SONG TO NEHALENNIA (NETHERLANDS, AD 200) LOOKING FOR NERTHUS (AD 100)for Jenny SONG TO SEQUANA (BURGUNDY, 100 BC) SONG TO SULIS (BATH, 100 BC) |
 Tim Miller’s most recent book is the long narrative poem, To the House of the Sun (S4N Books). His novel Bearing the Names of Many is forthcoming from Pelekinesis, and he also write about poetry, history and religion at http://www.wordandsilence.com. |
Saint Teresa’s Heart the walls of its chambers reverberate still. none can unravel. A mystic with inquisitorial immaculate and shining in fields of barley O my sisters this I left, leaving only entrails pencils in its margins: morning has come Saint Christina’s Gut Hunched on the top branch I, my own cartographer Out at the end of a birch twig No holy anorexic I gorge High among incensed rafters Saint Christina’s Gut published Abridged 0-37 (July 2014), p. 44. Saint Joan’s Mirror Whispering we know She will put the Dauphin Mary Magdalene’s Foot A wanderer then And washing others Some stormy season Mary Magdalene’s Foot published A New Ulster 39 (Dec 2015), pp. 15/6. Julian’s Eyes She did not drink dark cups from the sores the arc her spine, sculpt her sigh or tease out The remaining years in an anchorite’s cell she wrote: do not accuse yourself of sin but your own. The father no entity only place Julian’s Eyes published The Galway Review (January 29 2016). Mechthild’s Tongue Though they think still will I speak with you tasted mint drank wine and wild honey divining blue, the fish always outside their book who withholding holy office beside the spring Mechtild’s Tongue published The Galway Review (January 29 2016). Our Lady of Częstochowa Not ones for faffing around Her right hand pointing at her son. |
 Clare McCotter’s haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in many parts of the world. She won the IHS Dóchas Ireland Haiku Award 2010 and 2011. In 2013 she won The British Tanka Award. She also judged the British Haiku Award 2011 and 2012. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on Belfast born Beatrice Grimshaw’s travel writing and fiction. Her poetry has appeared in Abridged, Boyne Berries, The Cannon’s Mouth, Crannóg, Cyphers, Decanto, Envoi, The Galway Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Iota, Irish Feminist Review, The Leaf Book Anthology 2008, The Linnet’s Wings, The Moth Magazine, A New Ulster, Panning For Poems, The Poetry Bus (forthcoming), Poetry24, Reflexion, Revival, The SHOp, The Stinging Fly, and The Stony Thursday Book. Black Horse Running, her first collection of haiku, tanka and haibun, was published in 2012. Home is Kilrea, County Derry. |
The Devil, Oblique Angles and Polka DotsFor Grandmother |
Your host shimmers
beyond the margin of this page
as my fingers tap-tap you from the dead.
It takes you a while to snap into focus.
You remind me
of a day when I was eight,
or ten, at most,
the day I got lost in the woods.
How I blubbered and wailed for you!
When you finally found me—
a snot and hiccup spewing fountain
– not pretty.
“What took you so long?”
It was strange how you appeared, seemingly out of nowhere;
haloed in spring beyond the green fog of young birches,
your sudden presence, not reassuring – not at first –
“why did you leave me?” I cried
all the while, you, unruffled, reproached me: “Shame on you. A big girl crying
like a baby. And for no reason at all. Don’t you know that God
is watching over you, Detushka?’
Aha! This is where I should invoke the DEVIL.
Yet, there is no need,
for he’s here, already, lurking.
in the detail, wearing
your best navy polka dot dress – what else –
the one you were buried in.
The one you had kept shrouded, when alive,
in a film of translucent tissue.
How well I recall the day:
me, six years old and agog
for the morbid. For hadn’t you whispered to me:
“I’ll tell you a secret – something you should know
for when I’m dead.”
Of course I was disappointed! A DRESS? IS THAT ALL? Polka dots!
What the devil! I should have / could have exclaimed, but sure,
at that age I didn’t know any better.
