Poetry Potluck III (ft. Emily Yoon, Wo Chan, Sueyen Juliette Lee, & Kristin Chang)

We’re bringing you another episode of Poetry Potluck featuring audio from our favorite AAWW poetry events and showcasing exciting poets of the moment. In Poetry Potluck 3, we celebrate Emily Jungmin Yoon’s debut collection of poetry, A Cruelty Special to our Species. As the Poetry editor for The Margins, Emily has cultivated a special home for Asian American poetry in all its richness, and we’re thrilled to celebrate her collection.

Emily Jungmin Yoon collects testimony and confronts history in her debut collection, A Cruelty Special to Our Species. The poems in this book are records of earthly and human violence—the sexual slavery of Korean comfort women, lives lost during natural disasters, and the everyday, accumulating ways that women hurt and are made to silently accept that pain. These are poems deeply invested in the minutiae of language, how one word leads to the next, connecting sound, rhythm, and meaning between languages, poets, and women.

She has invited three poets to read alongside her; Wo Chan, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, and Kristin Chang. They read poems about friendship on mushrooms, a roast duck elegy to restaurant families, and environmental erotica about condensation.

Here’s programs assistant Tiffany Tran Le, who introduces each writer. Thanks for listening.