Nineteen university students and civic-minded Kyoto residents squat on a mountain pass on a cloudless afternoon in early October as a tall British poet, Stephen Gill, 58, reads from a collection of haiku.

In British-inflected but fluent Japanese, he recites poems about this mountain, Mount Ogura, in the western Kyoto suburb of Saga-Arashiyama. The group listens thoughtfully, then returns to their main task for the day: retrieving illegally dumped garbage that has been tossed from the road to blight the steep mountainside.

Mount Ogura is a "paramount poet's peak" in Gill's words. Matsuo Basho, Kyorai and Saigyo are among the famous poets in the past who wrote of the turtleback mountain's beauty. The Japanese card game karuta is based on the "Ogura Hyakunin Isshu" ("One hundred Poets' Poetry Anthology") compiled by 12th century poet Fujiwara no Teika when he lived near the base of Mount Ogura.