CURRENT ISSUE

Memory vs. Mainstream: Manahil Bandukwala interviews Monica Kim

“Hold a Memory” opens with sources on queer Korean history across a span of almost 3000 years. Each line of historical documentation is paired with a footnote. In one of the footnotes, you write, “our bodies are counter-archives.”

This poem is a sort of counter-archive as well. I’m curious to hear from you about what you see as the relationship between body, poem, and (counter)archive.

This poem began because I thought about how, in a lot of colonized and imperialized places, the dominant narrative now by those who hold power is “Queer people don’t exist here. Queerness is inherently Western.” I wanted to reject this in multiple ways: queer people in the present, queer Koreans who live on the peninsula (both south and north) and in the diaspora, are living examples countering this dominant narrative. Thus, our bodies are counter-archive. Mainstream historical archives erase and attempt to hide the long history of queerness in Corea (here, I am using a specific spelling of Corean to signal a unified Corea). But in doing some research, including reading Queer Korea: Toward a Field of Engagement edited by Todd A. Cox (and there is a conversation to be had about who has access to research, which I won’t get into here), I learned just how long the history of queerness in Corea actually is. And it made me wonder: what other examples are out there that are lost because no one thought to record them? Or that were recorded but destroyed? It made me think: how can the poem reject mainstream archive and be its own kind of archive? A poem can run counter to dominant harmful narratives: a poem can excavate, explore, question.

What was your research process like for this poem, and how did the research balance with the writing? Did you compile all the notes and sources on history before you began to write? Did some of the lyric interventions come before the research?

My research process was a mixture of both. The inspiration for this poem—and for many of my other poems that talk about haenyeo—was a 2022 trip to Jeju Island’s Haenyeo Museum. That museum opened up so many doors of knowledge for me, but the research process when I returned to America was definitely imperfect. I have a limited reading comprehension of Korean (I can basically read at the 5th-grade level), so I relied on English translations of Korean websites. For the queer history and women workers’ history, as I mentioned for the former, I read Queer Korea: Toward a Field of Engagement and for the latter, I read Women in the Sky: Gender and Labor in the Making of Modern Korea by Hwasook Nam. I did a combination of reading and taking notes while thinking about how to structure the poem and which information I could translate into a poem.

The judges describe “Hold a Memory” as “formally daring.” You employ and play with a number of forms in this poem, from the above-mentioned documentary poetics to ‘burning’ haibun to erasure. How did these various forms develop in your writing of this poem?

This is so kind and gracious of them to say. I have to shout out George Abraham’s work, whose poems are formally daring, and whom I have learned so much from. With the burning haibun, I also have to shout out fellow 2022 The Watering Hole cohort member Fran Nan for introducing me to the burning haibun form, which was created by another incredible poet, torrin a. greathouse. I wrote one burning haibun after that 2022 Watering Hole retreat, and found inspiration for a second and then a third, the third of which is included in this poem. I was reading up on Busan haenyeo, and Busan’s own unique revolutionary history, and learned that Busan literally means “cauldron mountain.” The burning haibun form requires some element of fire to be included in the first stanza; so when I read this about Busan, I thought, “oh this section will be perfect as a burning haibun.” As for the documentary poetics, I wanted to take the research I learned about queer history and Korean women workers’ history and think about how to incorporate certain research elements into poetry, whether through numbering or footnotes—but still have those poetic elements.

Memory, especially bodily memory, recurs throughout the poem. What do you consider a poem’s role is in combatting against forgetting?

I think about Lucille Clifton’s poem, “samson predicts from gaza the philadelphia fire,” written after the police bombed MOVE in Philadelphia, killing eleven people and destroying homes in the Black neighborhood. Clifton ensures that through her poem—and through her legacy—readers will never forget this atrocity, in spite of American history classes choosing to exclude this. Her poem, weaving in Black and Palestinian solidarity, is also a current reminder of that long history of solidarity. A poem is a witness, but a poem can also ensure that what was witnessed is not forgotten or erased, and unearth what a dominant narrative cannot.

Working with documentary poetics, especially in longform narratives, is a huge feat! Who are some of your inspirations for your writing? Were there any poets or poems in particular that influenced the writing of this poem?

There are so many inspirations I have for poetry, this list would be too long! So for this poem and its sections specifically, I was inspired by Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony, Eve L. Ewing’s 1919, and Tarfia Faizullah’s Seam.

You’ve published two chapbooks: an abridged medical family history & multiverse of selves and dreamterludes. What’s next for your writing?

This long poem is part of a larger project about haenyeo, queerness, and Korean history in the context of U.S. empire. I’m currently working on submitting that project as a manuscript. I first started out writing fiction, though, and I’ve been thinking through the early stages of a potential fantasy sapphic sports project. It’s interesting to be somewhat near the end of a project while also starting to think about a completely different one! Thank you so much for these questions. :)

 

 

---

---

We gratefully acknowledge all of our supporters