But no, it is you, not the devil I see hovering just there,
where my eye does not dare
appearing to me as you did that day in the woods:
light streaming over your left shoulder, oblique, aimless—
the light, of course,
not the shoulder, for the shoulder, even lopsided,
knew where it was heading.
Heaven was always your destination,
as I knew only too well.
And I knew, equally well, there was no place for me
astride a puffy cloud my nose buried in your soft breast
gleaning comfort from your old woman smell.
No.
My place was in the woods. Kneeling on a bed
of prickly pine needles.
Of course I hated that icon of yours;
that dead-eyed, flat-faced Madonna
and her miniature child simpering at me in his nakedness
when all I wanted to do was sleep
while you, awake at the crack of dawn, genuflecting
to them,
praying all the while:
I hasten to Thee,
O Master, Lover of mankind, and by Thy loving-kindness I strive
to do Thy work
… and oh, how you worked!
digging the permafrost. Building His canal,
the one that went nowhere.
GLORY, GLORY THE REVOLUTION!
and I pray to Thee: Help me, O God, at all times
Did he ever!
But, perhaps He did, at that.
What is it they say about God and burdens? He did help,
after a fashion:
by the time I was born, your once dainty feet,
He had magic-ed to the size of a man’s,
and your delicate hands to that of shovels.
and deliver me, O God, from every worldly evil thing
and every impulse of the Devil OHO, HERE WE COME
TO THE CRUX OF IT:
WE CAN NEVER ESCAPE THE DEVIL.
Yes, I fed him tasty morsels to do my bidding – unknowingly –
I believe.
I made him promises,
offered him rewards,
without knowing I was doing any such thing. Like the time I cut
my Barbie’s hair for him
(he liked her shorn of course, her eyes, hence, more visibly dead).
You see; the Devil was honest that way. And a good teacher too:
no more worship for me at the altar of Barbie! That’s why
when your icon fell off its perch
I knew IT WAS HIS DOING!
So what if it was my rubber ball that hit the shelf where the icon rested,
Madonna and Child no longer serene above the ever-burning flame?
Sure,
even the Devil needs a helping hand.
| The Devil, Oblique Angles and Polka Dots is © Sue Cosgrave |
 Sue Cosgrave was born in Russia and spent her formative years in the United States, in Iraq and in Finland. After travelling extensively in Asia and the Americas, she worked in various parts of Africa before settling in Ireland. Her work, drawing on many cultural traditions, appeared in the Cork Literary Review, The Five Word Anthology, Can Can, Abridged, The Bone Orchard and The Irish Examiner among others. She featured as a guest reader at various events both in Ireland and the UK. Sue has a Masters in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is currently working on a trilogy set in Iraq as well as a poetry and a short story collection. In 2016 she was finalist for the Wisehouse International Poetry Award |
Alice and her StilettoesWe always walked faster Her elfin face powdered, Once John got three pairs Dressing UpI crept the three steps to I stumbled over slippers Sparkles and hallmarks You called me for lunch, You promised a tomorrow slice Dressing Up was first published in The Honest Ulsterman (October 2015) This TimeHe came back this time with hens, IntrusionTwo days after your burial, The striped suitcase stood waiting in turn, I clicked that clasp, tried to grasp at memories. Unopened post bound with elastic bands, Your late presentShe came head first as I opened Squeezing her out into our existence At the BaptismAt the font, the blessed water trickled down. A sudden shower drowned out the ceremony, Sunbeams shone on your suit Dressing Up was first published in The Honest Ulsterman (October 2015) and in Quail Bell edited by Christine Stoddard (September 2016) |
 Lorraine Carey from Donegal, now lives in Co.Kerry. Her work has been published / is forthcoming in the following journals; The Honest Ulsterman, A New Ulster, Proletarian, Stanzas Limerick, Quail Bell, The Galway Review, Vine Leaves, Poetry Breakfast, Olentangy Review and Live Encounters. Her first collection of poetry will be published this summer. |
for John & Fedelma Tierney
I have one marble only, glass-curled greens and blue.
