Author: Lee Young-ju
Translated by: Jae Kim
Publisher: Asia Publishers, 2020
Original title: 여름만 있는 계절에 네가 왔다
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Details from LTI Korea website. The title is available from Kyobo and probably other Korean online stores:
Times like this are no good. They’re too distant from the root cause. I think I was a
weaver in a factory a hundred years ago. Maybe a handweaver for hire a thousand
years ago. I’m now weaving things that aren’t easily woven. Language? What
language? I fail each time. When I fail, I can feel a faint presence of the roots . . . .
From “Poet’s Note”
Lee Young-ju writes as a citizen and a poet, about what has happened and the pain that is ongoing; this peculiar blend of subjects and perspectives have become her means of finding certainty. She isn’t satisfied with recording the event and despair as-is; she excavates the brutality that lies within the “as-is,” while recognizing that no words can adequately describe what she sees.
From “Commentary”