Moon Chung-Hee

This pocket-sized paperback is one of the twenty-four titles published for 2017 Hong Kong International Poetry Nights. The theme of IPHHK2017 is “Ancient Enmity”. IPNHK is one of the most influential international poetry events in Asia. From 22–26 November 2017, over 20 invited poets from various countries will be in Hong Kong to read their works based on the theme “Ancient Enmity.” Included in the anthology and box set, these unique works are presented with Chinese and English translations in bilingual or trilingual formats.

"'Dazzling strokes of falling stars in falling water. I want to write poems like that,' writes Moon Chung-hee. Thanks to Silberg and You, these poems dazzle bright in English. Here love is violent and 'suffered, an encysted stone ...wedged' in the heart, and defiance trembles the soul: 'Dress up for men, you say? / Nonsense / I stripped / for them ...the world's women / root on earth, naked.' Chung-hee casts off 'the watch and mink stole,' and exclaims: 'I want to be a free dancer from now on.'"--Sholeh Wolpe Moon Chung-hee's poetry is passionate, impetuous, a poetry of love, epiphany, feminist assertion, even rebellion. Richard Silberg co-translated, with Clare You, The Three Way Tavern and This Side of Time, by Ko Un. He is author of The Horses: New and Selected Poems. Clare You is the Chair of the Center for Korean Studies at USC Berkeley, and has co-translated modern Korean poetry and fiction into English.

Moon Chung-hee's lyrical poems represent poignant self-examination, evoking moments of bewilderment and hopeful resignation to the passage of time and imprisoning conditions of her life. Her work explores the desire to escape the fetters of domesticity as a vehicle for understanding a woman's journey and her negotiations between the desire for freedom and domestic reality.