Jiban Narah’s The Yellow Metaphor is an unassuming collection of poetry, written from 1990 to 2023, that draws from the Mising and Assamese traditions of north-east India. Occasionally embedded in the English translation are the original Mising words, a translator’s decision to retain the otherworldliness of the poems. Assamese geography, fauna, and history feature prominently throughout the book. While steeped in regional references, Narah blends his poetry with literary allusions to Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot, as well as spiritual representations of Krishna.
Author: Jonathan Han
Written 40-50 years ago during the South Korean dictatorship from the 1970s-80s, now newly-translated into English and framed by reflective essays, Kim Hyesoon’s poetry collection The Hell of That Star is a violent and grotesque testament to a censored time. Having worked as an editor during the regime, Kim is familiar with the censorship apparatus that her book contends against.
A child was abandoned on the train tracks of Cheongnyangni Station, Seoul. Nothing was known of her before that moment—no certificates, no paperwork. She would grow up to be called Munju by her foster father, then Esther by the nuns at the orphanages, and finally given the name Nana by her French adoptive parents. Those same train tracks are Nana’s first childhood memory, a memory that forms how she views her birth mother, her foster father, and her own sense of self. Now an award-winning playwright in Paris, Nana receives an invitation to Seoul from an amateur filmmaker, who proposes a documentary on her adoption, a film that will revisit the fragmented scenes of her past.
You must be logged in to post a comment.