It’s kept inside a golden globe with turquoise studs,
I swing it from a chain: my dowsing stone, my truth-seer.
Once it knocked against an ancient head, cracked it so its walnut core
Leaked sepia images of a being lived inside another time, another age,
Before the image replaced the real and the real was more than shadow.
Outside the cave I glassed the play of light and shadow,
And when my only marble fell from its golden globe onto a blue
Tiled ocean floor, I swam after. The ancient head, wise with age,
Told me he had too lost his, recalled the studs
Inside the coloured orb, their curled blues, their seedy core
His own two eyes: Learian days that left him sightless and a seer.
My ancient friend dismissed the lies of a mummer seer
Whose falsest claim is that to love someone is to dispossess him of his shadow,
To wipe out every trace of him. Is this not indeed a murderous future? Our core
Belief that we are sworn to good and not extremes is not illusory. Those blue-
Eyed boys in ivory towers profess there is no truth, no self, nothings real; the studs
That breed such suasive tales are only there to fill the storybooks of our age.
Along the furrows of my brow I found a little pebble, it seemed an age
Since I had lost my marble. This purple stone weighed but a fraction of a seer.
It rattles in the golden globe, its hollow ring dislodging all the turquoise studs.
In the desert of the real, we watched the sun expand and then contract my shadow.
The ancient head has none. Though he is dead, we still talk. When the moon is blue
And the sky is starry nights, we harvest all the fruits of happy thoughts and core
Them for their seeds. “Is all of speech deception, all meaning at its core
Inherently unsound?” I asked the wise old head. He’d reached an age,
He said, and no longer feared such things, was satisfied there were no blue-
Prints or master schemes, simple truths apply—it does not take a seer
To tell you that the darkest hour is just before the dawn. All of us are shadow-
Dancing but mustn’t let the darkness intercept the light. The mettle studs
He riveted to the heart of my resolve are turquoise studs
In reinforced solutions. I’ve made up two new moulds, hollowed out their core
For curled glass in colours of the universe, whose negatives in shadow
Graphs are images of beings lived inside another time, another age,
Before I was madder than unreason and he mapped inscape as a seer
And gladness had another view, before betrayal choked intentions blue.
Talk on this blue-green sphere sets the lens within our glass-eye studs,
Through which the seer sees us stumble through the worth of words, in that core
Bewitchment of every age that cannot tell the real from dancing shadow.
First published in WOW! Anthology 2011, and subsequently in The Shadow Owner’s Companion (2012)
You fix our ladder in the scorched earth,
watch as the crows crowd round us,
I hear their cautionary caw-caws, but cover
your ears against their thin black sermons.
And so we climb. Me. Then you.
Runged, we stroke each bird,
‘sedate and clerical’ –
one bestows a molted quill feather,
colour-run like oil-marked silk.
Is it an omen? You ask. Should we go back?
I don’t answer; I’m too busy holding up the sky.
We are the survivors
who wait by the barricade
for the slow countdown.
Some of our dead slip through,
stand beside us, unsteady, unclothed, low –
we cannot take them with us.
The cry goes up for cheer,
smile, they demand, be merry.
Fireworks tear the stars
from the moon, pock the night
with dissimulated Armageddon,
the awed throng pitches forward.
If not in groups then kinfolk
keep in hailing distance,
their calls, inmost, distinctive,
provisional. My Dad sees me first.
He’s changed; parchment against bone,
eyes gone the colour of vertigo.
I am a smashed pane
that lets the rained downpour in,
in to vacant tenure.
As the countdown begins
there’s a clamour for the barricade,
and this is where we’re obliged to live on.
