Sa lecture en anglais sera accompagnée par une lecture des premières traductions de ses textes faites en français
Traductions par Abigail Lang, MDC Paris 7, lues et présentées par Virginie Poitrasson
ENGLISH: Korean-American Author Myung Mi Kim will read for Ivy Writers Paris on 18 November at 19h30 (WEDS NIGHT!). She will read in English and new translations (first translations!) of her work by Abigail Lang (MdC Paris VIII) will be presented in French, read by Virginie Poitrasson.
I am asked often whether my shift from one language to another (Korean to English) “made me into a poet.” Over time I have realized that I invariably answer, “yes,” to this question. My body of work attempts to understand this “yes,” the heterogeneous meaning of this “yes.”
I was nine years old when I immigrated to the U.S. I did not know any English. There was a window of three months where I first began to understand English but could not speak it. This ability to comprehend a language but not utter it, informs much of what comes into play in my thinking about language and poetry. In a sense, language “cracked open.” Frightening, perhaps—but more, this fissure or rift has meant an enduring reflexive relationship to language for which I am grateful.
A book of my poems, Under Flag, was awarded the Multicultural Publisher’s Exchange Award of Merit in l992. I held a residency at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (1993) and received Awards from the Fund for Poetry (1994, 1995,1997) as well as three Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative North American Poetry (l994, 1995, 1996). During 2006-07, I worked on a translation project with a grant from the Daesan Foundation. I received but unfortunately had to decline a residency from the Djerassi Alumni Resident Artists Program (2008). In 2009, I was the recipient of the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Creative Activities.
I have held faculty residencies across institutional lines, for example: Poet in Residence, Oberlin College (1995), Edelstein-Keller Writer in Residence, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (1996), Tucson Poetry Festival (2001), Distinguished Poet in Residence, St. Mary’s College, Moraga, CA, (2001), Woodland Pattern Book Center, Milwaukee, WI (2002), Kootenay School of Writing, Vancouver, Canada (2002), George Mason University (2006), Naropa Summer Writing Program (2007), Kundiman Asian-American Poetry Retreat (2009), Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (2009), Ewha University, Seoul, Korea (2010), Poet in Residence, University of Utah (2011), Writer in Residence, Lower Manhattan Culture Council, New York, NY (2011-15).
Broadly speaking, my work as a poet investigates otherness in gendered and raced power relations, and in the contact zones between nations, cultures, and languages. My most recent book of poems, Penury, appeared from Omnidawn Publishing (2009). Penury explores the interarticulation of transnational capital, forced displacement of populations around the globe, and ecological devastation. For analysis on Penury: Hume, Angela. “An Ecopoetics of the Limit: Myung Mi Kim’s ‘fell’” OmniVerse 38. http://omniverse.us/angela-hume-an-ecopoetics-of-the-limit/ (January 2014).
Commons, my fourth book of poems, published by University of California Press in 2002, negotiates multidimensional time and disjunctive simultaneity to open up the textual space not simply to the social, historical, and political, but also to the unutterable, the silenced, and the erased. For an in-depth study of Commons: Keller, Lynn. “Myung Mi Kim’s Visual Poetics of the Aggregate.” Thinking Poetry: Readings in Contemporary Women’s Exploratory Poetics. University of Iowa Press, 2010.
My third book, DURA, was published in 1998. A second printing appeared from Nightboat Books (2008) with an introduction by Juliana Spahr and an afterword by Stephen Hong Sohn. Sohn provides a useful gloss of the critical work that has emerged in relation to DURA.
I offer up a handful of illuminating, but nevertheless divergent critical approaches to DURA. First, Josephine Park’s “’Composed of Many Lengths of Bone’: Myung Mi Kim’s Reimagination of Image and Epic,” argues that Kim’s poetic influences draw from Ezra Pound, Walt Whitman, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Park’s contention suffices to expand the boundaries of what ShirleyGeok-lin Lim has called ethnopoetics by reminding critics of the complex webs that help structure the aesthetic projects of so called “minority” writers. Zhou Xiaojing’s “’What Story What Story What Sound: The Nomadic Poetics of Myung Mi Kim’s DURA,” investigates the lyrical geometry of Kim’s collection through theoretical interventions offered by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Zhou is especially interested in the ways in which the collection inhabits numerous geographical landscapes and temporalities. Other analytical approaches have included Joseph Jeon’s study of DURA’s sound qualities, specifically the interlingual valences where Korean phonetics clash against English. Brian Reed has categorized Kim’s lyrics as espousing “postlinear poetics,” arguing that DURA contains “word squares” where the physical shape of specific poetic sections must be analyzed.
