Poets at Work

In this special episode of Poets at Work, as a supplement to Foothill Poetry Journal’s 2021 release, we talk to Diana Khoi Nguyen about ghosts, poetic form, prepositions, and writing through loss. The interview is in print in the 2021 issue of Foothill Poetry Journal, which you can read online at cgu.edu/foothill.

For a transcript of this episode, email cgupodcasts at gmail.com and include the episode title.

In this episode of Poets at Work, we talk with Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo, poet and associate professor of Arts Management, and the academic lead for the 2020 cohort here at CGU about language, form, and interdisciplinary work.

For a transcript of this episode, email cgupodcasts at gmail.com and be sure to include the episode title. Our intro and outro music for this episode is Lee Rosevere's "Night Caves", licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/

In this episode of Poets at Work we talk with Rowan Ricardo Phillips about his newest collection, Living Weapon.

For a transcript of this episode, email cgupodcasts at gmail.com and be sure to include the episode title.
Our intro and outro music for this episode is Lee Rosevere's "Night Caves", licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/

In this episode of Poets at Work, guest host CGU student and poet Stacey Park talks with Emily Jungmin Yoon, 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, about the role that poetry can play in remembering history and grappling with the way the past lives in the present.

Our intro and outro music for this episode is Lee Rosevere's "Night Caves", licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/

Stacy Park:
You're listening up to Poets at Work, a podcast featuring conversations with poets and readers. I'm your guest host, Stacy Park. In this episode, we are speaking with 2020 Kate Tufts award finalist. Emily Jungmin Yoon. Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species, winner of the Devil's Kitchen reading award, as well as a 2020 Kate Tufts award finalist. An ordinary misfortunes, winner of the Sunken Garden Chatbook prize. She is the translator of Against Healing, a chatbook of poems by Korean women writers. She has accepted awards and fellowships from the poetry foundation, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Aspen Institute, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor for the Margins, the literary magazine of the Asian Americans writers workshop and a PhD candidate in Korean literature at the University of Chicago. Hi Emily, thank you for being here.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Hi, thanks for having me.

Stacy Park:
Would you mind opening the podcast by reading a poem from your latest collection?

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah, I think I'll read Bell Theory.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Bell theory. When I was laughed up for my clumsy English, I touched my throat. Which said ear, when my ear said year. And year after year, I pronounced the new thing wrong and other throw slack, elevator, library, vibrating bells in their mouths. How to say azalea. How to say, forsythia. Say instead, golden bells. Say I'm in ESL. In French class, a boy whose last name is Kring called me belle. Called me by my Korean name, pronouncing it wrong. Called it loudly. Called attention to my alien.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
I touched the globe moving in my throat, a hemisphere sinking called me across the field line with golden bells. I wanted to run and loved at the same time. By Kring. As in ring of people, where are you going? We're laughing with you. The bell in our throat that rings with laughter is called uvula, from uva. Grape. In theory, special to our species, this grape bell has to do with speech, which separates us from animals. Kring looked at me and said, "Just curious, do you eat dogs?" And I wanted to end my small life. Be reborn a golden retriever of North America. Lie on a field lined with golden bells. Well, today in a country where dogs are more cherished than foreign child.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
An Oregon Senate candidate says no to refugees. Says years ago, Vietnamese refugees ate dogs, harvested other people's pets. Harvest as in harvest grapes. Harvest as in harvest the field of golden rice. As do people from rice countries. As in people-eat-dog worlds. Years ago, 1923 Japan, the phrase [foreign language 00:03:20] is used to set apart Koreans. Say 15 yen, 50 sen. The colonize who use the chaos of the Kanto Earthquake to poison waters set by the cruelty special to our species. The cruelty special to our species. How to say jugo, how to say gojit. How jugo Sounds like die in Korean, how gojit sounds like lie. Lie, lie, library, azalea, library. I'm going to the library. I lied, years ago on a field lined with forsythia.

