Miho Kinnas

October 2024 Issue
Lowcountry Originals

Photography by
Lindsay Pettinicchi Photography, LLC

Miho Kinnas
Art: Poetry
Career: Corporate, consulting to freelance
Current Residence: Hilton Head
Hometown: Yokohama, Japan
Family: Husband, Ben. Daughter, Leslie, married and lives in Philadelphia. Dusty, the Labrador- deceased

When and how did you discover your artistic talent? How and / or why did you choose this medium? What do you love about it?
I was born and raised in Japan, my father a publisher, my mother an editor. The house was filled with books, but I didn’t know I would be a poet writing in English until I was 40 years old. We were living in Hong Kong, and I became unemployed and thought I’d become a literary translator. Then, one of my mentors, Allegra Wong, told me I must be a poet to translate poetry. Within ten years, the Museum of American Poetics published my poems, thanks to another mentor, Marc Olmsted, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the City University of Hong Kong. I love the process of making a poem and putting together a book. The more I learn, the more I see how much freedom poetry offers to both readers and writers.

As a creative you are unique. What makes you the most You!
I find hybridity attractive. I have been improvising Japanese dishes without proper ingredients. I like clothes by Sybilla, a Madrid-based designer whose shapes, materials, and colors are well-targeted for Japanese women without losing her exoticness. When two or three elements of myself come together and present as one, like my favorite Sybilla skirt or Lowcountry-style miso soup, it makes me uniquely me. In poetry, I create space where my languages, history, and things of beauty, natural or artificial, come together.

What’s the best encouragement you’ve ever received in pursuing your artistic talents?
The best encouragement for an artist is to feel understood. I am often told my poems are abstract and experimental. From time to time, a reader appears, usually a writer, but not always, who totally understands what I am doing and embraces what I am trying to do. Last year, a poet/editor, Elain Equi, encouraged me publicly. She selected my poem, “Three Shrimp Boats on the Horizon”, for Best American Poetry 2023 and wrote her interpretation of the poem in the introduction. She discussed my subject matter, methodology, and intentions down to the placement of a period. Poets and writers are often supportive in that special way.

What artist inspires or influences you the most?
A Japanese abstract artist, Shinoda Toko, best known for her sumi ink paintings and prints, is one of my eternal inspirations. She kept producing until shortly before she passed away at 107. She looked fragile all her life but created oversized, bold, yet minimalistic art with few colors and infinite gradations of black sumi ink. She started as a calligrapher, following tradition, and began breaking all the rules when she was about 40.

What is your background?
What in your background gave the courage to fearlessly pursue your passion?
I am a lifelong swimmer and pianist. Swimming keeps me silent, like a vast blank space on a page. Piano playing helped me land my first real job as a computer programmer at Bell South Services in Atlanta, Georgia. They were recruiting musicians for programming positions. I switched my life language from Japanese to English around that time. I changed my major from Comparative Cultures at Sophia University in Tokyo where I met my American husband, Ben, to Information Technology and Business at Georgia State University. I then worked at American tech companies and Japanese and Swiss banks in Tokyo and Hong Kong. I was often the only woman, only Japanese, or only bilingual between English and Japanese. I grew comfortable being different. Certain technical knowledge and logic of relational databases and financial markets still directly influence my creative process and associations.

When someone finds out what you do or where you are from,
what question do they always ask you?
“Do you write haiku?” When a Belfast poet, Ciaran Carson, who was the head of the Seamus Heaney Center for Poetry, kept asking for my agreement with every statement he made about haiku, I made up my mind: I would know everything I could learn about haiku, so I would be ready to answer any questions that would come my way. It was the best professional decision I ever made as a poet. I offer a popular workshop based on short Japanese poetic forms. I am invited to speak about Japanese poetics or translations, as well as poetry in general and collaborative poetry. Haiku opened the door for me to experience poetry in other ways.

If you could take a semester of classes with no other responsibilities, what classes would be at the top of your list, and where would you want to take them?
I would take classes on botany and Chinese herbal medicine. A class was offered nearby when I lived in Shanghai, but my Chinese was rudimentary, and I didn’t think I could follow. Looking back, I should have done it and learned whatever I could. After all, 60 percent of characters are shared between Chinese and Japanese. I read Chinese. I knew some Chinese poetry. The ideal location would be Taiwan. They produce excellent tea, and, in my opinion, they have the best Chinese food in the world.