Eloquent Experiments

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here.

Last spring, at my all-girls independent school, I taught a senior-year poetry workshop called "A Portfolio of Selves: Four Asian American Women Poets," focusing on the work of Monica Youn, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Celina Su, and Jenifer Sang Eun Park. The students responded enthusiastically and imaginatively to the variety of subject matter and style in these very different poets. I was immensely impressed by the students' eagerness to learn from these eloquent experiments in contemporary poetry.

The poems written by one student, Charlotte Baker, stood out for their self-assured adoption of the means on offer to convey her very own ends. I had very little to offer her in terms of feedback. The poems were whole, or almost so. The poems were incredibly vulnerable too. They transcended the writing exercises to become genuine investments in discovery and feeling. They have now been published in the Evergreen Review, alongside beautifully fitting drawings by the artist Elizabeth Ibarra. I hope you like the poems and the art as much as I do.

Send me some poems to consider for the Evergreen Review. My email for the NYC-based journal is jeeleong@evergreenreview.com. We pay, as we should.
 
Jee Leong Koh
October 15, 2020

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