Stacy Park:
Thank you. I think like off the top, I just have to give you all the praise and thanks for this collection and your work. I read the first, I don't remember how, but I stumbled upon Say Grace, I think on the poetry foundation website. And it was a poem that looked me in my eyes and was reading me. As a first generation, Korean Canadian woman, for me, your collection and your poems just hit me viscerally. And the collection I think is very Korean and it's very centered in womanhood, especially. And I just want to get really hell Korean with you, for a second. And just talk about that

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Thanks for your kind words.

Stacy Park:
Of course.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
And I'm really happy that the poem spoke to you, reached out to you and that you like the book as well, as a whole. So thank you.

Stacy Park:
For sure. There's those types of poems or collections or authors where it really just feels providential to me, for a lack of a better word, not to make it super spiritual or anything like that. But, it does kind of feel like something is striking you from above. And you're like, "Holy shit, this poem is like writing me." It really feels like that.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Really? Thank you.

Stacy Park:
There's like a sense of... Obviously having a shared cultural background, I have a connection to the text in that way. So I want to start out by asking you how being Korean figures into this collection and Korea's colonial history sort of being everywhere, pervading throughout the text. And so how do you reckon with the weight of that history and how do you think the past still lingers?

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah. So this book, I can say really started when I started investigating the history of the so called comfort women, which as you know, is a euphemistic term of the sex slaves of the Japanese empire. And having grown up in Korea until I was almost 11, I already knew about that history and the existence of these women and their stories. And when I was at NYU completing my MFA, I realized that a lot of people actually didn't know about these women and generally about the US involvement in Asian wars, or just outside of the US in general. So my friends of color and I were talking about how can we convey things that are important to us culturally, personally, but in a way that works as [inaudible 00:07:18]. Because our impulse is to inform.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
But sometimes that doesn't work in the poetic genre. Just through those conversations, I decided that I want to try doing my part as a poet in not only helping increase the level of awareness about these women's histories, but also think about how to add emotional information for people who are already aware of this history. Yeah. So I started writing a lot of the poems about them, the women, and then it kind of grew there. And I do think that the women's stories and of course, the [inaudible 00:08:09] Japanese wars and all of that, it's in the past.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
A lot of people say, "Why are Korean is still not over this history, over colonization." But I think that something that happened in the past is still an unresolved issue that we're living in the present. And it is our job as people who came after to amplify these stories and continue the conversations. So, yeah. And there aren't that many former comfort women alive right now, but they are alive and they're still looking for affirmation. So I don't like to think that these are things that we should just leave behind, but they're still ongoing. That could live these stories with them.

Stacy Park:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think the quote on the back of this latest issue of poetry magazine, I forget which poet it was, but it said something like that, like poetry assumes that the past is never over or something like that. And I thought that was really apt, thinking about coming into this interview with you specifically and how your collection is reckoning with history. That false assumption that the past is somehow over or the idea of getting over something is like, do we ever really get over things, just in general? Yeah.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah. And I do think about what can we do as poets for history that we hear about. And in a way, I was really struck by what [inaudible 00:09:48] said in a reading, we were reading together and she was talking about her book scene. And she just said, "This book is a problematic book," about her own book, because it's not actually going to... The lives of these women are not going to significantly change. And I thought it was really kind of cool to acknowledge that.

Stacy Park:
Yeah, totally.

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
To not overburden yourself with this soul person or the sole voice. And I really don't want this book to be the sole voice or kind of the only book that people read about this history. I want people to kind of maybe use this as a stepping stone to learn more. And I do to think about what can I do with this book to help the women in a more concrete and real way. Yeah. And I try to use whatever cultural, financial means I have to, to help them by maybe doing a little fundraiser or donating to them using some of my stipends from readings and all of that. So yeah. It does make me think about, what more can I do? In the beginning I say, "What can I do as a poet, but, so what comes after?"

Stacy Park:
Yeah. I think that, and you mentioned this, the generation of comfort women, there's not a lot of them left. And a part of, I think, what a lot of Korean feminists and people in Korea have been vocal about, is commemorating and remembering this part of our history and the financial reparations is a part of that, but also in the collective memory of the current generation and the present generation. So how do you think poetry serves as a way to remember, or to commemorate?

Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Just talking about my poems and specifically what I wanted to do with these poems. I did have a Western audience in mind when I was writing this book. I was coming from a context of being an MFA student in the United States. And l

In this episode of Poets Genevieve Kaplan discusses her new collection Aviary, poetic tropes, and writing in public spaces.

