Forthcoming Interview at AAPW

February 1st, 2009 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs | Posted in Blog | No Comments »

What a treat thanks to Lee Herrick who is editing a special forthcoming issue of Asian American Poetry and Writing! An interview conversation featuring Jane Jeong Trenka, Sun Yung Shin, and me discusses divided geographies of language and diaspora and writing’s relationship with community building. This same issue includes an extensive line-up of poets and writers who are part of the Korean adoptee diaspora.

New Recordings at Poets on Poets

February 1st, 2009 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs | Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »

Many thanks to Tilar Mazzeo, curator of Poets on Poets, for the opportunity to record Charlotte Turner Smith’s “Sonnet LXX” and “Sonnet LXXVII.” Turner Smith is one of several overlooked Romantic poets whose influence during her lifetime extended to Coleridge and Wordsworth, both who greatly admired her Elegiac Poems. To read an online edition of her work and to learn more about her contemporaries, please visit the British Women Romantic Poets Project hosted by the University of California Davis.

Essay Available at IWP

January 8th, 2009 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs | Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »

Many thanks to the International Writing Programs at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop! My essay, “Home as the Direction of Search,” is available at the 2008 Paros Symposium’s website.

Reading Kim Ki-Taek’s Poetry

January 8th, 2009 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs | Posted in Blog | No Comments »

I’m looking forward to co-hosting Kim Ki-Taek with the University of Minnesota’s Consortium for the Study of the Asias this coming February. He’s reading at the UM, Loft Literary Center, and St. Olaf College during February 23-27. Lee Herrick introduced Kim’s work to me a year ago after meeting him in California. (Kim Ki-Taek was a writer-in-residence at UC Berkeley before.) So it’s a pleasure to share his work with the Twin Cities!

Kim Ki-Taek was born in 1957 at Anyang, the southern satellite city of Seoul. He majored in English language and literature in college and Korean language and literature in graduate school. He started to write poetry after winning the poetry section of a literary contest in Hankook Daily Newspaper in 1989 (32 years old). He has published 4 books of collected poems - Fatal Sleep (1991), Storm in the Hole of the Needle (1994), Office worker (1999), Cow (2005) and has won 5 major literary awards - Kim Soo Young Literary Award, Hyundai Literary Award, Midang Literary Award, Jihoon Literary Award and Isu Literary Award.

In his poetry, he has focused on the human physicality and the relationship between the body and the violence inflicted upon it and the idea that physical and psychological violence inflicted on human body leaves its mark behind. The mark eventually manifests itself as various habits that continue to inform one’s sense of itself. He has tried to observe this process and record it in his poems. His works were often told to get the poetic characteristics by several critics “the perspective imagination” or “observation and description of minute and microscopic details.”

New England Poetry Prize

December 31st, 2008 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs | Posted in Blog | No Comments »

This news just arrived from my publisher: The New England Poetry Club awarded Paper Pavilion the Sheila Motton Book Award! The New England Poetry Club is the oldest reading series in the U.S. Thank you so much! What a wonderful way to begin the new year.

Update: Poems in Blackbird

November 14th, 2008 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs | Posted in Blog | No Comments »

Two poems from my chapbook, Song of a Mirror, are available online at Blackbird. It’s a heartfelt privilege to be in a journal with Larry Levis’s poetry. His work is a touchstone for me, especially Elegy.

Thank You Toronto Women’s Bookstore!

November 14th, 2008 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs | Posted in Blog | No Comments »

What a pleasure it was to read to a packed room at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore! The event included a discussion of current trends in Korean activism especially related to de-militarization and women’s rights. Thank you Rose and Janet for coordinating and to Jin Dap’s Michelle and Sun for your voices!

October Readings in California

October 14th, 2008 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs | Posted in Blog | No Comments »

I can’t say enough how grateful I am to Sterling Warner at Evergreen Community College, Sandra Hunter at Moorpark College, Lee Herrick at Fresno City College, and Eastwind Books of Berkeley for their kind invitations to read Paper Pavilion. (The photo on the left with Lee was taken right before the Berkeley reading.) Thanks to Barbara Jean Reyes and AK — San Francisco for facilitating this event in particular! If you missed it, you can see a video recording here.