Sohini Basak interviews Kim Hyesoon and @daybreakjung.bsky.social on transparent poetics, anonymity, and translation as an elevated gift. Read “A State of Transparent Nakedness: An Interview with Kim Hyesoon and Jack Jung on the Hybrid Project LADY NO,” here: wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...
Author photos of Kim Hyesoon, Jack Jung, and the book cover for LADY NO sit to the right of blue and white text that reads: Words Without Borders, Interview, A State of Transparent Nakedness: Kim Hyesoon and Jack Jung on Lady No “When a poet enters the territory of poetry, the poet takes off their clothes—takes off their name. After becoming naked like that, wouldn’t it be better if, inside the poem, I could do ‘doing animal’?” Interview
Happy #NationalPoetryMonth ! Poetry editor Sohini Basak interviewed Kim Hyesoon and translator @daybreakjung.bsky.social on Hyesoon’s LADY NO (@eccobooks.bsky.social ). Together they consider anonymity, new poetic forms, corruption, and more.
Read here: wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...
“Lady No” from ecco publishes tomorrow. To mark the occasion, Words Without Borders (@wwborders.bsky.social) ran an interview with Kim Hyesoon and me on the origins of the Lady No project, the poetics of negation, and what translation gives and takes away. wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...
Lady No by Kim Hyesoon, proems following one of our major poets through Aerok, Korea’s mirror image, where Lady No faces national tragedy and historical trauma with sardonic wit, surrealist humor & deep empathy for the voiceless. Preorder now. Out 4/14 from @eccobooks.bsky.social.
Thank you 🙏
I’ve become bewitched by these translations of Yi Sang’s poetry: modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/five-po.... #thoughtcrime
Jack Saebyok Jung stands in the University of Wisconsin Press booth at AWP 2026 in Baltimore, holding a copy of Hedgie Choi's poetry collection, Salvage
Scenes from #AWP26: @daybreakjung.bsky.social is the co-translator (with Hedgie Choi) of Sand Bookshop Raining Sand by Moon Boyoung--winner of the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation--publishing in Spring 2027! He's pictured here with his co-translator Hedgie Choi's poetry collection, Salvage.
Today! Join us at Local Economy for a reading from 2 new translations of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry. Cindy Juyoung Ok & @daybreakjung.bsky.social will read their translations, followed by a conversation with @rokwon.bsky.social. Book sales by @ebbooksellers.bsky.social. Register at buff.ly/BT7bzGn
At top, a red banner with white text reading "congratulations to the winners and the editors' selections!" Then two lines of poets' photos with "Wisconsin Poetry Prizes" in the middle in red text on a gray background. Then the text "Coming fall 2026 and spring 2027: new books from Colin Pope; Jim Whiteside; Jack Saebyok Jung, Hedgie Choi, and Moon Boyoung; Joshua Nguyen; Lenna Mendoza; Adele Elise Williams; and Todd Fredson and Henri-Michel Yere!" And then the University of Wisconsin Press logo in red.
Announcing the winners & editors' selections for the Wisconsin Poetry Prizes: @colinpope.bsky.social; Jim Whiteside; @daybreakjung.bsky.social, Hedgie Choi, & Moon Boyoung; @joshuanguyen03.bsky.social; Lenna Mendoza; Adele Williams; & Todd Fredson & Henri-Michel Yéré!
Details: tinyurl.com/hduz5ywu
2/26 join us at Local Economy for a reading from 2 new translations of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry. Cindy Juyoung Ok & @daybreakjung.bsky.social will read their translations, followed by a conversation with @rokwon.bsky.social. Book sales by @ebbooksellers.bsky.social. Register at buff.ly/BT7bzGn
2/26 join us at Local Economy for a reading from 2 new translations of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry. Cindy Juyoung Ok & @daybreakjung.bsky.social will read their translations, followed by a conversation with @rokwon.bsky.social. Book sales by @ebbooksellers.bsky.social. Register at buff.ly/BT7bzGn
Du Fu, trans. Arthur Sze, full poem text below Spring View The nation is broken, but hills and rivers remain. Spring is in the city, grasses and trees are thick. Touched by the hard times, flowers shed tears. Grieved by separations, birds are startled in their hearts. The beacon fires burned for three consecutive months. A letter from home would be worth ten thousand pieces of gold. As I scratch my white head, the hairs become ewer: so scarce that I try in vain to fasten them with a pin.
The nation is broken, but hills and rivers remain.
Du Fu, trans. Arthur Sze
“i want back my rocking chairs, / solipsist sunsets, / & coastal jungle sounds...”
