In this short interview with Guernica editor in chief, Jina Moore Ngarambe, developed for the Guernica newsletter, translator Jack Jung talks about discovering the work of the poet Kim Hyesoon, translating her “non-poems” from Korean, and how readers can help make translators’ work more visible — and valued. Selections from Jung’s translation of Thus Spoke n’t, and other of Kim Hyesoon’s work, feature in the July issue of Guernica.

Guernica: How did you decide to translate these “non-poems” rather than anything else?

Jack Jung:About 15 years ago, during my summer vacation in Seoul following my freshman year of college, I first encountered the words of Kim Hyesoon on the back of a young Korean poet’s debut book of poetry. Kim’s blurb filled the entire back cover. My understanding of modern and contemporary Korean poetry was minimal at that time. I wish I could recount the exact words of the blurb, or the title of the book. Nonetheless, the sensation remains with me. (I highly recommend new poetry readers to follow a trail of blurbs to uncover fresh poems and poets)

While the blurb appeared to be prose, each line carried a different essence. It didn’t occur to me at the time that the lines resembled poems; the English-language poems I had read during my first year of college may have obstructed my perception that “this blurb is a poem.” The tone was casual, but each sentence was dense with imagery. The writer shared precise thoughts like vivid stepping-stones, inviting readers to deduce their message.

After discovering Kim Hyesoon through that blurb, I read many of her poetry collections, both in the original Korean and Don Mee’s outstanding translations published by Action Books and New Directions. Kim Hyesoon’s poetry, I discerned, seemed to be deeply engrossed in dreamscapes, with a hint of our world’s reality.

My rudimentary understanding of the difference between prose and poetry is that prose reveals the author’s discoveries, while poetry nudges readers towards their own. If my memory serves me right, this blurb did both. This, I speculate — although I haven’t confirmed it with the poet — could have been an early instance of Kim Hyesoon’s shisanmun (poetry-prose) style, a technique fully utilized in Thus Spoke n’t.

I reflect on this early experience with Kim Hyesoon’s poetry-prose — or non-poem, a piece of writing heavy with poetic elements yet deliberately avoiding categorization as a poem — because last year, when I met Kim Hyesoon, she presented me with the volume Thus Spoke n’t. Reading it, I found her poetry-prose pieces steeped in our warped reality, reaching towards the celestial realms where poetry resides.

The initial publication of the writings that would later form Thus Spoke n’t, on Korean publisher Munhakdongne’s blog, was anonymous. (Kim Hyesoon was revealed as the author a year later, in 2015, when the book was announced.) The posts unfolded over time — but stopped for 49 days, in the aftermath of the Sewol Ferry disaster, in which 476 people (including 325 high school students) died perished due to the ferry company and government’s egregious negligence. When the publications resumed, there was a tangible thread of grief in the work, tying together sorrowful observations on systematic institutional failures — an aspect all too present in Korean life and perhaps universally in our contemporary era.

This thread of grief, paired with reflections on diverse facets of life in a country named Aerok (an anadrome of Korea), shapes the backdrop for the character known as n’t (않아/ahn-ah). This persona muses, agonizes, satirizes, and sermonizes on subjects ranging from politics and economics to city life, films, books, and the lives of writers, poets, and artists. For me, all these elements converged to form a grand narrative of contemporary Korea.

I hesitate to label Thus Spoke n’t as a long poem or a novel, as the author would likely reject both genre categorizations. But with hybrid works like this, the influence of both genres is palpable in the entirety of the book. It’s plausible that Kim Hyesoon’s work in Thus Spoke n’t introduces a new literary form – a vessel for contemporary writers to engage with myriad subjects simultaneously. Given the bewilderingly multidimensional nature of our society, I believe such an approach is called for, and this was a major motivation for me to translate this collection into English.
 
Guernica: How do you translate work whose upending of form/expectation is part of the author’s mission?

Jung: I believe that some new readers of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry-prose from Thus Spoke n’t may have a similar experience to mine when they first encounter them. I think prose often conveys what the author has discovered about something, while poetry helps us explore what we need to discover within ourselves. In her poetry-proses, Kim Hyesoon combines both approaches, akin to a tight-rope walk that appears deceptively easy, almost like a dance on the rope. I am aware that my response may seem abstract, and I have an explanation for this, which I hope you’ll indulge me as I briefly digress into a fundamental issue regarding form in contemporary American poetry.