“Escape Route” and “New Year’s Eve / Old Year’s Day” are © Eleanor Hooker
|
She is featured poet in the winter 2017 New Hibernia Review, University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. She won the 2016 UK Bare Fiction Flash Fiction competition. Eleanor holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin, an MA in Cultural History (Hons) University of Northumbria, a BA (Hons 1st), Open University. She is Programme Curator for Dromineer Literary Festival. She is helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She began her career as a nurse and midwife. |
SunflowerIn Memory of the 796 infants and children who died at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. |
 Susan Millar DuMars has published three poetry collections with Salmon Poetry, the most recent of which, Bone Fire, appeared in April, 2016. She also published a book of short stories, Lights in the Distance, with Doire Press in 2010. Her work has appeared in publications in the US and Europe and in several anthologies, including The Best of Irish Poetry 2010. She has read from her work in the US, Europe and Australia. Born in Philadelphia, Susan lives in Galway, Ireland, where she and her husband Kevin Higgins have coordinated the Over the Edge readings series since 2003. She is the editor of the 2013 anthology Over the Edge: The First Ten Years. |
Tuam
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Sewage babies
Missing |
View original post 235 more words
Featured image from “The Infinite Body Of Sensation” by Salma Caller
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“In the Glass Coffin” by Kim Myeong-sun Today, I withstood agony again, In The Glass Coffin by © Kim Myeong-sun, these translations are © Sean Jido Ahn . Along with a literary movement, Kim was also a central figure in feminism movement of her time. She argued that the world would achieve peace rather than war if women could play a major role in sociopolitics. Moreover, she openly supported free love, and her practice of free love subjected Kim to severe criticism. The fact she was a date rape victim and a daughter of a courtesan hardened the criticism, even among the writers who were close to her. After she fled to Tokyo in 1939, her mental health exacerbated due to extreme financial hardship, failed relationship, and ongoing criticism, and Kim spent rest of her life in Aoyama psychiatric hospital in Tokyo. While her year of death is known to be 1951, this date is not officially verified. A note about the translatorSean Jido Ahn is a literature student and a translator residing in Massachusetts, USA. His main focus is Korean to English translation, and he has translated a documentary, interviews, journal articles, and literary pieces. Currently, he runs a poetry translation blog AhnTranslation and plans to publish the first edition of a literary translation quarterly for Korean literature in fall 2017. |
Faoi Ghlas
Tá sí faoi ghlas ann fós, sa teach tréigthe,
cé go bhfuil aigéin idir í agus an teach
a d’fhág sí ina diaidh.
I mbrat uaine a cuid cniotála, samhlaíonn sí
sraitheanna, ciseal glasa péinte
ag scamhadh ón mballa sa teach inar chaith sí —
— inar chas sí eochair, blianta
ó shin, an teach atá fós ag fanacht uirthi,
ag amharc amach thar an bhfarraige mhór.
Tá an eochair ar shlabhra aici, crochta óna muineál
agus filleann sí ann, scaití, nuair
a mhothaíonn sí cloíte. Lámh léi
ar eochair an tslabhra, dúnann sí a súile agus samhlaíonn
sí an teach úd cois cladaigh, an dath céanna
lena cuid olla cniotála, na ballaí gorm-ghlas,
teach tógtha ón uisce, teach tógtha as uisce
agus an radharc ann:
citeal ag crónán, gal scaipthe, scaoilte
ó fhuinneog an pharlúis, na toir i mbladhm,
tinte ag scaipeadh ar an aiteann
agus éan ceoil a máthair ag portaireacht ina chliabhán,
ach cuireann na smaointe sin ceangal ar a cliabhrach
agus filleann sí arís ar a seomra néata, ar lá néata
eile sa teach
altranais, teanga na mbanaltraí dearmadta aici,
seachas please agus please agus please,
tá sí cinnte de nach dtuigeann siad cumha
ná tonnta ná glas. Timpeall a muiníl,
ualach an eochair do doras a shamhlaíonn sí
faoi ghlas fós, ach ní aontaíonn an eochair sin
leis an nglas níos mó tá an chomhla dá hinsí i ngan fhios di
an tinteán líonta le brosna préacháin
fós, fáisceann sí an chniotáil chuig a croí
ansin baineann sí dá dealgáin í, á roiseadh go mall arís,
arís, na línte scaoilte ina ceann agus ina gceann
snáth roiste: gorm-ghlas gorm-ghlas gorm-ghlas
gorm-ghlas gorm-ghlas gorm-ghlas amhail cuilithíní
cois cladaigh nó roiseanna farraige móire. Sracann sí
go dtí go bhfuil sí féin faoi
ghlas le snáth á chlúdach ó mhuineál go hucht.