A poem by Renee Nicole Good, who was murdered by ICE earlier today.
lithub.com/renee-nicole...
LADY NO by Kim Hyesoon, translated by @daybreakjung.bsky.social (Ecco Press). “I gobbled up all the excerpts published in various outlets over the past couple of years and am eager to read the collection in its entirety.” — Maggie Vlietstra, Education Program Manager bookshop.org/p/books/lady...
Even after grace I’ll still worry as the bread leavens. Reprieve, but less teeth for the banquet. Who doesn’t want the wine of dissolution? Its feathers lately blue on the roof as we thrum through sheets of rain? For music at the wings to acquit the body’s dull current. What strikes twice on faces like this? Despite a cross, the chapel the realtor trades in broad daylight. Its one jaded window where you vacate me like a wave. Vikki C.
For #smallpoemsunday and @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
a new poem for 2026 – 'Even after grace'.
Thank you so much for reading 🩶
#poetrycommunity #WritingCommunity
Source text:
Year of the Red Fire Horse. I’m reminded of a poem by Jeongrye Choi about a legendary warrior who cuts off the head of the horse that always carried him to his lover’s house, believing this act will allow him to fulfill his destiny. The poem, however, takes a different view.
This is just Draft One. Now comes the long revision tunnel and, hopefully, finding the right readers and publisher... (6/6)
one moment you’re staring at a pressure rice cooker named “Another Titanic,” or a janitor aunt on a garbage truck; the next, you’re in space opera mode, orbiting burning suns inside a ribcage or exchanging email from Pluto on a weekday that’s on no calendar. (5/6)
Bodies and cities get dragged through all of it—mothers, daughters, workers, ghosts, houses eating houses, trash bags that remember everything. The speakers keep slipping between scales: (4/6)
Across the poems, time keeps showing up: calendar grids, film reels, subway lines, factory shifts, hospital machines, even a sleepwalking airship that spends your whole life falling. (3/6)
But the book itself roams much wider. It moves from katydids and bicycles to landfill roads, Seoul high-rises, Pluto, Mongolian steppes, and a Buddha whose robe could blanket five oceans. (2/6)
Just finished the first full English draft of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry collection, working title: Dear Mister Manager of Calendar Factory. The title poem writes straight to an invisible “mister manager” who seems to oversee time. (1/6)
💫 Archana Madhavan’s PIROWA PADOWA (Lee Jenny) — a dazzling act of sonic invention where language flows and reforms like the sea. www.amazon.com/dp/194781790...
💫 Jein Han’s Phantom Limbs (Lee Min-ha) — a haunting, visceral debut that turns trauma, memory, and the body into living architecture. uglyducklingpresse.org/product/phan...
A wooden tabletop holds two poetry books and a small crocheted black bird with a gray beak and shiny eyes perched in a blue cup. On the left is Phantom Limbs by Lee Min-ha, translated by Jein Han, with a pale yellow cover and a green vine design. On the right is Pirowa Padowa by Lee Jenny, translated by Archana Madhavan, with a blue-green cover showing a blurred, abstract landscape and the note “Winner of the Malinda A. Markham Prize for Translation.”
So proud I could burst. Two luminous Korean poetry books in English, both by my former ALTA Emerging Translator mentees
💫 Jein Han’s Phantom Limbs (Lee Min-ha)
💫 Archana Madhavan’s PIROWA PADOWA (Lee Jenny)
#translation #koreanpoetry #ALTA #LTIKorea
Just got home to find the advance galleys of Kim Hyesoob’s Lady No waiting on my doorstep. Artwork by Fi Jae Lee, translation by me. Coming from Ecco in April 2026. Grateful to the poet, the artist, and the best editor ever, Deborah Ghim. ❤️✨💫
Black-and-white cover of Matewan from The Criterion Collection. A man in a hat and suit stands in the foreground, his back to the viewer, holding a gun at his side. Ahead of him, a group of men in hats and dark suits stand on a railroad track in the distance, facing him through a haze of light and smoke. The large, bold title “MATEWAN” spans the lower half of the image, with smaller text reading “Written and directed by John Sayles.” The left border notes “1987 · The Criterion Collection.” The overall mood is tense and cinematic, evoking an impending confrontation.
If you liked "One Battle After Another," then may I recommend...
Today's Featured Poem:
"Schrödinger" by Katie Erbs published by @pinchjournal.bsky.social
Read here:
poems.com/poem/schrodi...
Many thanks to @poetrydaily.bsky.social for hosting this essay and the poem.