Sundress Reads: Review of My Dear Yeast

In My Dear Yeast (Milk & Cake Press, 2024), Melanie Hyo-In Han masterfully guides readers far and wide, entering diverse terrains of both landscape and interiority. Han employs a variety of forms to her advantage as well, demonstrating a knowledge of poetics and a courage to approach reality from unexpected, and sometimes challenging, angles. With memory as her painter’s palette and words as her paintbrush, Han shares remarkable and moving truths throughout her debut full length collection.

Home is a central theme throughout My Dear Yeast, grounding Han’s speaker during difficult times. As a Third Culture Kid (TCK), Han can self-identify through multiple geographies. “Waiting for Water in Morogoro,” for example, exhibits incredible detail on daily life in Tanzania. Han invites readers to smell the spices of a mother’s sukuma wiki and feel her speaker’s “red-dirt heels / that have cracked / like the ground” (Han 3). Such sensory descriptions demonstrate how significant a role the body plays with memory and creating an idea of home, whether that home is remembered in a positive, negative, or more nuanced light.

Later in the collection, Han brings readers to Seoul. The poem “Stacked Memories” starts off right away with images of

“Hustle and bustle of lunchtime at Gwangjang Market. Fried chicken feet splayed out,

curled at the ends, rows of hanging chilis in different shades of summer sunset, dried

whole squids piled flat on top of one another, every tentacle preserved and intact.” (Han 23)

The specificity here is both honest and stunning. Han’s attentiveness and precision across diverse landscapes is unique in the contemporary literary landscape, where so many writers feel pressure to hone in on one singular theme, identity-marker, or experience in order to find depth. Han, on the other hand, achieves both quality and quantity with care and skill.

Some of the maps Han uses to interrogate and explore are linguistic in nature. “Abecedarian in 한글 (Hangul)” puts a clever spin on a form popular in the English language. Instead of each line starting with the letters of the English alphabet in order, Han uses the fourteen consonants of the Korean alphabet. Even more inventive, and since the majority of the poem is in English, individual words are written using both alphabets together. For example, lines start with “ㄴineteen-nineteen” and “ㅅurvival” (Han 36). The hybridity of language employed throughout My Dear Yeast is delightful to explore; they additionally speak to Han’s successes as a translator. Whether readers know Han’s languages or not, the poems ring authentic and powerful.

And yet, home is always a question; at times, what constitutes home for Han is up for interpretation. Other times, when it’s in her grasp, it can later devolve or vanish. “Holding On,” at the heart of the collection, uses a consistent and neat form to allow the speaker access to traumatic memories. Each stanza, placed at a distance from one other, starts very plainly: “in the house at” followed by latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates (Han 20-21). The curious reader like me will pause to look up where these homes are located, to see how they too are scattered across the globe. Because of the emotional intensity of “Holding On,” Han uses an entirely lowercase lettering. She shares what she didn’t know, what she never realized, and what she had to do to survive. The quieter, more intimate tone demonstrates the trust Han is putting in the readers hands, as if she were revealing secrets to an old friend.

The collection ends with “Tell me 사랑해,” a poem that directly acknowledges the speaker’s desire. She craves connection, and despite having lived all over the world, she’s found it, often. But family, even when close, can feel far away. Almost entirely in the voice of the speaker’s grandmother, italicized lines signal all the ways a matriarch expresses love without saying so explicitly:

“Have you eaten? I’ll make you 순두부 next time you come home.

Make sure you pay your 집세 on time.

You should read this article about happiness. You’ve been looking 우울해 lately.

Do you have enough warm clothes? Why do you never wear enough layers?” (Han 42).

The list goes on, and the poem lands with the speaker replying back, or perhaps more accurately, confessing her desire to the reader:

“It was her way of letting me know

that she cared, but all I

ever wanted was to hear “사랑해.” (Han 42)

This final admittance is an act of vulnerability and bravery earned through the pages of My Dear Yeast that precede it. Through poetic excellence and the excavation of her own memories, she speaks plainly here. The last line is the culmination of all Han’s experiences, emotions, and homes. Hearing “사랑해” (I love you), Han asserts, is home.

