Overview
Andrew Campana is a scholar of modern and contemporary Japanese literature and media. His research centers on exploring moments of media transition, focusing in particular on poetry, digital media, and disability. His first book, Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at the Edge of Media, available in open access, was published by the University of California Press in 2024. In it, he engages with expanded poetic practice from the 1920s to the present as a site where poets in Japan grappled with new media technologies like film, tape recording, television, the internet, and augmented reality. He is currently working on his second book—tentatively titled Glitch Texts: Digital Poetics in Japan—which will explore poetry in relation to the internet and video games, focusing on shifting platforms, poetry generators, disability, feminist criticism, and Ainu poetics. This project draws from his experiences as part of the Trope Tank at MIT, a lab dedicated to developing new understandings of computation and literary practice. He has performed and published widely in both English and Japanese as a multimedia poet and translator.
News about Andrew Campana's research:
Cornell Chronicle: "Poets in Japan Experiment at the Edge of Media"
Cornell Chronicle: "Japanese Poets Open New Ways of Thinking About Media"
The Statesman: "Professor Links Poetry, the Internet, and Augmented Reality"
Cornell Research Profile: Poets, Artists, Game Makers, and New Media
Research Focus
- Modern and contemporary Japanese literature
- Japanese media
- Disability studies
- Poetry and poetics
- Digital media
- Game studies
- Feminism, gender and sexuality
Publications
BOOKS:
2024: Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at the Edge of Media. University of California Press. Available to read for free online in open access.
ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS:
Forthcoming: “Windows Shutting Down: The Glitch Poetics of Chika Sagawa,” in The Past and Future of Chika Sagawa, Japanese Modernist Poet, edited by Sawako Nakayasu, part of the Mellon-funded Digital Publications Initiative.
2025: "The Poetics of the Internet Rabbit Hole: Ryōta Yamada's 'Contemporary Poetry Wikipedia Parade'," in Expressive Networks: Poetry and Platform Cultures, edited by Matthew Kilbane, Amherst College Press.
2023: "Projected on the Dusk: Seeking Cinema in 1910s and 1920s Japanese Poetry." Literature 3: 133–144.
2022: "You Forbid Me To Walk: Yokota Hiroshi's Disability Poetics." positions: asia critique 30, no. 4. 735–762.
2022: "Beyond Status Effects: Disability and Japanese Role-Playing Games." In Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG, edited by Rachael Hutchinson and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon. Lanham MD: Lexington Books. 157–172.
2019: "Gender and Poetry." In The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture, edited by Jennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, and Mark Pendleton. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.
2016: Yellen, Jeremy A., and Andrew Campana. "Japan, Pearl Harbor, and the Poetry of December 8th." The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 14, issue 24, no. 5. 1-17.
2015: "Fold, Flip, Stick: Paper Mario, 2.5 Dimensionality, and the Media Mix." Kinephanos. 77-111.
2014: Montfort, Nick, Erik Stayton, and Andrew Campana. "Expressing the Narrator's Expectations." Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies. 24-30.
2013: Montfort, Nick, Rafael Perez y Perez, D. Fox Harrell, and Andrew Campana. "Slant: A Blackboard System to Generate Plot, Figuration, and Narrative Discourse Aspects of Stories." Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC-13). 168-175.
SELECTED GENERAL AUDIENCE PUBLICATIONS:
2023: Introduction to Visual Poetry of Japan: 1684–2023.
2017: “Poetry on Every Platform in 2010s Japan.” Tokyo Poetry Journal 4.
“Nihongo de shi o kaku koto ni tsuite [On Writing Poetry in Japanese].” Gendaishi Techō 60, no. 5
2016: "Poetry? In Postwar Japan: Literary Experiments Beyond the Page [Sengo nihon ni okeru 'shi' to wa?—Shimen o koeta jikken-teki-na shisaku katsudō]." Wochi Kochi Magazine. English version. Japanese version.
“The Neglected History of Videogames for the Blind.” Kill Screen.
2015: “A Video Introduction to ‘Livre-Object’ by Yoshimasu Gōzō and Wakabayashi Isamu, 1971.” Harvard-Yenching Library Collections.