Even today, discussions on form in American poetry often revolve around the physical structure of the writing itself. While many in the North American poetry scene agree that line breaks alone do not define a poem, I sense that, in the history of poetry, once meter, rhyme, and other techniques dissipated, line breaks became the sole marker for immediate recognition of poetry in English. We now employ line breaks as a slightly more dramatic form of caesura, rather than as enjambments. In other words, line breaks serve as a clever twist, a surprising point where sentences land unexpectedly as they transition from one line or stanza to another.

For me, enjambments are primarily about maintaining the rhythmic flow, rather than exerting controlled management of revelations through line breaks. These line breaks offer a visual pause stronger than that of a caesura, especially since we seldom recite poems aloud. Even when we do, listeners without the text in front of them would be unaware of the pauses, as we rarely rely on audible rhythm and instead focus on the visual rhythm created by how a poem appears on the page.

So, this was my perspective when I began reading Kim Hyesoon’s poetry-prose. She herself has stated that line breaks alone do not define a poem. In fact, if you understand Korean and have spent time on the Korean side of the internet, you would have noticed that nearly everyone uses line breaks in blogs, emails, and comment sections. It is actually less common to encounter a block of prose in those spaces and platforms. Considering that these poetry-proses were initially blog posts, their line-broken structure should be understood as having been quite informal in the original context. Initially, they would not have been regarded as poems; they would have simply seemed like any other blog post. However, upon reading them, they reveal layers of observations, ideas, and imagery that transcend their casual presentation.

So why not refer to these pieces as poems in a new form? Both in her writing and in conversations, Kim Hyesoon has been adamant about not labeling them as poems. I would like to share with you an extensive quote from her Afterword to Thus Spoke n’t:

I believe that Kim Hyesoon’s ability to achieve a formlessness in her writing while still embracing the essence of poetry and prose enabled her to elucidate the true nature of poetry. It transcends mere technicalities and delves into a more spiritual realm. I hope that my translation was able to capture some of this essence and that it will enlighten readers as well.
 
Guernica: What are some of the challenges of working as a translator? How can readers support translators?

Jung: Pay us and recognize us. Give us our due as artists. But who determines these matters? The recent scandal involving the British Museum’s shocking treatment of Yilin Wang illuminates why we must confront these glaring questions. As they planned the special exhibition “China’s Hidden Century,” the museum’s curators misused Wang’s translations of revolutionary Chinese feminist poet Qiu Jin, without offering proper credit or payment. Subsequently, upon being confronted by the translator, they attempted to absolve themselves by eliminating all the translations, effectively erasing two writers—the poet and the translator—from the exhibition for an English-language audience.

From the museum’s actions, it appears — this is as generous an interpretation as I can muster – that they consider what we do as highly interchangeable—as if poetry translation is something that someone with basic knowledge of grammar and a dictionary can accomplish. They hardly regard it as laborious, let alone an art. If they adhere to this belief, why would they ever think it important to credit the translator? The cynical part of me suspects outright theft, hoping it would go unnoticed, an attitude stemming from the same belief: translation is interchangeable.

But here’s the catch: there’s a selectivity in who is recognized as a translator-artist and who isn’t. While Yilin battled the British Museum’s incompetence and undeserved online trolls, I chanced upon a new volume of Seamus Heaney’s work in a New York bookstore. Intrigued by the prospect of posthumous works, I was soon disenchanted to learn the volume was titled The Translations of Seamus Heaney. A single poet’s translations from various languages, bound in honor of his singular mastery.

At first, I rationalized—after all, he was a Nobel laureate. But my disillusionment intensified as I noticed more such volumes—John Ashbery’s French Translations, Daniel Mendelsohn’s Collected Poems of Cavafy, where the translator’s name appeared in prominence. It dawned on me that these publishers, readers, and institutions recognized translation as an art form, but selectively: translators with proven original works received more recognition. It felt reminiscent of the excuse for bridge translations: a native speaker would create a “rough” translation that an English-language writer then transformed into “art.”

Yet, if the translator undertakes the entire process alone, they aren’t considered an artist. Many translators, myself included, know what it’s like to be excluded from elite literary circles and academia. When we express our indignation, the people inside the circle are clueless because they’ve never experienced this injustice. They were born and raised within the circle. But we’ve been watching. Now, our anger has evolved into understanding and action. Perhaps the people inside the circle view us as barbarians at the gates. Maybe that’s exactly what we are. I suggest they dress their consuls in their finest attire to greet us. But when they emerge, we’ll have disappeared—to create our own art, away from them. Their institutions, in due course, will become deserted.