People :
“First Prize of Nippoushidan 2004” for Poetry Composition
Ms. Eri Kusaka

Ms. Kusaka was born in 1983 in Yachiyo City, Chiba Prefecture. She graduated from Kounodai Women’s High School and is now a third year student in the School of Education. On the basis of her steady production of highly evaluated poetry, she was also awarded this year's “Culture Prize for Waseda Students”.

Ms. Kusaka wrote her first poem as homework for a reading class in Junior High School. She still remembers how she struggled on it, while a friend’s poem was singled out and published in a newspaper. But still, she was fascinated by the magic of poetry, where "You can express your feelings directly and there is no right answer." This spring, her poetic contributions to the Chiba Nippou Newspaper over the last six years brought her “The First Prize of Nippoushidan 2004”.

Ms. Kusaka had health problems when she was young. The experience of being in the hospital gave her a lot of time to spend by herself. Naturally, her reading time increased and her interest in words increased. She is also interested in painting and fiction, but “Paint, canvas, and space are required for painting, and novel manuscripts are bulky. The most appropriate thing for my environment was poetry”, she says. Even though you don’t have freedom, as long as there is a notebook and a pencil, you can write a poem at any time. “People who are deprived of privacy are the very ones who need some privacy in their mind.” Ms. Kusaka's reasons for continuing to write poetry appear in condensed form in this statement.

About two months are needed to finish a poem. The process of writing and rewriting is repeated over and over again. Even after a poem is finished, she sometimes re-evaluates it when she comes back to it after a certain amount of time has passed. People change as time goes by. There is no other choice but to write what you want at that moment.

She used to feel that it was easier to write when she was unhappy. But then she started to think that something was wrong if she could only write when she had problems. “I now would like to write when I am feeling happy. I want to keep on writing about what I gain from the happy things in my life.”

She reads all kinds of books for a change of pace. Her favorite authors are Shungiku Uchida and Minoru Furuya. She answers the question “What would you like to do in the future?” by saying “All I want to do is to have a regular job and live quietly. And if possible, I would like to publish an anthology of my poems.” The dream of creation will never end.