An excerpt from "The Obla( )t Initiative: The (Micro / Mega / Metropolis) Medium is the Message" by Jordan A. Y. Smith, published in Tokyo Poetry Journal Vol.15: Visual///Visionary Poetry (edited by Zoria Petkoska K.)
The obla( )t initiative is run by a group of product designers and poets getting playful with the word – off-page, sometimes in the city, sometimes moving, on and in digital screens, wood, glass, light.
Obla()t's first design product grew from a conversation with Tanikawa Shuntaro about poetry and media, and led to the idea of a book of microscopic poetry on glass. Tanikawa penned five poems aimed at 10-year age brackets from 5 to 45 years old, to create an experience that all ages could share. All poems were originals not to be published outside of the medium of glass – in this case, glass slides with poetry only visible through the poetry microscope (the Poemicro), with microorganisms preserved all around the words. And of course, In order for readers to view the poetry, the obla( )t team developed a specially branded microscope sold together with the poetry slides.
Each character was a mere 0.2 mm, presenting a technical challenge for the design team who had to navigate the intricacies of kanji characters, with lines breaking or smooshing into each other. The micro poems in Japanese are intended for microscope slides only, but we’ve received permission to publish one here in my English translation just to give a taste of the way their medium (microscopic size characters etched in glass) enters the poems themselves:
“To Nothingness”
by Tanikawa Shuntaro
From the micron
To the nano,
The hidden mass
Longing for nothingness
The instant before vanishing
That thing that exists
Faintly
Yet distinctly
Nothing, as yet
Still far away
The force is vanishing
But perhaps remains in trace?
At the vanishing point,
The skin
So smooth,
Is it not?
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