My Dear Yeast is available at Milk Cake Press

Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Honey in My Hair and the Sundress Publications Reads Editor. She earned a Writers’ Room of Boston Poetry Fellowship, Breakwater Review’s 2022 Peseroff Prize, and Second Place in The Room Magazine’s 2023 Poetry Contest. Her writing has found homes in Gasher, Thrush, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Emerson College, where she now teaches writing and literature. She is a cancer survivor.

Sundress Reads: Review of Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy

Jennifer Funk’s poetry collection, Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy (Bull City Press, 2023) is a hypnotic journey through daydreams with undertones that reflect the fear and courage it takes to hope for more. From the glorious to the spiteful, the wistful to the contemplative, each poem is a compelling fantasy and a sincere exploration of wishes that linger in the recesses of our mind. Funk invites readers to dream along, to consider their wildest fantasies alongside their sincerest wishes as she touches on themes of self-love, self-doubt, and the complex emotions associated with yearning for something while grappling with the reluctance to admit those desires, nor truly wanting to see them through. 

Funk’s tone throughout the collection is strikingly authentic. There is originality to the words she writes, yet they are still somehow familiar as she captures the wondrous nature of fantasy. In “Lady Brett Ashley,” Funk writes, “It seems impossible / for a woman to live without / a little fiction” (34), which seems to be the perfect explanation for the impossible familiarity a reader feels towards the fantasies of others. 

Funk begins with “Make Me Familiar,” its story transporting readers to the hues of August. This establishes the general hazy, wistful aesthetic that resonates with the thoughts that come when staring out a window on a warm day. Funk writes, “I can find myself, creature of terminal haste, creature / ever mid-stride, reconsidering the world in the middle of the road” (4). Her style weaves together reflection and reverie as her speaker embarks on fantasy. 

“Origin Story: 1” establishes the necessity of daydreams—their roots and desires that elude reality. Funk writes, “I am from the hot feelings / my mother suggested might ruin me the way / they ruined her, so I kept a meticulous record / of the fires I started” (Funk 12). This disclosure is central to the collection’s embrace of reverie, and the symbol of fire returns in the end of the collection with new meaning– a symbol of destruction turned into one of rebirth.

The range of fantasies displayed throughout this collection is outstanding. In “I Run Down All Roads,” Funk writes a testament to the fragility of romantic hopes. She captures the illusions that lead nowhere, the bitterness of unmet expectation:

“I go into every maybe this time already ahead

of the story, which is real, or not real, is real as the fog now

 blurring the view ahead…

I run down the future, I am so so fast,

I chase down would you want to, I pant, I pant, I cannot be caught, I am not

being chased, it will never be as good as this. Silence. Eating alone.” (Funk 19)

Funk encapsualtes the dichotomy of yearning for an idealized love and the reality that follows. The acknowledgement that “it will never be as good as this” highlights the way reality cannot satiate a preference for what is fantastical. “Silence. Eating alone” paints a poignant picture of the solitude in the aftermath of unfulfilled wishes. Funk gives way to quiet, solitary reality. 

The slightly sinister quality in these intense imaginations lies in the recognition of the darker side of daydreams. Funk’s awareness makes for a complex and multi-dimensional narrative. She doesn’t shy away from the matter of self-deception and emotional tolls.

Funk begins to close the circle of fantasy with “Consent,” navigating the societal expectations that often shroud our imagination. She writes,

“But I could be

caught, I could be lightning

Directed, flash inanimate. Out beyond

These walls…

I want to say

I never assented to any role I was not fully certain I could sell

but I, too, am susceptible to the suspicion I should be 

dumb and grateful, like a cow or a potted plant.” (Funk 15)

The candid admission to the conflict between autonomy and conformity is a strong reflection on the external pressures that rouse one from a daydream, the consideration that it is selfish to wish for more, but impossible not to. 