Chax Press published my second book, The Bounty, in 1996 and ran a second printing in 2000. The Bounty interrogates the agency of utterance undergirding the historical process of transcultural encounters, with a focus on questions of translation (translatability, transliteration, transcription). Work from The Bounty was anthologized in Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women. Talisman House (l998), Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. Talisman House (1996), Premonitions: The KAYA Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry. Kaya Productions (1995).
Under Flag, my first book of poems, (Kelsey St. Press, 1991, l998, 2008, 2011) inaugurated a foundational consideration in my poetry; namely, how might the stress marks of history, the fragility of lives in upheaval, the trace of the conversation between the dead and the living be inflected in our conception and practice of language? In the past decade or so, my poetry has found a growing readership here and abroad.
Translations of my work have appeared in Spanish, French, and Korean. Critical response to my writing has been robust. Along with the critical work mentioned above, I would also highlight: Dowling, Sarah. “Interpolation, Coherence, History: The Works of Myung Mi Kim.” Nests and Strangers: On Asian-American Women Poets. Kelsey St. Press, 2015. jacket 2 feature on Myung Mi Kim: http://jacket2.org/feature/myung-mi-kim, 2013. Jeon, Joseph Jonghyun. Forms: Objecthood in Avant-garde Asian American Poetry. University of Iowa Press, 2012. Ziarek, Krzysztof. “Noting Silence.” Critical Horizons, 11.3, 2010. Liu, Warren. "Making Common the Commons: Myung Mi Kim's Ideal Subject." American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics. Wesleyan University Press, 2007.
The composer, John Zorn, commissioned me to write a bilingual Korean/English text for his “New Traditions in East Asian Bar Bands.” I have given poetry readings in a wide range of venues, such as: Poets House (New York), Rice University, Wesleyan University, Brown University, University of Maine at Bangor, Segue Reading Series (New York), University of California at San Diego, Duke University, University of Utah at Salt Lake City, Page Turner: The Asian-American Literary Festival, Asian American Writers Workshop, Lunch Poems Series, University of California at Berkeley, Mt. Holyoke College, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Kelly Writer’s House, University of Pennsylvania, Poets Out Loud at Lincoln Center, Fordham University, University of Virginia, St. Mark's Poetry Project, University of Colorado at Boulder, Cambridge Conference on Contemporary Poetry, Trinity College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, Folger Library, Washington, D.C., University of California at Santa Cruz, Columbia University, and the Academy of American Poets.
My writing and teaching are deeply reciprocal. From 1991-2002, I served as Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. In 2002, I joined the faculty at the State University of New York at Buffalo as Professor of English and as a core faculty member of the Poetics Program. Since my arrival at the University at Buffalo, I was appointed as Director of the Poetics Program (2008-2011), Acting Director (Fall 2014), and am currently resuming my role as Director of Poetics for the next three years.
MYUNG MI KIM: LIST OF WORK
Books of Poetry
- Penury. Oakland: Omnidawn Publishing, 2009.
- Commons. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2002.
- DURA. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1998.
- New York: Nightboat Books, 2008.
- The Bounty. Minneapolis: Chax Press, 1996, 2000.
- Under Flag. Berkeley: Kelsey Street Press, 1991, l998, 2008, 2011.
Books in Translation
- DURA. Spanish edition. Guadalajara: Mantis Editores, forthcoming.
Chapbooks
- River Antes. Buffalo: Atticus Finch, 2006.
- Fell. New York: Belladonna Books, 2006.
- Spelt. San Francisco: a+ bend press, 1999.
In Anthologies
- “Under Flag,” A Sulfur Anthology. Wesleyan University Press, forthcoming.
- From Commons, A TransPacific Poetics. Litmus Press, 2016.
- From Commons, Out of Everywhere 2: Linguistically Innovative Poetry by North American and U.K. Women. Reality Street (Hastings, England), 2015.
