ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sunwoo Kim has published several books of nonfiction, four novels, and five books of poetry including Falling Asleep Under Peach Flowers and A Nocturne. She has received the Modern Literary Award and the Cheong Sangbyung Poetry Award. She lives in Seoul.

According to the poet Na Hui-deok, Kim's poetry is filled with "bashful yet intense sensuality reminiscent of moist flower petals," and "her femininity emanates... abundance as that of embryonic fluid."

about the Translators

Won-Chung Kim is a professor of English Literature at Sungkyunkwan University where he teaches contemporary American poetry, ecological literature, and translation. He has published The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy and co-edited East Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical Reader. He has translated ten books of Korean poetry. He lives in Seoul.

Christopher Merrill directs the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He has published six collections of poetry, including Necessities, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, and five books of nonfiction. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

News

[05/06/2021] Read these two latest reviews of Flares. The Millions lists it as a must-read for May 2021 while poet Nina Murray raves that the words "induce an electric trance" on Compulsive Reader.

[04/30/2021] To celebrate the end of National Poetry Month, Chris joins A Mighty Blaze for their final installment of Poet's Cafe. He talks about Flares, poet-diplomacy, Myanmar, and more.

[04/23/2021] "Dividing Lines": On Poetry and Diplomacy, a new article by Chris on the potent connection between the two.

[03/21/2021] In Burma, 'they have come for the poets': read Chris's op-ed for The Dallas Morning News about the fate of Burmese poets in the aftermath of the military junta.

Christopher Merrill

If My Tongue Refuses to Remain in My Mouth (2018)

Sunwoo Kim's debut collection of poems, If My Tongue Refuses to Remain in My Mouth, appeared in 2000, declaring in the boldest terms that at the outset of the new millennium she would bring to the page a radically different conception of poetry. Central to her work is the belief that in what Lao Tzu calls "the world of ten thousand things" the poet reveals the manifold ways in which one thing is connected to another, her poetic self-expanding into the world even as the world flows into her. This interconnectedness marks a return to a maternal, communal, and ecological view of the human condition.

Translated by Won-Chung Kim and Christopher Merrill

Read the excerpt.

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