Unexpected Vanilla: Poet Lee Hyemi in conversation with and translator Soje

The Korean Literature Night (KLN) is a monthly discussion group that explores various themes and topics relating to that month’s chosen book.

Poet Lee Hyemi and translator Soje will join us for a poetry reading. They will talk about their work together on the poem collection, Unexpected Vanilla. Soje will talk to us about their experience translating Unexpected Vanilla, and Hyemi will talk about some of her inspirations when writing Unexpected Vanilla. It is a surrealist collection that explores the way that lovers interact and think with one another, and it has had great success already in Korea and the UK.

This event is co-organised with the publisher Tilted Axis Press and supported by LTI Korea (Literature Translation Institute of Korea).

[Event Details]

• Event Date: Wednesday 5th October 7PM-9PM (UK time)
• Venue: Korean Cultural Centre UK (Offline event)
• Free - Booking Essential, Register to Eventbrite page to apply

UNEXPECTED VANILLA

Shortlisted for the 2021 National Translation Prize in Poetry

A sensual, surrealist collection by a young feminist poet, in an equally sensuous and sensitive queer translation.

Lee explores a wide variety of relationships, attractions, and sensations. Her erotically charged, surrealist sensibility can be traced back to the paintings of Leonor Fini, a bisexual Argentinian artist whom she admires. Lee subverts the titular “vanilla” norm without denying its pleasures.

Detailing various intimacies in her “world of the second person,” which feels clandestine but safe from the threat of exposure, Lee explores the Korean language’s scope for ambiguous gendering.

Published by Tilted Axis Press, the new edition of Unexpected Vanilla will be available on 29 September 2022 and includes a new translator’s note by Soje.

Lee Hyemi

Lee Hyemi debuted at age eighteen by winning the JoongAng New Writer's Award in 2006 and became the youngest winner of the JoongAng New Writer's Award after novelist Choi In-ho won in 1963. She has authored the poetry collections Ultraviolet (2011) and Unexpected Vanilla (2016). Her poems have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, and Words Without Borders.

Soje

Soje is the translator of Lee Hyemi’s Unexpected Vanilla (Tilted Axis Press, 2020), Choi Jin-young’s To the Warm Horizon (Honford Star, 2021), and Lee Soho’s Catcalling (Open Letter Books, 2021). They also make chogwa, a quarterly e-zine featuring one Korean poem and multiple English translations.

Host or Publisher London Korean Film Festival