Featured Interview: E.J. Koh
Up the Staircase Quarterly: Your debut book of poetry, A Lesser Love (winner of the Pleiades Press Editors Prize), was just released in October. What can you tell us about the process of formulating this book? Was this a long-term project that spanned several years, or did it come together more quickly? Was it difficult to decide which poems made the cut? What in particular were you hoping to investigate or confront with this collection?
E.J. Koh: The poems hovered around since 2009. They waited eight years to get home—to settle down and rest inside the book I call a house. The structure of a house makes room for visitors. It gives the poems a chance to be visited by others rather than by my haunting self. All the poems made it, whether in form or relation; they birthed each other, un-concealed one another, and therefore, are inseparable, interconnected.
The collection has, in many ways, confronted me. It isn’t for everyone. This must be made clear. The collection is not out to change the world. It’s only out there to be with them.
UtSQ: A Lesser Love is split into three sections: Heaven, War, and Love. I’m curious about the supposed polarity of these section titles and the poems that cut the distance between them. How are these sections connected or disconnected to one another and to the book as a whole? Why was it important to create these divisions?
EK: I imagine if you opened my brain, the divisions would be the same. You’d get a scalpel and tug on some tissue, and go, “This is Heaven.” Wiggling another section, “And here’s War. Behind all this stuff right here. The part that lights up. That’s Love.” If Heaven, War, and Love were colors, they’d give the sky wild dimension, flames and puffs, without making it unlike the sky we already know from our youth. But all this is to say: it’s not only the location or appearance or sound—but Heaven, War, and Love feel like getting to truth.
UtSQ: “Pain becomes meaning,” you wrote in your poem “Father in His Old Age”. Pain is demonstrated and discussed in various ways throughout A Lesser Love. Pain is history, memory, but also permeates the present. Pain is purged through the stories of others, as well as more personal confessions. What role does pain play in these poems? What was your intent in incorporating this theme into your work?
EK: My father sees the present as the revenge of the past. I would grow up paranoid of my past constantly taking revenge against me…in my present. It torpedoes your concept of time. Think about if I was only scared of a clown. But I was running madly from time itself that sought to undo me. This is how he demonstrated meaning into present action. Make it matter now--make it mean something so it won’t kill you later. Pain comes, not from the pain we know, but the pain we don’t know that is coming for us. Even through our children. This was what I was born into, and what I was tasked to observe. It took me decades to be present without the past.
E.J. Koh: The poems hovered around since 2009. They waited eight years to get home—to settle down and rest inside the book I call a house. The structure of a house makes room for visitors. It gives the poems a chance to be visited by others rather than by my haunting self. All the poems made it, whether in form or relation; they birthed each other, un-concealed one another, and therefore, are inseparable, interconnected.
The collection has, in many ways, confronted me. It isn’t for everyone. This must be made clear. The collection is not out to change the world. It’s only out there to be with them.
UtSQ: A Lesser Love is split into three sections: Heaven, War, and Love. I’m curious about the supposed polarity of these section titles and the poems that cut the distance between them. How are these sections connected or disconnected to one another and to the book as a whole? Why was it important to create these divisions?
EK: I imagine if you opened my brain, the divisions would be the same. You’d get a scalpel and tug on some tissue, and go, “This is Heaven.” Wiggling another section, “And here’s War. Behind all this stuff right here. The part that lights up. That’s Love.” If Heaven, War, and Love were colors, they’d give the sky wild dimension, flames and puffs, without making it unlike the sky we already know from our youth. But all this is to say: it’s not only the location or appearance or sound—but Heaven, War, and Love feel like getting to truth.
UtSQ: “Pain becomes meaning,” you wrote in your poem “Father in His Old Age”. Pain is demonstrated and discussed in various ways throughout A Lesser Love. Pain is history, memory, but also permeates the present. Pain is purged through the stories of others, as well as more personal confessions. What role does pain play in these poems? What was your intent in incorporating this theme into your work?
EK: My father sees the present as the revenge of the past. I would grow up paranoid of my past constantly taking revenge against me…in my present. It torpedoes your concept of time. Think about if I was only scared of a clown. But I was running madly from time itself that sought to undo me. This is how he demonstrated meaning into present action. Make it matter now--make it mean something so it won’t kill you later. Pain comes, not from the pain we know, but the pain we don’t know that is coming for us. Even through our children. This was what I was born into, and what I was tasked to observe. It took me decades to be present without the past.
UtSQ: One of the first poems in A Lesser Love is “Confession”, a piece particularly fascinating from a writer’s perspective. The need to divulge one’s story, “I have never told anyone / everything” hints at what drives many to become writers. How has the act of confessing positively influenced your work? Has it ever hindered your writing? How do you decide what NOT to say?
EK: I say everything. This is what I think. Then, I go into non-fiction and arrive to greet people who say everything harder than I’ve ever seen. When I go into non-fiction, I’m scared again. I don’t know what I’m doing. I haven’t given enough. I haven’t given—at all. That is to say, I’m still learning “how to” and I’ve not broached the edge of where or when to stop.
UtSQ: Tell us about your first significant literary encounter. How did this experience inspire you, or shape you, into the writer you have become?
EK: My first literary encounter was my elementary school teacher who asked why I’d try for the spelling bee and what the biggest word I knew was. I said, “Masturbation.” You must know, I’d previously been a mute and recommended for a learning disabilities program. Still, I was this small, conscious thing, and even I could sense this teacher’s smug-ass tone. I remember her short red hair and her Christmas sweater. Then, a word came to me I couldn’t have possibly known before the perfect moment for its use. Glorious, I thought.
UtSQ: What do you find exciting, hopeful, or promising about poetry and/or the literary community right now?