SELECTED TRANSLATIONS:
2024: "Four Modern Haiku Poets on Encounters with Creatures," with works by Iboshi Hokuto, Murakami Kijō, Tomita Moppo, and Hashimoto Takako. MONKEY: New Writing From Japan 5. [Forthcoming]
2023: “Eight Modern Haiku Poets on Music,” with works by Hashimoto Takako, Iida Dakotsu, Hekigotō Kawahigashi, Maeda Fura, Sugita Hisajo, Takahashi Awajijo, Takeshita Shizunojo, and Usuda Arō. MONKEY: New Writing From Japan 4.
2022: “Four Modern Poets on Encounters with Nature,” with works by Iga Fude, Ōzeki Matsusaburō, Satō Sōnosuke, and Takahashi Awajijo. MONKEY: New Writing From Japan 3.
2021: “Five Modern Poets on Travel,” with works by Kanan Ken’ichi, Okamoto Kanoko, Yumeno Kyūsaku, Sugita Hisajo, and Iida Dakotsu. MONKEY: New Writing From Japan 2, 89–97.
2020:“Seven Modern Poets on Food,” with works by Yosano Akiko, Takeshita Shizunojo, Hisajo Sugita, Takahashi Awajijo, Iboshi Hokuto, Ōte Takuji, and Nishigori Kurako. MONKEY: New Writing From Japan 1, 88–95.
2020: “Memories” and “Recollections” by Hara Tamiki, Wasafiri issue 102, pg 78.
2019: “Nine Poets on Winter,” with works by Yumeno Kyūsaku, Yamamura Bochō, Yosano Akiko, Yonezawa Nobuko, Satō Sōnosuke, Yanagihara Byakuren, Imai Kuniko, Iga Fude, and Iboshi Hokuto. Translators to Watch For feature, Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan.
2018: Japanese subtitles for “The Female is Future,” exhibit of android-performed video-poems by Elena Knox, Hashimoto Gallery, Tokyo.
2017: English subtitles for Salome’s Daughter—Anotherside Remix. Experimental film-poem directed by Shichiri Kei, text by Shinsaku Minori. Tokyo: charm point, 2016.
Poems by Shimizu Fusanojo for “Noroshi: Signal Flare for Our Future,” opening exhibition of the Art Museum & Library, Ota. Included in Opening Exhibition—Noroshi: Signal Flare for Our Future [Kaikan kinenten, mirai e no noroshi]. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2017.
English subtitles for “Life,” “What I Like,” and “Hamster” by Nakauchi Komoru, Poetry Slam Japan 2017 Champion, projected during the Grand Poetry Slam World Cup 2017 in Paris.
“Fortune Teller” (Kōno Satoko), “Railroad Crossing” and “Round Trip” (Matsuoka Miya), “Excerpts from Hyōka, Raigai: RPG Poetics” (Yada Kazuhiro), “Selected Haiku from There Are Eyes in You—Wide-Open” (Satō Ayaka), “Contemporary Wikipedia Poetry Parade” (Yamada Ryōta), “Record of Affidavit” (ni_ka). Tokyo Poetry Journal 4: Heisei Generations.
“Four Poems on Cinema,” by Kitahara Hakushū, Yosano Akiko, Matsumoto Junzō, and Kawaji Ryūkō. Inventory 7.
2016: Nick Montfort, Serge Bouchardon, Andrew Campana, Natalia Fedorova, Carlos León, Aleksandra Małecka, and Piotr Marecki. 2x6. Los Angeles: Les Figues Press, 2016. [Responsible for translation of original English Python poem/program into Japanese Python poem/program.]
2015: “ＷＥＢ h a l l e l u j a h 「a」－blood／arch.” Monitor poem by ni_ka. CURA Magazine. November 30, 2015. [Translation of “ＷＥＢはれるや「あ－血／アーチ” from the Japanese.] Republished in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3, 2016.
“Contemporary Japanese Poetry Generator,” generative poem by SHINONOME Nodoka. CURA Magazine. November 30, 2015. [Translation of “現代史ジェネレーター” from the Japanese.] Republished in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3, 2016.
SELECTED MEDIA APPEARANCES:
2021: Curiosity Daily podcast, "Blind Gamers Take the 'Video' Out of Video Games"
2020: NPR (WAMC Northeast Public Radio), Academic Minute, "Taking the Video out of Video Games"
2019: Jackie Swift, “Poets, Artists, Game Makers, and New Media,” Cornell Research
2019: Speaking of Language podcast, “Andrew Campana – Gaming, Poetry, and New Media"