FEATURES
Supra-text Sequences
Image: A series of frames require me to shade some of the evenly-distributed sets-of-3, black or blank. How I apply notions of form (actual space) and appearance (virtual space) to my experience in the world is very much like my …
Electronica
This issue of Cordite makes a bow to music and the ways musicians in various modes and guises have used electric technologies to generate sound. When David suggested this editing gig to me, I thought how odd, and then, perhaps, …
Posted in 36: ELECTRONICA, EDITORIAL Tagged beats, electronica, Jill Jones, mashups, music 2 CommentsCordite 35: Oz-Ko is now complete!
If you’d told me in April this year that we’d still be posting content from our Oz-Ko issue in November, I would have called you barking mad. But that’s exactly what’s happened: what started out in 2009 as an idea for a straightforward issue devoted to new poetry from Australia and the Republic of Korea has now spawned three separate issues including one hundred and fifteen poems (of which over ninety are translations), almost two dozen features (including essays, articles, interviews and photo galleries) and two separate tours, to Korea and Australia, by a total of eight poets from both countries.
Excuse me while I take a moment to reflect on that.
Ozko (Envoi)
This poem, featuring the titles of the forty poems published in Cordite 35.2: OzKo (Hanguk-Hoju), officially brings to a close Cordite’s monumental Oz-Ko issue.
An interview with Kim Ki-Taek
As I write this introduction, it occurs to me that the following interview constitutes my first unmediated communication with Kim Ki-taek (if we discount the technology through which we’ve communicated), that is to say a communication unmediated by a third, human, party.
Posted in FEATURES, INTERVIEWS Tagged KIm Ki-taek, Korea, orphans, Ozko Features, seoul, Terry Jaensch 2 CommentsHighlights from the Korean poets’ tour of Australia!
This gallery contains 12 photos.
In August 2011, Korean poets Kim Ki Taek, Park Ra Youn, Hwang Tong-gyu and Park Hyung Jun landed in Australia for a ten day tour. They presented at the Melbourne Writers Festival and in Sydney at the Redroom Poetry Company. The tour was a reciprocal visit following the Cordite/Asialink tour of Korea in May.
Balloon and Hyung-seok and Bo Yeon and Seoul city rolling
Balloon’s earned his name. He’s a six-foot-two barrel of a man with a voice that booms. He’s a giant among Koreans. A gentle giant with a wide, open face. The day is hot. His brow drips when he gets excited. Bo Yeon brings him a tissue. Bo Yeon brings water and coffee. She brings a bandaid. She watches everything with a hopeful half-smile on her full moon-face. Hyung Seok sits between them. He has a long expressive face landscaped by a strata of old scars. His hands are delicate and when he talks his fingers make tiny sculptures in the air.
In the Republic of Words: Ethics of Translation & the Politics of Contemporary Korean Poetry
In a book I recently read with my students in an undergraduate translation class, the writer sets forth twenty provocative theses on translation in this era of globalization for a new comparative literature, ranging from ‘Nothing is translatable’ to ‘Everything …
A Report From the Poetry & the Contemporary Symposium
Trades Hall, Melbourne 7 – 9 July 2011 l-r: Ann Vickery, Martin Harrison, Tom Lee, and Tim Wright. How to sum up the Poetry and the Contemporary Symposium held at Melbourne’s Trades Hall under the auspices of Deakin University – …
Posted in FEATURES Tagged ann vickery, conferences, Corey Wakeling, festivals, melbourne, michael farrell Leave a commentGay/Poet/Korea: An interview with Gabriel Sylvian on the poetry of Gi Hyeong-do
Gay/Poet/Korea – it is not lost on me that with these three words I might well have been searching for myself, attempting to locate myself in a new context, a new country, but in the end the search produced Gi Hyeong-do.
Posted in FEATURES, INTERVIEWS Tagged Gi Hyeong-do, GLBT, Korea, Ozko Features, seoul, Terry Jaensch 5 CommentsFour poems translated by Gabriel Sylvian
Read four poems by Korean poet Gi Hyeongdo, translated by Gabriel Silvian. These poems, a special addition to Cordite 35: Oz-Ko, are accompanied by an interview between Gabriel Silvian and Oz-Ko touree Terry Jaensch on Gi’s life and poetic works.
A Fortnight of Poetry in Seoul
(or, Someone’s Always Falling in Love with Korea and Doesn’t Want to Leave) I am at the boarding gate of Incheon Airport, waiting for my flight to be called and for my return journey to begin. I am wearing large …
Dialogue between Australian and Korean poets in Seoul
Australian poets Ivy Alvarez, Barry Hill and Terry Jaensch, accompanied by Asialink Literature Programme Officer Nicolas Low and Cordite’s Managing Editor David Prater, met with five Korean poets on 18 May 2011 in Seoul. Read a summary of the event, including excerpts from the Koreans’ poems.
Yi Sang House, Seoul
This gallery contains 20 photos.
The Conversations with Yi Sang project, co-organised by artist Jooyoung Lee, seeks to interrogate, engage with and memorialise the work of controversial twentieth-century Korean poet Yi Sang. View a gallery of images taken at the house during the Cordite tour of Korea in May 2011.
Oz-Ko (Hoju-Hanguk) is now online!
The task of bringing these poems to you has been nothing short of monumental. Starting with the combined efforts of twenty poets whose work was selected for this stage of the issue, followed by the Cordite editorial team’s struggles with the challenges of bi-lingual layout and formatting, and finally of course the crucial role played by our two Korean translators – 김재현 (Kim Gaihyun) and 김성현 (Kim Sunghyun) – it’s been a labour of love, and we hope you enjoy the results.