For a transcript of this episode, email cgupodcasts at gmail.com and be sure to include the episode title. Our intro and outro music for this episode is Lee Rosevere's "Night Caves", licensed...

In this episode of Poets at Work we talk with poet and Pomona College professor Prageeta Sharma, who also reads selections from her work.

For a transcript of this episode, email cgupodcasts at gmail.com and be sure to include the episode title. Our intro and outro music for this episode is Lee Rosevere's "Night...

In this episode of Poets at Work, we talk with poet, professor, and visual artist Dawn Lundy Martin.

For a transcript of this episode, email cgupodcasts at gmail.com and be sure to include the episode title.
Our intro and outro music for this episode is Lee Rosevere's "Night Caves", licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/

In this episode of Poets at Work we talk with poet, Foothill editor, and CGU student Stacey Park and poets Jose Hernandez Diaz and Inez Tan abut multiculturalism and international voices in contemporary poetics.

For a transcript of this episode, email cgupodcasts at gmail.com and be sure to include the episode title.
Our intro and outro music for this episode is Lee Rosevere's "Night Caves", licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/

In this episode of Poets at Work we talk with poet and curator Elena Karina Byrne about Los Angeles, Art, and contemporary poetry.

For a transcript of this episode, email cgupodcasts at gmail.com and be sure to include the episode title.

Our intro and outro music for this episode is Lee Rosevere's "Night Caves", licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/

This transcript was exported on Sep 14, 2021.

