targeted way-following my obsessions and things I want to teach.

Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana’s first collection, Sing me down from the dark, was published by SALT in 2022. She has been a teacher for 27 years and is a poetry tutor for The Writing School and The Writing Well. Her poems are published in P.N. Review and Poetry Wales and forthcoming in Hodder Education’s A level magazine, English Review. In 2023, she was highly commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Fish Prize and Leeds Poetry Festival Award. She lived in Japan for 10 years and has Master’s degrees in Writing Poetry and in Japanese Language. She can be found on X as @CorrinTachibana and her Instagram is: corrintachibanapoetry.