Welcome back to Lyric Essentials, where we invite authors to share the work of their favorite poets. This month, Ashley Hajimirsadeghi (former Lyric Essentials editor and an all-around Sundress staff contributor!) joins us to discuss the work of Kim Hyesoon and the importance of female poetry, translation, and how everyone needs a break at submitting to marinate in ideas. As always, we hope you enjoy as much as we did.
Ryleigh Wann: When was the first time you read Kim Hyesoon’s work? Why did it stand out to you then?
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi: The first time I read Kim Hyesoon I was a freshman in college. I’d just moved back from South Korea after studying Korean at Ewha Womans University, and to curb the sadness of leaving behind a country I really loved, I was finding all of these ways to stay connected to the culture. I purchased a copy of Kim’s Autobiography of Death on a whim after reading about how she was one of the leading female poets in Korea–and one of the few who gets translated and brought into broader international discussions of literature made by Korean women.
What struck me then–and still strikes me–is how experimental Kim is with her work, and how unapologetically female it is. Autobiography of Death is specifically a reaction to the Sewol tragedy in 2014, but Kim generally uses the grotesque in a way that reminds me of abject theory, of artists like Meret Oppenheim and Cindy Sherman. It’s something I began to realize as an eighteen-year-old and now study today.
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi reads “H is for Hideous” by Kim Hyesoon
RW: How has her writing inspired your own?
AH: I really do believe reading the work of women writers like Kim Hyesoon really helped hone in this instinct to focus on women’s stories. It was by consuming stories like these that I realized as a writer I was more comfortable anchoring pieces in narratives versus abstract concepts–and because of that, I began to lean more into documentary and ethnographic poetics. Reading Kim’s work also reminded me of translation and the power behind who and what gets translated–I wanted more from Korean women writers, and while we’re going through quite a bit of a Korean culture renaissance recently, it made me realize I wanted to read more broadly and translate myself. So I do Bengali poetry translations in my free time with books I sourced from a Bangladeshi bookstore owner in Jackson Heights, Queens. You learn a lot about language, power, and intentionality when you do this kind of work.
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi reads “Mailbox” by Kim Hyesoon
RW: Your chapbook, Cartography of Trauma, has a beautiful cover and title. What does this collection explore and what was your writing process like?
AH: Ironically, a lot of these poems are from high school and beginning of college. When it comes to exploration, I was in the beginning stages of thinking about how trauma is a ripple effect across periods, and I wanted to really hone in on women’s experiences. I have a tendency to blur fiction with reality, while delving into history, but I want to be really intentional and careful with the work I’m doing. Some of it is personal, some of it is research, but with fictional bends. I say I’m an accidental poet; I was a devoted fiction writer who kind of fell into this.
RW: What have you been up to lately (life, work, anything!)? Got any news to share?
AH: Right now I’m in my third semester of graduate school and preparing for my thesis. It’s going to be on colonial Korean women’s literature, so writers like Kim Myeong-sun, and this concept of hybridity as a form of self-expression for those suffering from the double colonization involved with the patriarchy. I’m trying to turn this into a digital humanities project, so maybe I’ll open it up to broader Asian feminist writers like Qiu Jin (if I have the energy).
Besides that, I’ve been taking a cute little break from submitting to marinate in my ideas and writing. I find it so liberating to step away from the submitting grind and just write. I’ve been doing this a lot more lately, and I think it’s helped my practice as a writer.
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Kim Hyesoon is one of the most influential contemporary poets of South Korea. She is the first female poet to receive the prestigious Midang and Kim Su-yong awards, and her collections include I’m OK, I’m Pig! (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), Poor Love Machine (Action Books, 2016), and Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018). Kim lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
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Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is an Iranian American multimedia artist, writer, and journalist currently pursuing an M.A. in Global Humanities at Towson University. Her writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Passages North, The Cortland Review, Salamander, RHINO, Salt Hill, and The Journal, among others. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief at Mud Season Review, a former Brooklyn Poets Fellow, and a contributing writer and film critic at MovieWeb. She can be found at www.ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com // Instagram: @nassarine
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Ryleigh Wann (she/her) hails from Michigan and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned an MFA from UNC Wilmington where she taught poetry and served as the comics editor for Ecotone. Her writing can be found in The McNeese Review, Longleaf Review, The Shore, and elsewhere. You can visit her website at ryleighwann.com
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