10 Jon Pitt: Becoming botanical
Translator, author and academic Dr Jon Pitt discusses his work in critical plant studies and the representation of plants throughout Japanese literature and media. He shares the joys of his recent translation of the work Tree Spirits Grass Spirits by acclaimed Japanese poet Hiromi Ito, and delves into what we can gain from becoming botanical – or thinking like a plant. Bio: Jon L Pitt is Assistant Professor of Japanese Environmental Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. He situates his work at the intersection of Japanese literary and media studies and critical plant studies. He is the translator of poet Hiromi Ito's Tree Spirits Grass Spirits (Nightboat Books, 2013). His first monograph is forthcoming from Cornell University Press. Selected publications include "Documenting Wordless Testimony: Botanical Witnesses of Hiroshima and Chernobyl" in the journal Angelaki, "Becoming Marimo: The Curious Case of a Charismatic Algae and Imagined Indigeneity" in the collected volume Being Algae: Transformations in Water, Plants (Brill, 2024), and "Of Miracles and Mourning: Reading COVID-19 Environmentally in Uchidate Makiko and Ito Seiko" in The Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2023). Plant Kingdom is hosted and produced by Catherine Polcz with music by Carl Didur.