Don Mee Choi, Petite Manifesto

"In ‘Yellow Translation’, the first stanza from Gulliver’s Travels in which beggars are observed, lice, ‘Limbs of these Vermin’, nausea. The second stanza (‘What spectacle does an Asian eye behold, you ask? Enormous noses. RITZ crackers are impressive too, their enormous holes.’)

Holes, too, returning frequently throughout, from an undesirable translation from English-language editors to the holes made in the lands and bodies in Korea by US bombs. Everyday speech, alongside academic research and translated fiction, takes on new meanings. But recurring sonic/aural experiences (betty=butter=batter, or Freud/Frau Frau/fraud) are dotted throughout, while lines like ‘Let me put an end to grammar of obedience and colonialism with fetal ontology—that was my intention, eggbition. My tongue is forever attached to nipples’ dare us as readers to find a piece of colony to butcher, or at least think about how poems can do this." Overland

Don Mee Choi was born in Seoul and grew up in Seoul and Hong Kong. She now lives in Seattle. She is the author of The Morning News is Exciting (Action Books, 2010) and a recipient of a 2011 Whiting Writers Award and the 2012 Lucien Stryk Translation Prize. Her most recent translation titles are Princess Abandoned (Tinfish, 2012), Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream(Action Books, 2014), and I’m OK, I’m Pig! (Bloodaxe Books, 2014). She has a pamphlet of talks forthcoming from Wave Books. 

Description: Petite Manifesto consists of poems about grammar, translation, immigration, debt, Gulliver, and Betty, including an explanation on Betty’s home. It also has art inspired by Melanie Klein.

Don Mee Choi, Petite Manifesto  

28pp. 2014. ISBN 978-1-922181-23-7

dB series 1 (November 2014): 10 collections of poetry edited by Pam Brown, designed by Chris Edwards.