EK: The Seattle literary community has cheered me on—for years. I don’t know why, they just envelop me with their unyielding support. The Seattle Review of Books, Elliot Bay Book Company, The Richard Hugo House, The Stranger, The Seattle Channel, Open Books, The Jack Straw Writers Program, Seattle Weekly, CityArts, Poetry Northwest, Seattle University, University of Washington, and others. It’s an inexhaustible community. Every so often, when I am enticed to hole up inside a room or within my research, they inevitably appear on my doorstep and ask me to share something, and they remind me that I am human and it is quite impossible to be alone, and for this, I am utterly relieved.
UtSQ: What is next for you? Any forthcoming projects, publications, or events?
EK: I’m in the throes of an epistolary memoir. I’m also researching Korean literature, Korean feminism as well as translating two books of Korean poetry by Yi Won with fellowship support from The American Literary Translators Association.
UtSQ: Finally, E.J., if you could have a meal with anyone, dead or alive, real or imaginary, whom would it be, what would you talk about, and what on earth would the two of you eat?
EK: My grandmother Kae Hwa Kang. Her Japanese name was Kumiko. I used to tell her, when I was a little booger, I’d fly her out to Ueno where we’d eat boatloads of Unagi or her favorite, Uni. She taught me ‘rabbit’ in Japanese was ‘usagi.’ I was pretty much an idiot. But I think she never thought so—not even when I was small. She would hold my hand and show me things. Somehow, she knew I was listening and that I understood her. She wore quilted vests of embroidered peonies and soft leather moccasins. She smelled like old coats and camphor wafting out her patches for arthritic pain. Actually, she smelled of everything she owned from velvet-covered photo albums to egg shells she saved for her planters. She carried me across the living room and fed me Japanese tofu skins stuffed with vinegar rice. She told me stories. This was a woman born amid WWII. She survived the Jeju Massacre. She lived through disease-infested, civilian-death-ridden Korean War before giving birth to seven living children, filing for bankruptcy, and immigrating. She planted a rose garden in her front yard where she prayed every morning and night. In the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, I have never lost sight of the greatest company in the world—and that is love.
EK: I say everything. This is what I think. Then, I go into non-fiction and arrive to greet people who say everything harder than I’ve ever seen. When I go into non-fiction, I’m scared again. I don’t know what I’m doing. I haven’t given enough. I haven’t given—at all. That is to say, I’m still learning “how to” and I’ve not broached the edge of where or when to stop.
UtSQ: Tell us about your first significant literary encounter. How did this experience inspire you, or shape you, into the writer you have become?
EK: My first literary encounter was my elementary school teacher who asked why I’d try for the spelling bee and what the biggest word I knew was. I said, “Masturbation.” You must know, I’d previously been a mute and recommended for a learning disabilities program. Still, I was this small, conscious thing, and even I could sense this teacher’s smug-ass tone. I remember her short red hair and her Christmas sweater. Then, a word came to me I couldn’t have possibly known before the perfect moment for its use. Glorious, I thought.
UtSQ: What do you find exciting, hopeful, or promising about poetry and/or the literary community right now?
EK: The Seattle literary community has cheered me on—for years. I don’t know why, they just envelop me with their unyielding support. The Seattle Review of Books, Elliot Bay Book Company, The Richard Hugo House, The Stranger, The Seattle Channel, Open Books, The Jack Straw Writers Program, Seattle Weekly, CityArts, Poetry Northwest, Seattle University, University of Washington, and others. It’s an inexhaustible community. Every so often, when I am enticed to hole up inside a room or within my research, they inevitably appear on my doorstep and ask me to share something, and they remind me that I am human and it is quite impossible to be alone, and for this, I am utterly relieved.
UtSQ: What is next for you? Any forthcoming projects, publications, or events?
EK: I’m in the throes of an epistolary memoir. I’m also researching Korean literature, Korean feminism as well as translating two books of Korean poetry by Yi Won with fellowship support from The American Literary Translators Association.
UtSQ: Finally, E.J., if you could have a meal with anyone, dead or alive, real or imaginary, whom would it be, what would you talk about, and what on earth would the two of you eat?
EK: My grandmother Kae Hwa Kang. Her Japanese name was Kumiko. I used to tell her, when I was a little booger, I’d fly her out to Ueno where we’d eat boatloads of Unagi or her favorite, Uni. She taught me ‘rabbit’ in Japanese was ‘usagi.’ I was pretty much an idiot. But I think she never thought so—not even when I was small. She would hold my hand and show me things. Somehow, she knew I was listening and that I understood her. She wore quilted vests of embroidered peonies and soft leather moccasins. She smelled like old coats and camphor wafting out her patches for arthritic pain. Actually, she smelled of everything she owned from velvet-covered photo albums to egg shells she saved for her planters. She carried me across the living room and fed me Japanese tofu skins stuffed with vinegar rice. She told me stories. This was a woman born amid WWII. She survived the Jeju Massacre. She lived through disease-infested, civilian-death-ridden Korean War before giving birth to seven living children, filing for bankruptcy, and immigrating. She planted a rose garden in her front yard where she prayed every morning and night. In the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, I have never lost sight of the greatest company in the world—and that is love.
About E.J. Koh
E. J. Koh is the author of A Lesser Love, winner of the Pleiades Editors Prize and finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Columbia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry Society of America, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Koh accepted fellowships and scholarships from The MacDowell Colony, The American Literary Translators Association, Kundiman, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and Jack Straw Writers Program. Koh earned her MFA at Columbia University in New York for Creative Writing Poetry and Joint Degree in Literary Translation for Korean and Japanese. She is completing her PhD at the University of Washington for English Language and Literature in Seattle, Washington. She is currently translating two volumes of Korean poetry by Yi Won supported by that ALTA Emerging Translator Fellowship.
