Japanese writer Haruki Murakami receives the ''XXIII Premi Internacional Catalunya'' prize from Catalunya's Regional President Artur Mas during an awards ceremony in Barcelona, June 9, 2011. 
 
 TOKYO Worried about your future, the meaning of life or the realness of unreal things? Ask Japanese author Haruki Murakami for enlightenment - or as much as a surrealist can give. 
 
 Though a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Murakami is so notoriously reclusive that nobody knows for sure where in the world he lives, and he has joked about biting fans who get too close. 
 
 But for a short period this spring, the global bestselling author, 65, will take any and all questions posed to him by readers, answering those that pique his interest, his publisher Shinchosha said on Tuesday. 
 
 "He likes to engage with readers, but there's so much interest it's hard for him to interact well. This should be smoother," a company spokeswoman added. 
 
 The company will take questions from Jan 15 to 31, and Murakami's responses will run until the end of March on a special page called "Murakami's Place" on the company's website. 
 
 Born in Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto to schoolteachers, Murakami's often surreal books have been translated into more than 50 languages and feature characters bonding through pain. He has lived in self-imposed exile for years and is often a harsh critic of his home country. 
 
 His most recent novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage", was an instant bestseller that had Japanese fans queueing to buy it at a midnight release in 2013. 
 
 Murakami is known to be a passionate runner, fan of cats and devout supporter of Tokyo's Yakult Swallows, a perennially cellar-dwelling baseball team, and questions are likely to touch on these topics as well as literature, the spokeswoman said. 
 
 "We expect there to be some rather strange questions as well," she added. "Which ones he answers depends on him." 
 
 (Editing by Tony Tharakan) ||||| This article is over 3 years old 
 
 Publisher for the Japanese novelist says he will answer ‘questions of any kind’ from readers on his own website 
 
 Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is to offer advice to troubled readers in an agony uncle column on his website, his publisher said Tuesday. 
 
 
 
 The website, named “Murakami-san no tokoro” or “Mr. Murakami’s place” will solicit problems from fans of the surrealist, whose novels are published in dozens of languages around the world. 
 
 The publicity-shy writer will pen answers to queries, offering his opinions and advice on how to tackle all manner of difficulties, said Shinchosha Publishing. 
 
 “He will receive questions of any kind,” a company spokesman said, adding that he will answer queries written in a variety of languages. 
 
 Murakami will also answer fans’ questions on his likes and dislikes - including cats, a favourite animal of his, and the Yakult Swallows, the Japanese baseball team he supports. 
 
 Problems and queries will be accepted until the end of January, and Murakami’s answers will be published over the following two months. 
 
 The scheme echoes a similar project in 2006, and offers a rare chance for Murakami’s legions of fans to communicate directly with a writer who spends much of his time hiding from the glare of the media. 
 
 “After so long, I want to exchange emails with readers,” Murakami was quoted by the publisher as saying. 
 
 Murakami is one of Japan’s best known writers and has repeatedly been tipped as a future Nobel Literature laureate. 
 
 The 65-year-old, who reportedly spends much of his time in the United States, has a cult following for his intricately-crafted tales of the absurdity and loneliness of modern life, and peppers his work with references to pop culture. 
 
 The website’s URL or email address for questions is not yet available, the publisher’s spokesman said. ||||| Candy Windows 
 
 He runs in slow-mo with a wall of flame 
 
 Boiling behind him like Valhalla’s fall 
 
 In Götterdämmerung. He made his name 
 
 From being bulletproof. He summons all 
 
 His skills to get the girl from Bucharest 
 
 To Rome or Paris or wherever suits 
 
 The budget. Somewhere she can get un-dressed: 
 
 The only scene for which we give two hoots. 
 
 The heavies blast the road or bomb the train. 
 
 The dialogue is dreck, the plot inane. 
 
