Jihyun Yun

Anonymous Grocer 9/30: [Teeth, their in limbs]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
On this fine Day 9, I present you with the Korean-American poet, Jihyun Yun. After listening to today’s episode, I encourage you to pick up a copy of her collection, Some Are Always Hungry. Through recipes, rationing, and animal dismemberment, Yun presents a reclamation of identity and womanhood. She uses food in all its mythical and visceral manifestations to expose and interrogate the inequalities and sacrifices, the leavings and desires that propel humans to protect one another and tear each other apart.
 
Discover more about this poet here. 
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Wisdom from Writers: A Conversation with Jihyun Yun

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

In the collection, the mouths of the three main speakers struggle to articulate a kinder world still unfathomable to them, in efforts to forge a path there. Articulation is conjuring. I believe it’s the realest magic our bodies are capable of.

I recently talked with poet Jihyun Yun about her prize-winning debut poetry collection, Some are Always Hungry; the mouth as metaphor; a few favorite Korean fairy tales; and the ways in which language connects food, women, and violence. You can read the full interview here on The Rumpus.

I do find it very troubling in itself that it’s easier to imagine the female body as food, as something hunted, as prey, but I think it’s also speaking to a truth of how language, too, can be a knife, and how it is often brandished.

*

Find out more about Jihyun Yun on jihyunyun.com. Jihyun’s book Some are Always Hungry (September 2020) is available from University of Nebraska Press.