Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana

About

Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University and an MA in Japanese Language from Sheffield University. She teaches creative writing and is module leader for the International Foundation programme in Humanities, at Newcastle University. Her most recent work appeared in PN Review, The Moth, Poetry Wales, Fenland Poetry Journal, Tears in the Fence and The Alchemy Spoon. Online her poems can be read in Anthropocene, The High Window and London Grip.

She came third in the 2020 Oxford Brookes International Poetry competition, has been shortlisted for the Winchester and Troubadour prizes, and had two poems shortlisted by Billy Collins, for the 2022 Fish Prize. She read at the 2021 Aldeburgh festival, alongside Wendy Cope and at the 2022 Oxford Think Human festival, with Mary Jean Chan. She was also a featured poet at the 2022 Tears in the Fence festival, and has performed internationally, in Portland, Oregon, at the American Writer’s Program conference. Her debut collection, Sing me down from the dark, is published by SALT.

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‘Sing Me Down From the Dark explores the highs and lows of a ten-year sojourn in Japan, two international marriages, a homecoming, and the struggles of cross-cultural relationships. It is full of light and dark, as if the writer herself has been ‘caught off guard’ in the making of these poems.’

‘With a focus on her formative years in Japan, Corrin-Tachibana explores expectations on women in different cultures, in marriage, and motherhood. Love in all its unidealized difficulty is explored with humour and grittiness and is by turns spirited, suffocating, salty, sweary, sexy. Balancing belonging and the need to escape, Corrin-Tachibana questions where we can settle, and what we might settle for. Her poetic forms reflect this restlessly on the page – shifting, separating, compacting, conversing – as they risk trying to find and make a home.’
—Heidi Williamson

‘Charting a cross-cultural relationship through courtship, wedding and a marriage’s slow disintegration, this collection carries us across continents and years through love, disappointment and anger towards a new beginning. Vulnerable, direct and formally exact, these are generous, courageous and devastating poems that will draw you in, hold you close and leave you feeling wrung out but triumphant.’
—Jacqueline Saphra

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