In “Who Can Say,” Funk writes, “This tight circle of my life. I have been intent to wish for less,/ and what has this restraint cost, what has been left uncalled for” (40). She still asks the reader if the cost of hoping in vain is greater than the cost of hoping for less altogether. 

Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy is a fantastic collection that captures the essence of wanting and waiting. Funk’s ability to articulate the little things we all have dreamt about makes this collection a must-read for anyone looking to understand the landscape of their desires. 

Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy is available from Bull City Press

Caitlin Mulqueen is a senior at the University of Tennessee majoring in English and Journalism. She loves reading, playing piano, watching sports, and the Oxford comma. She has worked as an Editorial Graphics Production intern at ESPN, is a copy editor at The Daily Beacon, a student writer for Tennessee Athletics, a graphics and video operator for the SEC Network, and a marketing/social media intern for the Knoxville Ice Bears. With the majority of her undergraduate work being in sports media, literary media has remained her sincerest passion, finding stories that come out of sports to be as moving as those from literature.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents March Poetry Xfit

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Emory Dinsmore. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, March 17th from 2 to 4PM EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”. 

Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!

Emory Night is a queer author from East Tennessee. They are currently a Senior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and are working on getting their bachelor’s in creative writing. They have worked as an intern for both Sundress Publications and SAFTA. They have been published in The Phoenix, a literary magazine at the University of Tennessee. During their free time, you’ll find them hanging out with their cats, playing Dungeons and Dragons, or playing video games.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and the Tennessee Arts Commission. 

While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here: https://sundress-publications.square.site/product/donate-to-sundress/107?cs=true

Each month we split donations with our community partner. Our community partner for March is Mountain Brigade Access. Mountain Access Brigade is a volunteer-run organization that provides secure and stigma-free support, education, and advocacy for individuals seeking abortion care in Tennessee. Currently, Mountain Access Brigade is fundraising for abortion access in Tennessee. To support their campaign, visit here!

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents “Strange Ways the World Might Be”

Knoxville, TN— The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Strange Ways the World Might Be,” a workshop led by Becca Hannigan on March 13th, 2024, from 6:00-7:30PM ET. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).

You’ve likely heard of magical realism, but what about realism that’s simply strange? In this workshop, we will consider how fiction and nonfiction can—quite simply—“describe strange ways the world might be,” as one critic defines fiction by Samanta Schweblin. One way to do this—which we will practice—is to strip objects and social norms from their context, to examine and experience them phenomenally. 

Together, will question assumptions and unpack cultural baggage, using “widowed images” and surprising narratives. Along with Schweblin, we will draw inspiration from such writers as Franz Kafka, Lesley Nnekah Arimah, and Martha Gelhorn, looking at the history of absurdism (with nihilistic roots) and the contemporary absurd, which (I argue) is the opposite of nihilistic. The class will be generative, with ample writing prompts, discussion, and time to share. Together, we will blur genres, producing and admiring prose that you might call surrealism, absurdism, or just plain weird. 

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Becca Hannigan via Venmo @beccahannigan.

person wearing black shirt, smiling in front of collage wall

Becca Hannigan is a fiction writer based in Denver, Colorado. They earned a BA in environmental science at Sewanee, the University of the South. In May 2023, they graduated with an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where they taught undergraduate students and worked as fiction editor for Ecotone. Along with teaching, she has led workshops in various settings, as an intern for the Brink Literacy Project and staff at the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference. Her work has been published in Story Quarterly, the Rumpus, 303 Magazine, Juked, and elsewhere.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and the Tennessee Arts Commission.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants by Renee Emerson

This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plans by Renee Emerson (Belle Point Press 2023).

Warm Winter, Arkansas

“Torn” at the root of them, like your life
last year. We play the radio, we gather
in the tub, a six-pack of Coke under the sink.

Always, one of us would be
truly nervous. No one born here
is afraid. We all have stories,
children fished out of shattered
remnants of houses, clothes
spotless, white gold
hair unmussed, shining like a lost
coin in the dirt.

