“Tony Wallin Sato is indeed one of the young contemporary poets for whom Whitman has stopped somewhere and happily waited.” 
 
Wet Cement Press is pleased to announce the publication of Okaerinasai; a collection of Zen infused poetry reflecting on the author’s experience with incarceration and his encounters with others in the carceral state. 
 
What imprisons us, and what makes us free is a theme that runs like a wild river through the poems and prose of this collection. “Okaerinasai,” which roughly translates as “welcome back home,” weaves together Wallin-Sato’s adventures as a young Japanese-American in California struggling with addiction, to his redemptive adult work as a “re-entry” advocate for the formerly incarcerated. A series of riveting accounts of “gate pickups” when the author and his network greet former prisoners in their first hours of freedom, form a cinematic backdrop to meditations on Dogen’s Zen teachings and lyric reflections on the wilderness of California’s North Coast. Echos of Basho, and Bukowski sound through the work, with a powerful breadth of language that remains at its heart a fierce reparation for all that is false and broken. 
 
"I first read Tony Wallin-Sato’s work in 2021, when I selected it for 2022 Robert Creeley Memorial Award given by Marsh Hawk Press. Biracial and born in at least two different worlds, Walli-Sato has witnessed a lot of dying, this being America. In his most recent and to my mind strongest book, Okaerinasai, he writes long-lined poems, prose poems, and haikus,that carry the reader through the landscapes of Northern California and Oregon, aware of all the different peoples and spirits that have inhabited the land. Working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, as well as having been incarcerated, Wallin-Sato writes from the front lines of a divided, bleeding America. In his work, “professors and homeless and bankers and drug dealers and republicans and democrats and socialists and anarchists and treelovers and loggers and poets and government all gather. . . Isn’t it time that we join the circle?" —John Yau, author of Please Wait by the Coatroom: Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art
 
“Work hard. Accomplish nothing,” is one of the instructions Tony Wallin-Sato receives in a brief residency at a Zen temple. With poignant detail and relentless compassion, Wallin-Sato devotes himself to the fulfillment of that koan in this book-length sequence of poems. Tony Wallin-Sato is indeed one of the young contemporary poets for whom Whitman has stopped somewhere and happily waited. —Bill Mohr, author of Holdouts: The Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance 1948-1992
 
“Hard to put this book down, it zips along through places, times, in jails and out, sitting in zendos, walking on trails, riding the rails, stalking the streets. Through strings of haiku, quotations from Dogen, and dead-on descriptions in prose and verse reminiscent of Kerouac and Bukowski, Okaerinasai weaves a matter-of-fact vision of open-eyed survival in a brutally crazy world.
—Norman Fischer, Founder and Spiritual Director of Everyday Zen, and author of Men in Suits: A Poem 
 
“Is poetry mindfulness? Is presence repair? Is meditation creative? Is solitude social? When I read Tony Wallin-Sato’s poetry, yes, yes, yes, and yes. I can feel, in his poetry, the wind; I mean, on my skin. I can hear the sounds of where he was writing and of where and what and who he was writing about. Everyone and everything is clear, because his poetry—loving attention / being faithful to experience and to others—is the act of clearing the mind, in preparation for returning. The title alone makes me cry. Please come home, says Okaerinasai. You made it home, you are home, welcome home.
—Brandon Shimoda, author of The Afterlife Is Letting Go
 
BIO
Tony Wallin-Sato works with formerly and currently incarcerated students at Cal State Long Beach Project Rebound. He is also a lecturer in the Critical Race Gender and Sexuality Studies department at Cal Poly Humboldt and facilitates programming for youth and adult facilities. His chapbook of poems, Hyouhakusha: Desolate Travels of a Junkie on the Road, was published in 2021 through Cold River Press. Bamboo on the Tracks: Sakura Snow and Colt Peacemaker (Finishing Line Press) was selected by John Yau for the 2022 Robert Creeley Memorial Award.