S123.

Beyond BTS and Squid Game: Korean Contemporary Poetry in Translation

Room 437, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
Saturday, March 11, 2023
9:00 am to 10:15 am

 

At a time when many around the world know Korean culture through K-Pop and K-Dramas, Korean poetry in translation is more relevant than ever. Addressing leprosy, grief, and poverty, with images of a mirror’s sound and time uprooted like weeds, Korean poets offer poetic vision that resonates beyond borders. Five translators speak on the joys and challenges of translating Korean poems: which nuance to privilege, where to make the poetic leap, and how translation can feed one’s own poetry practice.



Outline & Supplemental Documents

Event Outline: KoreanPoetry_EventOutline_AWP_2023_ToPrint.pdf

Participants

Moderator:

Jeanine Walker is the author of the poetry collection The Two of Them Might Outlast Me; her poems have appeared in Bennington Review, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She translates poems in Chuncheon, Korea, where she teaches English at Kangwon National University.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox, winner of the Donald Hall Poetry Prize, and cotranslator of Yi Won's The World's Lightest Motorcycle. She has received fellowships from the NEA, Kundiman, and ALTA, and is a program coordinator for Miami Book Fair.

Stine An is a poet and literary translator based in New York City. Her work has appeared in World Literature Today, The Chicago Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in literary arts from Brown University, and she has received fellowships from ALTA and the Corporation of Yaddo.

Ed Bok Lee is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Mitochondrial Night. Awards include a PEN/Open Book Award, an American Book Award, a Minnesota Book Award, and an Asian American Literary Award (Members’ Choice). He teaches at Metropolitan State University.

Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species (Ecco|HarperCollins, 2018). She is the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago and is the poetry editor for the Asian American Writers' Workshop.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center