Ansin, ceanglaíonn sí snaidhm úr, snaidhm docht,
ardaíonn sí na dealgáin agus tosaíonn sí arís.
∇
Under Lock and Green
She is locked there still, in the empty house,
despite the ocean between her and this house,
the one she left behind her.
In the green sweep of her knitting she imagines
layers, green layers of paint
a wall peeling in the house where she spent –
– where she turned a key, years
ago, before, the house that is still waiting for her
gazing over a vast ocean.
She wears the key on a chain that hangs at her throat
and she returns there, sometimes, when
she feels weak. With one hand
over that chained key, she closes her eyes and daydreams
that house by the beach, the same colour
as her wool, the walls blue-green,
a house from water, a house of water
and the view there:
a fretting kettle, its steam loose, leaving
through the parlour window, where the furze is aflame,
fires swelling through the gorse,
and her mother’s songbird chirping in its cage,
but thoughts like these bind her chest too tightly
so she lets go, and returns to this neat little room, this neat little day
another in this home
this home for the elderly where she forgot the nurses’ words years ago
except please and please and please, and she’s certain
that they understand neither cumha
nor tonnta nor the glas at her throat,
the weight of a key for a door she imagines
still locked, but the key won’t slot
into her remembered lock the door has fallen from its hinges in her absence
the hearth fills with the kindling of crows
still, she nestles her knitting in near her heart
then lifts it from the needles, unravels it slowly again,
again, the lines released one by one
unravelled, the thread: blue-green blue-green blue-green
blue-green blue-green blue-green like little ripples
scribbling on the shore or immense ripping oceans. She tears
until she is under
lock and green again, with wool covering her neck and chest.
Then, a breath, and then, she ties a new knot,
lifts the needles and begins again.
 Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual writer working both in Irish and English. Among her awards are the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Michael Hartnett Prize, and the Ireland Chair of Poetry bursary. She frequently participates in cross-disciplinary collaborations, fusing poetry with film, dance, music, and visual art. Doireann’s writing has appeared widely, including in The Irish Times, The Irish Examiner, The Stinging Fly, and Poetry, and has been translated into many languages, most recently to French, Greek, Dutch, Macedonian, Gujarati, and English. Recent or forthcoming commissions include work for The Poetry Society (UK), RTÉ Radio 1, Cork City Council & Libraries, The Arts Council/Crash Ensemble, and UCC. Her most recent book is Oighear (Coiscéim, 2017)
|
Rajm
Outside is night
inside is separation
this must be the last day
of the world
-I think of him-
love ends (…)
the heart
remains as a woman who was stoned to death
in the middle of reality
my heart is the biggest
stone that God threw
at me
© Müesser Yeniay, translated into english by Müesser Yeniay
 MÜESSER YENİAY was born in İzmir, 1984; she graduated from Ege University, with a degree in English Language and Literature. She took her M.A on Turkish Literature at Bilkent University. She has won several prizes in Turkey including Yunus Emre (2006), Homeros Attila İlhan (2007), Ali Riza Ertan (2009), Enver Gökçe (2013) poetry prizes. She was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Muse Pie Press in USA. Her first book Darkness Also Falls Ground was published in 2009 and her second book I Founded My Home in the Mountains a collection of translation from world poetry. Her second poetry book I Drew the Sky Again was published in 2011. She has translated the poems of Persian poet Behruz Kia as Requiem to Tulips. She has translated the Selected Poems of Gerard Augustin together with Eray Canberk, Başak Aydınalp, Metin Cengiz (2011). She has also translated the Personal Anthology of Michel Cassir together with Eray Canberk and