Displaying items by tag: Korean poets

We have posted two poems by Chungmi Kim, a Korean-American poet and playwright. She is the author of the poetry books Glacier Lily (2004, Red Hen Press) and Chungmi—Selected Poems (1982, Korean Pioneer Press). Her poetry has been included in numerous anthologies and has been featured on Garrison Keillor's National Public Radio Program The Writer's Almanac (January 2010) and in Poetry Society of America's "Poetry in Motion" program in Los Angeles (1998). Her play, Comfort Women, was produced at Urban Stages in New York and was subsequently published in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2005 by Smith and Kraus. She has also written an award-winning screenplay titled The Dandelion.

The poems are titled "AMERICA! ('92 L.A. RIOTS)" and "SOME OF US ARE STILL WANDERERS." Both poems are from Glacier Lily, a collection of poems by Kim. "AMERICA!" expresses feelings of helplessness, frustration, and anger over the targeting of Koreans and Korean businesses during the 1992 L.A. Riots/Unrest after the announcing of the Rodney King verdict. "SOME OF US ARE STILL WANDERERS" describes the emotional ups and downs of the lives of immigrants residing in foreign countries. Both poems convey a sense of han, which is a deep-rooted sense of sadness that all Koreans are said to possess.

On February 26, 2014, Chungmi Kim performed excerpts from her play Comfort Women, which focuses on the women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II, at a colloquium at Queens College's Rosenthal Library.  

This is the first time that we have ever posted poetry on our Data Bank. In the future. we would like to post more poetry as well as literary fiction and non-fiction on our website. We hope that you enjoy these poems.