Jack Jung: “Perhaps they regard us as barbarians at the gates”
Illustration by Fi Jae Lee 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