Metin Cengiz (2011). Lately, she has published a Contemporary Spanish Anthology with Metin Cengiz and Jaime B. Rosa. She also translated the poetry of Israeli poet Ronny Someck (2014) and Hungarian poet Attila F. Balazs (2015). She has published a book on modern Turkish Avant-garde poetry The Other Consciousness: Surrealism and The Second New (2013). Her latest poetry book Before Me There Were Deserts was published in 2014 in İstanbul. Her poems were published in Hungarian by AB-Art Press by the name A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa (2015).Her poems have appeared in the following magazines abroad: Actualitatea Literară (Romania), The Voices Project, The Bakery, Sentinel Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poesy, Shampoo, Los Angeles Review of Books, Apalachee Review (USA & England); Kritya, Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Casa Della Poesia, Libere Luci, I poeti di Europe in Versi e il lago di Como (Italy); Poeticanet, Poiein (Greece); Revue Ayna, Souffle, L’oiseau de feu du Garlaban (France); Al Doha (Qatar); Poethead (Ireland)Tema (Croatia); Dargah (Persia). The Anthologies her poetry appeared: With Our Eyes Wide Open; Aspiring to Inspire, 2014 Women Writers Anthology; 2014 Poetry Anthology- Words of Fire and Ice (USA) Poesia Contemporanea de la Republica de Turquie (Spain); Voix Vives de Mediterranee en Mediterranee, Anthologie Sete 2013 ve Poetique Insurrection 2015 (France); One Yet Many- The Cadence of Diversity ve ayrıca Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Come Cerchi Sull’acqua (Italy). Her poems have been translated into Vietnamese, Hungarian, Croatian, English, Persian, French, Serbian, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Hindi, Spanish and Romanian. Her book in Hungarian was published in 2015 by AB-Art Publishing by the name A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa She has participated in the poetry festivals like Sarajevo International Poetry Festival, September 2010 (Bosnia-Herzegovina); Nisan International Poetry Festival, May 2011 (Israel); Belgrad International Poetry Festival, September 2012 (Serbia); Voix Vives International Poetry Festival (Sete), July 2013 (France); Kritya International Poetry Festival, September 2013 (India), Galati/Antares International Poetry Festival, June 2014 (Romania), Medellin International Poetry Festival, July 2014 (Colombia); 2nd Asia Pacific Poetry Festival 2015 (Vietnam). Müesser is the editor of the literature magazine Şiirden (of Poetry). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Turkish literature at Bilkent University, Ankara, and is also a member of PEN and the Writers Syndicate of Turkey. Three Poems by Müesser Yeniay An Index of Women Poets |
“We did not choose the sea” by Philo Ikonyaphilo 6.1.2014 When we found them washed ashore We shuddered at life’s turns and twists Her fiction includes two novels, Leading the Night and Kenya, will you marry me? She has published three poetry anthologies including: This Bread of Peace, (Lapwing) Belfast, Ireland, and Out of Prison- Love Songs translated into German (Aus dem Gefangnis Liebesgesange). Philo is a Pan-Africanist. |
In autumn, even a tree sheds jewels on the street.
A deeply buried heart may be fetching like this.
Around this time,
A bird shall pilot the life of a fragrant tree,
Crossing the river with a seed in its beak,
Passing the field of silvergrass on a mountain.
My shallow roots,
Which were swayed by no more than rain and wind,
Have you ever borne a piece of ruby hot as blood?
Without a jewel to pass on to a bird or a wind,
I pass in front of a pomegranate tree.
Whether I love or hate,
Life merely flows.
Toward where is life—an initiation ceremony—leading to?
The heart too red to believe in an afterlife,
The heart pecked by the bird!
Joseon*, when I part from you,
Whether you knock me down by a creek
Or yank my blood in the field,
Abuse me more, even my dead corpse.
If this is still not enough,
Then abuse her as much as you can
When someone like me is born henceforth.