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Genevieve Kapla...: Hi, I'm Genevieve Kaplan and this is Poets at Work, a podcast featuring
conversations with poets and readers.
Today we'll be talking with Elena Karina Byrne. Elena Karina Byrne is the author
of three books of poetry, most recently Squander, out from Omnidawn. Her
fourth book, Phantom Limbs, is forthcoming from Omnidawn in 2021. In
addition, her chat book, No, Don't, will be released from What Books Press in
2020.
Former 12-year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America, Elena is a
freelance professor, editor, the poetry consultant and moderator for the Los
Angeles Times Festival of Books, and literary program's director for the Ruskin
Arts Club. In 2018, she completed her three years as one of the final judges for
the Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards.
Her publications include the Pushcart Prize, Best American Poetry, Poetry, The
Paris Review, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, the Kenyon Review, and so
many more. Her poems are forthcoming from Volt, Denver Quarterly,
Massachusetts Review, Spillway, Terrapin Books, a Compendium of Kisses and
others. She's also completed a book of essays called Voyeur Hour; Meditations
on Poetry, Art and Desire.
Welcome, Elena and thank you so much for joining us.
Elena Karina By...: Thank you, Genevieve, this is a delight.
Genevieve Kapla...: So I've asked our guest to start off by sharing a poem that she loves, a poem
that invited her into poetry in some way. So Elena, will you tell us a little bit
about the poem that you brought with you?
Elena Karina By...: Yeah. I think probably to no surprise, I brought a Sylvia Plath poem. Like so
many students, I feel in love with Sylvia Plath in high school. Although my
mother introduced me to Keats and so many others when I was young. But, I fell
in love with the Sylvia Plath, not the typical, popularized Plath of aerial. It was
her earlier poems, like this one and like Blue Moles where the use of
personification first came alive for me. And a fresh kind of revelation, that selfrevelation
through close study of something outside ones self, especially her use
of nature which was not too pretty. She made this exciting and accessible to me.
Results of that notion, I think, I think it was Heidegar that said, "Angst is leading
to authenticity that I recognized in her work. And I saw as something that I
wanted. I wrote my senior thesis about how Plath wasn't just writing from a
place of depression, rather, I believed she had just discovered her own language
tools of empowerment as well.
As you probably know, she was a meticulous artisan and she looked up most of
her words to ensure she always had the best word possible. Masterful, she was
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a master of oral persuasion and of surprise endings, knockout, endings, but you
can bet they came as no surprise to her. I think anger was her hives engine, a
driving force, the inanimate and natural world was the perfect vehicle platform
for let's say what then might have been considered her unsavory, emotional and
intellectual unleashing of dissatisfaction or merely know what we know as a
canvas for her perceptual genius.
And this certainly rises above a kind of ours poetica. Also, I believe we fall in
love with different authors at different times in our writing, in our reading lives
for various reasons of need and desire. But, obviously, I keep going back to her
and I keep going back to other poets like Theodore Roethke, and Hart Crane for
the same reasons. And I love her music.
Genevieve Kapla...: Yeah. Plath is definitely somebody worth returning to right
Elena Karina By...: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. And you know, it's like any great art. You keep
finding new things and you keep relearning from it.
Genevieve Kapla...: yeah. Will you share the poem with us?
Elena Karina By...: Sure. It's called Black Rook in Rainy Weather.
On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook, arranging and rearranging
its feathers in the rain. I do not expect a miracle or an accident to set the site on
fire in my eye, not seek any in the desultory weather some design, but let
spotted leaves fall as they fall without ceremony or portent.
Although, I admit, I desire, occasionally, some backtalk from the mute sky, I
can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still leap incandescent out of
the kitchen table or chair as if a celestial burning took possession of the most
obtuse objects now, and then, thus hallowing an interval otherwise
inconsequent.
By bestowing largesse, honor, One might say love. At any rate, I now walk wary
(for it could happen even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical, yet politic;
ignorant.
Of whatever angel may choose to flare Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a
rook ordering its black feathers can so shine as to seize my senses, haul my
eyelids up, and grant a brief respite from fear of total neutrality.
With luck, trekking stubborn through this season of fatigue, I shall patch
together a content of sorts. Miracles occur, if you care to call those spasmodic
tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again, the long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.
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Genevieve Kapla...: Beautiful. I mean, that's an amazing poem and I think your introduction of it too
really helped me to be able to listen to it. I mean, thinking about Plath doing the
things that you brought up like, I don't know, empowering herself through
language and really thinking carefully about the form of the poem and the line
of the poem, are things that I admit are not the first thing in my mind when
someone says Plath to me.
Elena Karina By...: Right.
Genevieve Kapla...: And so it was really nice to have those in my head while I was listening also and I
could make different sorts of observations about that poem while I was listening
to it.
Elena Karina By...: Yeah. I think when things are popularized, we overhear sometimes maybe the
wrong parts, but I think what... I mean, I think for me too, what I'm realizing
more and more and as an artist, we're going to learn things from ourselves is we
go along our entire lives, but I'm realizing that we learned from our own process
either deliberately or accidentally, and I'm certain that she realized what was
empowering her and what she was doing well.
Genevieve Kapla...: Yeah. Yeah. And I think listening to that now, we're like, "Yes, she's doing so
many things well," and we need to think about this a little bit more.
Elena Karina By...: Yeah, yeah.
Genevieve Kapla...: Great. Thank you so much for starting that way with us today. I think it's so
good. I wanted to transition a way to think a little bit also about your daily life as
a poet, which is, I don't know what people think of when, think of what a poet
does all day. One of the things that I really love about you is that in addition to
your work, as a poet and a poetic thinker and somebody who's super smart and
reads all these things and looks at art all the time, is also the way that you
continually contribute to and participate in the poetry community that we have
year in Los Angeles and in Southern California in general.
So I know when I read your bio, it mentioned that you are the former Regional
Director of the Poetry Society of America. Also, that you're the poetry
consultant and moderator for the Festival of Books and then the literary
programs director for the Ruskin Arts Club. So I'm interested if you could tell us
a little bit about how you began getting involved in poetry in this way. I know
it's kind of a big question, but what drew you to those maybe more community
oriented aspects of poetry or what do you enjoy about those roles that you
have?
Elena Karina By...: Well, it's not a big question. I mean, it's only a big question because I worn so
many hats in the community. And, when I look at my own bio, I go, "oh my gosh,
how did I get into this?" It's sort of like the mafia thing. They keep pull me in. No
it's. And I only say that because my former first beloved professor Thomas Lux
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was around when I was first offered the gig as he called it as regional director
for the Poetry Society of America and that happened almost accidentally. In the
sense that I was a mother of, and I