From the Lost and Found Department: New and Selected Poems

by Joy Kogawa, Brandon Shimoda (Introduction)

A career-spanning volume that brings together new and selected works by an iconic voice in Canadian literature.

From the Lost and Found Department, by the trailblazing Joy Kogawa, is a profound work of spare, trenchant, and haunting poems that lets us stay with the quietest qualities of beauty and the sublime.

This essential volume brings together thrilling new work with selected poems from The Splintered Moon (1967), A Choice of Dreams (1974), Jericho Road (1977), Woman In the Woods (1985), and A Garden of Selected Poems (2003).

Kogawa’s poems here are evidence that our every vulnerability can open into vast channels of grace.

Genres: Poetry

368 pages, Paperback

Published November 7, 2023

About the author

Joy Kogawa was born in Vancouver in 1935 to Japanese-Canadian parents. During WWII, Joy and her family were forced to move to Slocan, British Columbia, an injustice Kogawa addresses in her 1981 novel, Obasan. Kogawa has worked to educate Canadians about the history of Japanese Canadians and she was active in the fight for official governmental redress.

Kogawa studied at the University of Alberta and the University of Saskatchewan. Her most recent poetic publication is A Garden of Anchors. The long poem, A Song of Lilith, published in 2000 with art by Lilian Broca, retells the story of Lilith, the mythical first partner to Adam.

In 1986, Kogawa was made a Member of the Order of Canada; in 2006, she was made a Member of the Order of British Columbia. In 2010, the Japanese government honored Kogawa with the Order of the Rising Sun "for her contribution to the understanding and preservation of Japanese Canadian history.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

…when you spend your life,
or a good portion of it, looking—
reaching—for someone or something
that is out of reach, you find yourself
in deeper relation with who and what
is around you. In beholding, embracing,
absence, you become attuned—
to everything. The peripheries are
centered, everything stands on end.
The abstract choreography is
transfigured into a reception that
brushes against you like homecoming.
Now you are humble, disarmed.
Open. To what is here, before you.

Intersectionality seems like a buzzword, but it is also a framework for analyzing the myriad layers around identity and I think has made a huge difference in fighting against despair as well as clarifying it so we don’t fall asleep and become paralyzed to know right from wrong. Canada holds such an interesting place in the world, part of the UK but not, so close to the US, but not the same, and this poet is Japanese Canadian, and a poet and activist I had never heard of, so I am thrilled to hear her voice. She is most well known for a novel, Obasan, about Japanese Canadians imprisoned during WWII, and if you had asked me before, I would not have known Canada did this as well as the US. There is so much knowledge out there, just waiting for us to know it, listen to the voices coming from and of it, and remember and pass down.

I created a found poem of her words below, and will return to this often, to hear and learn more.

in the valley
of the blind
no one can
look at the sun
without
filters
in the valley
of the blind
the sighted
must submit
fully fledged barn
swallow still singing
through foraging
skies sleek and sinewy

I hear a country pleading
In voices sad and low
Oh don’t you grieve us oh
Never leave us
pumice molten
rock down mountainside
to water lava porous
floating stone how
beautiful on the
mountains the feet
of those who bring good news
we wing our way
and always
that which we call Love
always and always

pacing the hallways of our hearts
we wade through the waters
we enter the deep beyond
our mundane lives
somewhere perhaps
in the blueness of the
sky or water who
can tell with blues and
our many busy peaces
in the morning she walked
the streets extravagant
with greeting as though
she had inherited
a continent of childhood

We walk
through the
brain’s
wide roads
seeking you
in the wintry
sky. You shine.
In the forest the tree
Perfectly balances its hours.
The moon’s highways
Are crowded, the sky
Full of dust. Walk with light feet.
One moment we attend
the brain’s singing
Then
We are the song.

from the preface: I envy you who have never read anything by Joy Kogawa. I envy you who have read one thing, many things. I envy you who have read everything. Most of all I envy the poems, for achieving a sentience that is salutation, being present for the arrival not of oneself, but of others, and to inaugurate, lovingly, the space of their experience: goodbye goodbye, Joy Kogawa writes. we never said goodbye, she writes. hello hello, she is writing.

Brandon Shimoda

[Clover · Rating 4 out of 5]

CW // Animal abuse (145)
Death of a pet (296)


This is the longest book of poetry I've ever read. I've been reading a lot of short (100-200 page) books, so this was refreshing.

I spent a lot of time rereading poems and contemplating them. There's a lot of imagery that lit up my mind. There's two poems that are long—a few pages—and I glossed over the first one, but I enjoyed parts of the second.

There was only one poem I truly didn't like (page 145). The poem on page 296 is touching on the common sorrow of losing a pet, but it can still be triggering for people so you might want to skip both if you don't like reading sad animal things.

She does have some poems about her father and that trauma. I looked it up and was disturbed by what her father and the Anglican Church did. I haven't yet decided if I wanted to read her books dealing with that topic, but I am interested in reading more from her!

Her poems are about all moments in life, big and small. She speaks about the Canadian internment camps, motherhood, marriage, walks in the park, train rides, birds, everything you can imagine. I really did enjoy reading a large body of one person's work. Her language and flow are all very beautiful. I wish this was taught in high school, I would have loved poetry if I had been shown Kogawa over the heavily white, male, American poets I read when I was in school.

I picked this last year as I was reading a lot of Korean and Japanese books. Can't I Go Instead by Lee Geum-yi does speak about the camps in America. So this was interesting—and heartbreaking—to read a Canadian point of view on the same atrocities that happened. I can only imagine what her novels are like. This is definitely going up as one of my Staff Picks for Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage month in May!

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book. I thought 'It's poetry, I'll have it done in no time'. But I found myself rereading, diving deep into each feeling, savouring, not wanting it to end. The poems cover every topic, from every time of a long life. At times heartbreaking, uplifting, funny and thoughtful, an absolute delight to read.

[Heidi Greco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The compilation of a life, told in poetry by one of Canada's National Treasures.

[Betty-Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poetic memoir.

[Eric Lam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A voluminous compilation of poetry from the acclaimed Japanese-Canadian author of the novel, Obasan. Joy Kogawa's poems are brief and unpretentious, drawing from a lifetime of experience, friendships, and memory. My favourite poems were the ones from when the author visited Japan, as I too find creative inspiration from travelling.