Don Mee Choi



‘Energy is Art’s force’: Dan Disney in Conversation with Joyelle McSweeney

‘In a station of the vortex pick me up and hurl me’ writes Joyelle McSweeney in the poem ‘Oocyte’, appearing in their celebrated collection Toxicon and Arachne (Nightboat Books, 2020). In this heady exchange of ideas, the author of ten books (poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, translation) reveals a formidable erudition swirls through the heartlands of their elemental writing.

Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged , , ,

‘Revolt and remembrance’: Joel Scott in conversation with Don Mee Choi

I’ve known Don Mee Choi now for more than 10 years. I got to know her work as a poet and a translator simultaneously, through her first book of poems, The Morning News is Exciting, and her first book-length translation of the work of Kim Hyesoon, Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers.

Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged ,

Owen Bullock Reviews A Transpacific Poetics

Lisa Samuels’s introductory essay, ‘What Do We Mean When We Say Transpacific’, begins with a quotation from Pam Brown that is particularly well-chosen for this volume. Brown claims that the ‘authentic’ pertains to someone who isn’t manipulated or being alienated from their context. There’s a good deal in this book about alienation relating to identity and culture; many of the authors have had to fight to preserve authenticity.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ruoy Ycnellecxe

Ruoy Ycnellecxe, Si ti Laitram Wal? Ro na elbattegrofnu nossel? Ruoy Ycnellecxe, Erehw si Nuhc Ood-Nawh?   Ruoy Ycnellecxe, Era uoy evila? Si Nuhc evila? Laturb Noitan!  Era uoy evila? ㄱ—ㅏ—ㄱ— ㅎ—ㅏ—ㄱ—ㅖ—ㅇ—ㅓ—ㅁ—ㄹ—ㅕ—ㅇ— ㅇ—ㅣ —ㅂ—ㄴ—ㅣ—ㄲ—ㅏ? The photo is from 518기자클럽. This site …

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

Four Poems from Kim Hyesoon’s ‘Autobiography of Death’

Kim Hyesoon is one of the most prominent poets of South Korea. She lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Her most recent books in translation are Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (Action Books, 2014) and I’m OK, I’m Pig (Bloodaxe Books, 2014).

Posted in TRANSLATIONS | Tagged ,

Dan Disney Reviews the deciBels Series

These ten tiny tomes each speak (squawk, swoon, glitch, muse, lyricise, confess) of how there is something not ticking precisely inside the reality machine. Or perhaps these books shine light onto how we’ve all gone slightly spectral within our anthropocenic phantasmagorias, lost and unmoored in an experiment that’s become dreadfully strange. Some of these books turn exclusively toward the world, others perhaps come from particular critical engagements; each serves to extend conversation both on what poets do, and what poems are for.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Joel Scott Reviews Kim Hyesoon and Don Mee Choi

It is refreshing to be introduced to a literature through its contemporary women poets. For that reason, I was extremely happy to receive these two titles, both published by Action Books (a small U.S. publisher doing great things). Neither book, though, is entirely Korean.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , , , ,