An Unknown Taste

poems by Park Soran 

translated from the Korean

by Susan K

 

24 pages, paper, staple-bound.

Toad Press/Veliz Books, 2024. $6.00

poems by Park Soran

translations by Susan K

cover design adapted from an art print "Vegetables ; Vegetables ; Vegetables ; Vegetables" in the NYPL Digital Collection.

You can purchase a copy of An Unknown Taste at Asterism, on Etsy, or from submittable.

 

Park Soran is a South Korean poet. She made her debut with Moonhak Soochup in 2009 and won the Sin Dong-yup Prize for Literature for her first poetry collection, Words Close to Heart (Changbi, 2015). The following year, she was awarded the Tomorrow’s Korean Writer Award by the Writers Association of Korea. One Person’s Closed Door (Changbi, 2019) is her second poetry collection, which won her the Nojak Literature Prize. She has also published the poetry collections There Is (Hyundae Munhak, 2021) and Water Marble (Changbi, 2024).

Susan K received her BA in English literature and linguistics from the University of Toronto. Having completed both the Literature Translation fellowship and the Media Translation fellowship at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI), she currently works as a full-time freelance translator specializing in Korean literature, web comics, films, and other cultural content into English. She has translated the poetry collections I’ll Give You All My Promenade (Asia Publishers, 2022) by Jeong Woo-shin, Rock Is Thunder (Asia Publishers, 2023) by Lee Jae Hoon, and co-translated Human Time (Black Ocean, 2023) by Kim Haengsook. Her translations appeared in Circumference, Asymptote, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Mantis. She has also received two grants from LTI to translate the poetry collections One Person’s Closed Door by Park Soran and We May See the Monsoon Together by Park Joon.
 

 

 

________

The Cheapest France in Town

 

from The Cheapest France in Town

Seo Jung Hak

translated from the Korean

by Megan Sungyoon

 

20 pages, paper

Toad Press, 2021. $5.00

You can purchase a copy of The Cheapest France in Town at Asterism or on Etsy. 

Seo Jung Hak was born in Seoul and graduated from Seoul Institute of the Arts’ Creative Writing program. Seo debuted in the Korean literary scene by publishing four poems including “은신처” (“Hideout”) in the Winter 1995 issue of 문학과 사회 (Literature and Society). His first book, 모험의 왕과 코코넛의 귀족들  (The King of Adventure and Aristocrats of Coconut) was published in 1998. 동네에서 제일 싼 프랑스  (The Cheapest France in Town) is his second book, published in 2017.

Megan Sungyoon translates between languages and across disciplines. Sungyoon’s efforts have appeared in Asymptote, Columbia Journal, The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), and SAND Journal, among others. As of 2020, Sungyoon lives a street away from Seoul, bordering the United States.

 

Read--and listen to--a couple poems from The Cheapest France in Town at Asymptote, where they were published earlier this year. Sungyoon writes in her translator's note, "The Cheapest encourages misreading. With its subtly unconventional uses of punctuation, plays with homonyms/homophones, and distorted subjecthood, The Cheapest is rather disinterested in identifying itself with a certain nation-state. A Korean reader may argue the poems are unmistakably Korean, but what is Korean, anyways?"

Poet Blood

Poet Blood

by Kim Kyung Ju

translated by Jake Levine

33 pages, paper, staple bound

cover image courtesy of the author

Toad Press, 2017. $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Poet Blood at Asterism.

Kim Kyung Ju was born in space. He arrived on earth in the late 1970s in Korea. He stayed there and wrote poems and some say he became the most important poet of his generation. He won the Kim Soo Young prize and a whole bunch of other prizes. He was blacklisted by the government though, so sometimes he writes using a pen name.

 
Jake Levine ended up in Korea and started translating poems there. Which is strange. There is no logic or reason. It was just something to do, so he did it. Kim Kyung Ju liked radiohead and he likes radiohead and they met at the radiohead fan club after Kim Kyung Ju translated Radiohead philosophy. He misses Tucson and his family at Spork Press.

"i was so enthralled and puzzled. i was terrified and brave. i’d close the book and open it. i opened it more than i closed it. for me, at times, it was more important than anything else and i’d delay life just to read it a fifth time.
i liked it when reindeer crawled across my lips the most." -John Thompson