Poetry
ISBN 978-1-957746-14-2
p.72
 
Double Exclusion is a poetic, visual journey of distance, fragmentation, and alienation. Written in equal combination of English and Korean, Kim navigates through literal waters, judicial systems, and the limits of poetry with striking attention to the most mundane scenes that paint the picture of a life without consolation. From the painstaking narration of a bleak housing accommodation to the revisioning of language in the spiral of a seashell, the collection observes and maps the world as Kim sees it, double-visioned, in which the poet must re-aim time and again seeking the language of wholeness. This collection is not a work of translation but a work of non-translation, in which the poet moves between languages to avoid detection, speaking in a fullness that few may attune their listening to.
 
PRAISE FOR DOUBLE EXCLUSION:
 
"Double Exclusion is a remarkable achievement of dual natures. Formations of selfhood, and nationhood move away from appropriative assimilation, propagating instead across Korean and English languages in a series of balletic elaborations. Rather than winnowing to approximate truth, the willful exclusion of languages allows for new shore, new answer, new life. In Shantal Jeewon Kim's remarkable vision, the practice of translation is broken and remade, as the poet's many selves break and reemerge to comprehend all the registers of personal and national feelings. Poetry materializing amidst the tragedy of Korea's comfort women, the capsizing of the Sewol ferry, and the immateriality of phasing between two countries, Double Exclusion is an extraordinary debut by an extraordinary poet." Jimin Seo author of OSSIA (Changes Press)
 
Shantal Jeewon Kim is a visual artist and writer based in South Korea and the United States. She studied Art & Technology and Psychology at Sogang University (Seoul, Korea) and is a graduate of the Image Text MFA from Ithaca College (NY, USA). Shantal's conceptual work is at the intersection of memory, melancholy, and translation, exploring both photography and experimental texts medium. Shantal has had 4 solo shows, and participated in several group shows, screenings, and magazine publications. Her image-text monograph When the Wind Blew and the Time Stopped was published by Fifth Wheel Press.