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?"

Codex of the Insane

Codex of the Insane (Body and Related Matters)

Bronka Nowicka

translated from the Polish

by Katarzyna Szuster-Tardi

 

 23 pages, paper

Toad Press, 2021. $5.00 

cover image by Małgorzata ET BER Warlikowska

You can purchase a copy of Codex of the Insane at Asterism or on Etsy.

BRONKA (BRONISŁAWA) NOWICKA is a Polish theatre and TV director, screenwriter, poet, and interdisciplinary artist. She is a graduate of the National Film School in Łódź, Poland, and the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts. Her literary debut, Nakarmić kamień (To Feed the Stone) was awarded the 2016 Nike Literary Award and the Złoty Środek Poezji (Golden Mean of Poetry) award. In 2017, she was a laureate of the New Voices from Europe project. Her second book, Kodeks Pomylonych (Codex of the Insane), was published in 2020, and To Feed the Stone will be published in a bilingual edition by Dalkey Archive Press in 2021.

KATARZYNA SZUSTER-TARDI is a translator. Forthcoming translations include the books To Feed the Stone by Bronka Nowicka (Dalkey Archive Press, 2021) and Polish Literature and Genocide by Arkadiusz Morawiec (Routledge, 2021). She earned her M.A. in English studies from the University of Łódź, Poland, and was a lecturer at Department of Foreign Languages, University of Nizwa in Oman. Recent translations have appeared in Denver Quarterly, LIT, Michigan Quarterly Review, Tripwire, Berlin Quarterly, and Seedings.

 

Woman Bathing Light to Dark

WOMAN BATHING LIGHT TO DARK prose poems by Paul Eluard translated from the French by Justin Vicari 21pp paper, staple-bound. Cover photo courtesy of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Toad Press 2006, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Woman Bathing Light to Dark here & add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About: Paul Éluard was born in France in 1895. In 1920 he met Andre Breton, the influential founder of the Surrealist movement. Éluard became an official member of this movement in 1924. Éluard’s many books include: Duty and Disturbance (1917), Animals and Their Men, Men and Their Animals (1920), Repetitions (1922), Dying of Not Dying (1924), Capital of Sadness (1926), Love, Poetry (1929), Immediate Life (1932), Public Rose (1934), Fertile Eyes (1938), Political Poems (1948), and The Phoenix (1951). He died in 1952. Excerpt: From Zero He places a bird on the table and closes the shades. He fixes his hair, his hair in his hands is softer than a bird. She tells the future. And I’m in charge of making it come true. The bruised heart, the aching soul, the broken hands, the white hair, the prisoners, the entire water covers me like a raw wound.