Description
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Translated from the Korean by Jiwon Shin, Lauren Albin, and Sue Hyon Bae. A landmark feminist poet and critic in her native South Korea, Kim Hyesoon's surreal, dagger-sharp poetry has spread from hemisphere to hemisphere in the past ten years, her works translated to Chinese, Swedish, English, French, German, Dutch, and beyond. In A DRINK OF RED MIRROR, Kim Hyesoon raises a glass to the reader in the form of a series of riddles, poems conjuring the you inside the me, the night inside the day, the outside inside the inside, the ocean inside the tear. Kim's radical, paradoxical intimacies entail sites of pain as well as wonder, opening onto impossible—which is to say, visionary—vistas. Again and again, in these poems as across her career, Kim unlocks a horizon inside the vanishing point.
Author Bio
Kim Hyesoon is a prominent South Korean poet who has received numerous prestigious literary awards. She teaches creative writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts. Her work translated into English includes Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), five titles from Action Books—A DRINK OF RED MIRROR (2019), POOR LOVE MACHINE (2016), SORROWTOOTHPASTE MIRRORCREAM (2014), ALL THE GARBAGE OF THE WORLD, UNITE! (2011) and MOMMY MUST BE A FOUNTAIN OF FEATHERS (2008)—the chapbook WHEN THE PLUG GETS UNPLUGGED (Tinfish Press, 2005), and poems in the anthology ANXIETY OF WORDS: CONTEMPORARY POETRY BY KOREAN WOMEN (Zephyr Press, 2006).
Author City: SEOUL KOR
Jiwon Shin teaches Korean literature and media studies at Arizona State University. She met Kim Hyesoon in the year of POOR LOVE MACHINE's original Korean publication and bonded with the poet over their mutual liking for Mallarmé.
Author City: TEMPE, AZ USA
Lauren Albin received her MFA from Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Her original work and translations have appeared in The Southeast Review, The Bitter Oleander, The Nashville Review, and Korean Literature Now. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia where she teaches English, creative writing, and leadership.
Author City: DECATUR, GA USA
Sue Hyon Bae was raised in South Korea, Malaysia, and Texas, and received her MFA from Arizona State University. Her collection of poems, Truce Country, is forthcoming from Eyewear Publishing. She lives in Sacramento, California.
Author City: SACRAMENTO, CA USA