 
 
 They make love. Breasts and bottoms fill the frame 
 
 When suddenly the whole motel explodes: 
 
 The bad guys in a tank. Devoid of shame, 
 
 He frisks her lovely corpse for the launch codes 
 
 Of the secret anthrax time-bomb missile thing. 
 
 They’re tattooed on her thigh. But look, she stirs. 
 
 The soundtrack fills with strings that soar and sing. 
 
 When has he ever seen a face like hers 
 
 Since his last movie? They run for the car, 
 
 She is the jail-bait, he the veteran star. 
 
 
 
 The enemy is an army: all the same 
 
 He kills the lot, but finds himself alone. 
 
 The girl is gone, and gradually the game 
 
 Changes. He fails to steal the new nose-cone 
 
 His HQ wants, and where once he could burst 
 
 Through candy windows, now he fears they might 
 
 Be real glass, and – much worse, the very worst – 
 
 The gathering night could really be the night 
 
 When he, immortal once, but not again, 
 
 Must bruise, and bleed, and die like other men. 
 
 
 
 Published in the NS of 31 July. Clive James’s most recent collection is Sentenced to Life (Picador). His Collected Poems will be published in spring 2016. 
 
 
 
 Fred 
 
 
 
 “Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were sexy, but only with their feet, like butterflies.” – Clive James 
 
 
 
 Forget dancing backwards in high heels and all that jazz – 
 
 I’ve told you before, I want to be Fred. 
 
 
 
 A sparrow of a chap turned shining black- 
 
 bird, magpie-tuxed, woodpecker heel 
 
 
 
 and toe, but gliding swallow-tailed, smooth 
 
 as you please. Mr Anti-Gravity. Impossible 
 
 
 
 geometries of flair and speed. No map. 
 
 I ache for the ease, the froth of her skirt, 
 
 
 
 the gloss of his shoes. And yet am sick 
 
 of so much breeziness, balsawood plots, 
 
 
 
 paper plane trajectories. She can fluff those ostrich 
 
 feathers up all she likes, if he’s in love 
 
 
 
 with anything it’s the steps. Sometimes 
 
 in a solo, there’s a glint, a glimpse – of what? 
 
 
 
 All of this perfect lightness. 
 
 Where on earth did you find it, Mr Auster-litz? 
 
 
 
 Published in the New Statesman of 9 January 2015. Isobel Dixon’s col-lections include A Fold in the Map (Salt). “Fred” appears in Double Bill: Poems Inspired by Popular Cul-ture (Red Squirrel Press). 
 
 All illustrations by Max Gregor 
 
 
 
 The Glen 
 
 
 
 April morning, rising mist, 
 
 last fugitive snow-drifts 
 
 cooried below the dykes’ north sides; 
 
 a naked mountain 
 
 ash tree next a tumbling burn . . . 
 
 Ay, it’s a different season here, different world . . . 
 
 
 
 So if you don’t mind, heather of the hillside, 
 
 and it’s alright by you, small invin-cible bird, 
 
 I’ll lean on this here boulder 
 
 by the old drove road, 
 
 and get my eye in, lighting on this and that. 
 
 
 
 “It’s nothing to us” you might shrug, 
 
 – and you’d be right. Under the bright-hemmed clouds 
 
 above the ridge 
 
 a dozen jackdaws chack. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Published in the NS of 27 March 2015. “The Glen”, which fea-tured in the Bristol Festival of Ideas new Lyrical Ballads project, also appears in Kathleen Jamie’s latest collection, The Bonniest Companie (Picador). 
 
 
 
 The adulteress 
 
 
 
 was her joke name for herself though 
 
 unfashionable & (except in the literal 
 
 sense) incorrect. She had to stop 
 
 attending dinner parties as someone 
 
 would inevitably say something 
 
 like, “I didn’t know which husband to 
 
 expect tonight!” or “Your husband” this/ 
 
 “Your husband” that with her partner 
 
 sitting right there. She did not view herself 
 
 as a joke & yet this joke word “adulteress” 
 
 was in her head so she said to her daughter 
 
 who was learning to sew, “Can you make 
 
 a big red A & sew it on my black dress?” 
 