The best stories happen to other people.
The local news reported a man crushed
in his own house, a truck through the roof,
risen by the simple air, that we take
in our lungs, without thinking or waking.

The steel, tire, heft. What would never lift
in any other weather.

Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2022). She is also the author of the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike (Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.


Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants by Renee Emerson

This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plans by Renee Emerson (Belle Point Press 2023).

Backyard Sabbath

The door to the porch hangs open
in this weather, inviting our children
and resident carpenter bees to drift
lazily in and out. A trail of cut crabgrass

chicken-scratched across the floor
from bare feet running to the sink—
because they need water for their own
complicated structures. Today,

digging for worms, pulled writhing
from the dirt. They chase each other
with them, threaten to add a slimy tress
to sister’s hair, toothless Medusa.

At last, we have all been told to stay home.
Everyone begins to trust
garden dirt on their hands, to fear
another’s touch, another’s breath.

I can tell you, they trust too much.
In our house in Arkansas, Black Widow
spiders webbed the corners of each window
and door frame, every exit wreathed

with poison. The coyotes, laughing
like children, ate our housecats
when they slipped out the door. It’s easy
to believe people are the hazards,

that God’s good earth can only give
us safe things. Indifferent, the soil
flakes on the hands of the playing child,
flakes on the hands of the dead.

Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2022). She is also the author of the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike (Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.


Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants by Renee Emerson

This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plans by Renee Emerson (Belle Point Press 2023).

Ode to the Daffodil

You confront me, rising arrogantly
at the first of March alongside every path
and in and out of gardens. Tufts of green
threatening flower, I have nothing new
to tell you. Never once did I set a bulb
going, pocketed in the earth. I have waited
an entire winter to only know more winter.
Yellow lanterns, clusters of bright faces,
fist-clenched constellations, I’ll see you
dusted with snow I’m sure next Thursday.
I’ll see you bow your heads in despair
as I’ve bowed mine to pray for life
to spring up once more from the lonely dirt.

Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2022). She is also the author of the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike (Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.


Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants by Renee Emerson

This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plans by Renee Emerson (Belle Point Press 2023).

Fern at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital

I didn’t know it was live
until a child began picking
leaves from the fronds,
letting them drop to the floor
like those long hospital minutes.

No one stopped her, bent as we were
to our tight economy of form paperwork,
hoping if we fill it right, insurance will
come through this time.

I’d been so often I could recite
the questions asked in neat typed rows.
The TV, above us like the eye of God,
kept up its own bright conversation.

The fern, just at child height,
was finally picked bare, a frond
spindling out—as if to mark
for us all the writing on the wall.

Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2022). She is also the author of the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike (Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.


Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.

Sundress Reads: Review of Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility

The Sundress Reads logo depicts a cartoon sheep sitting on a stool holding a mug and a book.
The cover of Anna Laura Reeve's poetry collection Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility depicts a translucent farmhouse set in a field.

In Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility (Belle Point Press, 2023), Anna Laura Reeve draws readers into a stark landscape of myth-making, at times unflinchingly intimate while at others sweeping and vast. Through her visceral and frank accounting of motherhood and the orbiting discussions of fertility, identity, and mother-children relationships in the modern chaos of our world, Reeve forges a new mythology for mothers that defies all expectations; she acknowledges the rippling, tender underbelly of motherhood, its fears and wonders, its failings and surrenders. A vivid background of the natural world is woven within the poetry collection, providing another plait in this intricate braid of rich imagery and a stark eco-poetics that converses with our changing landscapes. At its heart, this collection feels like a battle cry for women, for mothers, and for holding onto all the wonderful, terrible threads of identity in the midst of perfect obliteration.