- “Moving Across Languages, Borders, Cultures,” Cross Worlds, Transcultural Poetics. Coffee House Press, 2014.
- From Penury and “Into Such Assembly,” Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology. W.W. Norton and Company, 2013.
- From Penury and Commons, American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry. W.W. Norton and Company, 2009.
- From Commons, American Poets in the 21st century: The New American Poetics. Wesleyan University Press, 2007.
- “Into Such Assembly," Asian-American Literature: An Anthology. NTC Publishing Group, 2000.
- From The Bounty, Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women. Talisman House Press, l998.
- From DURA, Making More Waves. Beacon Press, 1997.
- "Into Such Assembly," "Rose of Sharon," Literary Mosaic: Asian-American Literature, HarperCollins, 1996.
- From The Bounty, The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative North American Poetry. Sun & Moon Press, 1996.
- From The Bounty, Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. Talisman House, 1996.
- "Anna O Addendum," Premonitions: The KAYA Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry. Kaya Productions, 1995.
- "Primer," The Gertrude Stein Awards In Innovative North American Poetry. Sun & Moon Press, 1995.
- From DURA. writing away here: a Korean/American Anthology, October 1994.
- "Into Such Assembly," "Rose of Sharon," The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian-American Women's Anthology. Calyx Books, 1989.
In Journals (selected)
- From Civil Bound, Aufgabe, forthcoming.
- From Civil Bound, Hambone, No.19 (Fall 2009): 143-151.
- From Civil Bound, Interval(le)s, CIPA (Centre Interdisciplinaire de Poétique Appliquée), http://www.cipa.ulg.ac.be/intervalles4/contentsinter4.php (February 2009)
- From Penury, big bridge # 12, www.bigbridge.org (Fall 2006).
- From Penury, boundary 2, (Summer 2006): 37-40.
- Translations from Lee Seong Bok's Ah, Those Without, Mouths, Words Without Borders, www.wordswithoutborders.org (Fall 2005).
- From Penury, xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics, (2003): 21-26.
- From Penury, Conjunctions, (Fall 2001): 433-437.
- “Anacrusis," text of a talk given at “Page Mothers Conference," University of California at
- San Diego, how 2, http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/stadler_ center/how2
- From Spelt, Chain 6, (Summer l999): 88-96.
- From Commons, Five Fingers Review l8, (l999): 91-92.
- From Commons, Conjunctions, (Spring l999): 299-306.
- From Commons, Proliferation 5, (l999): unpaginated.
- From Commons, Chain 5, (Summer l998): l09-ll0.
- "Exordium," Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, (Winter l996): 417- 419.
- From DURA, Sulfur 36, (Spring 1995): 72-80.
- From DURA, Conjunctions 24, (1995): 153-58.
- From DURA, Exact Change Yearbook 1995 (September 1995): 389-91.
- From DURA, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, (Winter 1994): 538-41.
- From DURA, Avec 7 (January 1994): 89-93.
- From The Bounty, Hambone 11, (Spring 1994): 64-68.
- "Primer," Conjunctions, (Fall 1993): 52-60.
- From "Anna O Addendum," Writing from the New Coast: Presentation, o-blek Editions (Fall 1993): 154-156.
- "Field of Inquiry," Writing from the New Coast: Technique, o-blek Editions (Fall l993): 175-77. From The Bounty, Avec 6,(Spring 1993): 133-35.
- From The Bounty, Notus (Fall 1992): 90-93.
- From The Bounty, Black Bread, (Spring 1992): 44-47.
- From The Bounty, lyric &, (Spring 1992): unpaginated.
- "The Site of the Capital," International Examiner, (March 1992): 17.
- "Food, Shelter, Clothing," Zyzzyva (Fall 1991): 111-15.
- "Under Flag", "Demarcation," Sulfur (Fall 1991): 132-37.
- "From A Far: Reading Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's DICTEE," How(ever) vol. 4, no. 4, (l99l).
- "From the Sea on to the Land," How(ever) vol. 3, no. 2 (1990).
- "Body As One As History," f.(lip),Vancouver, Canada (Fall 1989).
- "And Sing We," "These Fishing Two," Ironwood 30, (Fall 1987): 178-80.
- "Father Hat," Ironwood 29 (Spring 1987): 145.