 Her daughter said, “Which black dress?” 
 
 & the woman said, “Every black dress.” 
 
 
 
 Published in the NS of 2 October 2015. Kathryn Maris’s most recent collection is God Loves You (Seren). Origi-nally from New York, she now lives in London. 
 
 
 
 Words 
 
 
 
 I know that when the words are clear and bright 
 
 nothing else is, as the milk of street lamps 
 
 dims out the stars, but I can only keep echoing my own footsteps 
 
 longing for brightness, for streets lit by the stars alone, dark and shining. 
 
 I want to learn the language of these trees that line my streets, dreaming 
 
 upright 
 
 all through the dark till light wakes in them and crows slowly 
 
 make their own blacks out from the dawn. But the words of trees 
 
 are so large we cannot hear them. I want to make them out 
 
 from the hungry waking-up of the crows 
 
 in the dawn coming from the bay, like a song 
 
 of the light itself. I’m stranded in our dream of learning ceaseless 
 
 ripple-waves of language I cannot quite but always almost 
 
 can make out the words of. Words care-fully, 
 
 like marsh waders in silvery after-dawn light as the tide comes in 
 
 meandering to shore, picking their way towards us. 
 
 
 
 Published in the NS of 5 June 2015. Patrick Daly lives in California. His work has been published in the New York Times and his chapbook Playing With Fire (Jacaranda Press) won an Abby Niebauer Memorial prize. 
 
 
 
 On approaching Pendle Hill 
 
 
 
 The path up to Pendle. The sleeping beast. The purple skies. 
 
 
 
 Folk tell of witches burned or branded or drowned or hung 
 
 up there. They tell of failed crops, stillborn calves, murrain. 
 
 
 
 Always the women. Always the witches. Never the men. 
 
 Never the frost, never mastitis or scours or footrot; never 
 
 blackthorn or angel trumpet, hemlock, ragwort or lupine. 
 
 
 
 Never in drink or lust or fear or guilt. Never in penance or 
 
 madness. It’s always the women. It’s always the witches. 
 
 
 
 The path past Pendle. The buried bones. The violaceous skies. 
 
 
 
 Published in the NS of 24 April 2015. Benjamin Myers’s novels in-clude Pig Iron and Beast-ings. “On Approaching Pendle Hill” features in his collection Heathcliff Adrift (New Writing North).
– Who better to offer advice to the lovelorn, the beleaguered, and the downtrodden than a hermit-like Japanese novelist? That's the plan for Haruki Murakami, known recluse and one of Japan's most famous writers, his publisher said today, per the Guardian. According to Shinchosha Publishing, the 65-year-old surrealist author will serve as what the Brits call an "agony uncle" on a page called "Murakami's Place" on its website, dispensing wisdom in response to questions submitted by readers from Jan. 15 through Jan. 31, Reuters reports. He'll tackle "questions of any kind," a company rep says per the Guardian. "After so long, I want to exchange emails with readers," Murakami is quoted as saying by Shinchosha, with the rep adding to Reuters that "he likes to engage with readers, but there's so much interest it's hard for him to interact well. This should be smoother." Marukami once referred to himself as "an endangered species [that] may get intimidated and bite" if people got too close to him, the New Statesman reported in 2013. No one's sure where the self-banished Murakami—often brought up as a possible Nobel Prize candidate—lives, though the Guardian notes he "spends much of his time" in the US; the New Statesman claims he resides in both Japan and Hawaii. Some of the Qs he may receive will likely touch on some of his favorite topics, including cats and the Yakult Swallows, a pro Japanese baseball team. Or they may be more fitting for a writer known for what the Guardian calls "intricately-crafted tales of the absurdity and loneliness of modern life": "We expect there to be some rather strange questions," the rep says, per Reuters. "Which ones he answers depends on him." (Hopefully it will turn out better than this lad-mag column.)