Then we, who despise each other, will be parted forever.
Oh, you ferocious place, you ferocious place.
*Joseon (1392-1897) was a dynasty in Korea that preceded the Korean Empire (1897-1910). Even after the fall of the dynasty, its name was frequently used to refer to Korean peninsula.
There was an old soldier
Who plowed a field with his weapon
For he was injured all over from long battles
And thus hated fighting in battles.
But the furrows were unyielding
And the landlord was vicious,
So there was no harvest
Even after sowing and weeding.
So, one day, the old soldier,
Was paralyzed in sleep like a shooting rifle,
Stifled by heavy thoughts.
Oh, how strange—this soldier,
While sleeping after dumping his weapon,
Died with bruises all over his body
As if he fought in his dream.
People turned their heads.
There are battles whether you are awake or asleep,
So being alive and dead must be the same.
Saying so, each of them tensed both arms.
Today, I withstood agony again,
Because my life is still lingering,
Trapped in scarcely visible sorrow.
If my body is trapped
Like the life of a dinky, dinky thing,
What is with all this sorrow, this pain?
Like the bygone prince,
Who had loved the forbidden woman,
I believed I would live if I danced in the glass coffin;
I heard I would live with joy
Even in this dim sorrow,
If I worked, studied, and loved.
And so I have lived in this untrustworthy world.
Now, what shall I do with this suffocating feeling
That is burgeoning in this scarcely visible sorrow?
Stupid I! Stupid I!
Pomegranate & other poems are © Kim Myeong-sun, these translations are © Sean Jido Ahn
Kim Myeong-sun was born in 1896 in Pyongyang, Korea. She debuted in 1917 when her short story A Girl in Doubt appeared in Youth [Chungchun]. In 1919, while she was studying abroad in Tokyo, she joined Korea’s first literary circle Creation [Changjo], which is reputed as the harbinger of modern Korean literary style. She published her first book of poems The Fruit of Life in 1925, which is also the first book of poems published by a Korean woman. Kim was known as quinti-lingual, and she introduced works of Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire to Korean readers for the first time. Along with the literary movement, Kim was also a central figure in the feminism movement of her time. She argued that the world would achieve peace rather than war if women could play a major role in sociopolitics. Moreover, she openly supported free love, and her practice of free love subjected Kim to severe criticism. The fact she was a date rape victim and a daughter of a courtesan hardened the criticism, even among the writers who were close to her. After she fled to Tokyo in 1939, her mental health exacerbated due to extreme financial hardship, failed relationship, and ongoing criticism, and Kim spent rest of her life in Aoyama psychiatric hospital in Tokyo. While her year of death is known to be 1951, this date is not officially verified.
A note about the translatorSean Jido Ahn is a literature student and a translator residing in Massachusetts, USA. His main focus is Korean to English translation, and he has translated a documentary, interviews, journal articles, and literary pieces. Currently, he runs a poetry translation blog AhnTranslation and plans to publish the first edition of a literary translation quarterly for Korean literature in fall 2017. |
Conchita reads Pablo’s letter to God(while he is painting) Mrs Violet Schiff at The Majestic Dora Maar, The Weeping Woman Maya’s soliloquy to Pablo Finding symmetry Nataraja |
 Jo Burns comes originally from Maghera, County Derry. After studying Biomedical Science and spells in Chile, Scotland, England, she now lives with her family in Germany. Her poems have been published by or are forthcoming in: A New Ulster, Poetry Breakfast, The Galway Review, The Incubator, The Honest Ulsterman, Headstuff, The Irish Literary Times, Poetry NI P.O.E.T Anthology, The Literateur, Lakeview International Journal of Arts and Literature, Four x Four, Ink Sweat and Tears, Forage, Shot Glass Journal, Orbis, Picaroon and Poetry Pacific among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and she is one of Eyewear Publishing’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2017.
She occasionally retweets other peoples’ interesting posts at @joburnspoems |
Chris Murray 