The collection opens with “Ars Poetica,” a poem almost confessional in nature, in which Reeve describes waking early in the morning to write before “It must be time / to wake my daughter, make the lunches” (xi). And thus, the split between artist and mother, something Reeve grapples with throughout the collection, begins. Reeve’s poem “Entrapment” speaks poignantly to this again, describing a distaste for the domestic in poetry:

“Reading poetry as a teenager, phrases 

like “my daughter,” “my son,” or “as I fold laundry”

extinguished interest like the smell of shit. The firm thud

of a diaper tossed in the trash

seemed to echo.

“Domestic tranquility” suffocated, like oil

On seawater.” (Reeve 61)

But Reeve challenges such discounting or disavowment of the domestic in her work by weaving her own myths and candor around it, wilding and bearing witness to the vacillating bleakness and brashness of motherhood. 

The first part of her collection opens with “The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale” a contained accounting of the earliest days of motherhood. The poem depicts the immediate aftermath of giving birth with a haunting stillness, power in the silence, and the smallest of details. Instead of a time of unfettered and easy joy, as modern media would often like to portray giving birth, Reeve provides and unflinching account of the pain and fear so often experienced by new mothers, describing how a body that has just given birth is treated “like when you empty your bag into the trash / scooping, shaking” (3) with another line following starkly: “my own body sewn back together with steel / or plastic, still bleeding” (6). Indeed, the domestic world that Reeve illuminates is at times wild in its waves of changing emotions—cresting in moments of despair and frustration and ebbing back in moments of wordless relief. 

As the collection progresses, the contained world of mother and child expands to encompass the Southern Appalachian landscape, with the second section of the collection providing extensive and rich observation of the changing seasons passing over flora and fauna, and the mountains so often returned to in Reeve’s poems. The cyclical changing of the seasons and the vegetation, death and rebirth, parallel Reeve’s exploration of fertility and miscarriage, and the raw hope and devastation that accompanies these cycles. The poem “Trying” spins into an extended metaphor in which reproduction becomes the tending of crops, and a woman’s pelvis becomes the field, another kind of domestic care, laced with a stinging desperation:

“When the farm’s bright February seedlings

Faded pink and purple in the greenhouse, starved

By nutrient-poor potting media, we started over.” (Reeve 28)

Indeed, in this section, the landscape and the body become deeply intertwined, with the conclusion of this section. “For Southern Appalachia” in which Reeve writes, “Blood thickens on the uterine walls for two weeks, then / sheds. The ouroboros belongs to me, and the crow, / cicada, and scoliid wasp” (43). Such lines evoke a melancholy acceptance and even gratitude for the cycle of life and death.

Situated within the realm of the domestic, Reeve defies conceptions of motherhood and its singular identity in a string of poems within the last section of the collection. The “Mad Mother” makes several appearances in the titles of pieces, all of which speak to a similar theme of resistance against the surrendering of all other identities at the feet of motherhood. “The Mad Mother Discovers a Third Way” and “The Mad Mother Joins the Resistance” speak to societal expectations placed upon mothers: “Good mothers take care of everyone else” (Reeve 68). Reeve deals a snarling and triumphant rebuke against these ideals with the repeated words “Defy it” (68), providing a quasi-mantra to mothers with “your work is the real work. The real work is defiance” (69). What Reeve calls for is a return to the self, exultant and sacred, in the face of societal expectations placed upon the good wife, the good mother. 

In “The Mad Mother Envies a Widow” she avows that “the artist who is a mother splits herself in two” (Reeve 81). Here Reeve calls for a restitching, a returning to the self, something that she seems to be moving toward throughout the collection. Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility is a challenge to that split, an accounting of that split in order to make it whole in a new wild and beautiful way.

Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility is available at Belle Point Press

Addie Dodge is a student at Colorado College pursuing a B.A. in psychology with a minor in English. She is a writer currently working as an editor for her college’s literary magazine, Cipher, and is also a clinical intern at a domestic violence shelter in Colorado. She enjoys reading and hiking in the mountains in her free time. 

Lyric Essentials: Ashley Hajimirsadeghi Reads Kim Hyesoon

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.

Read more from this interview on our Patreon

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.

Purchase Phantom Pain Wings

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

Purchase Cartography of Trauma

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