"The Reason" by Worlan Kim
Live Reading!
April 11 at Nox Gallery
440 S 400 W Ste H
7:00 pm
April 12 at Taylorsville Redwood Campus
AD 226
9:00 am
Wolran Kim has been writing poetry for most of her life.
Being fascinated by the beauty of the words, she began writing when she was
young, and that love for the art has been carried into her adulthood. Along
with the Salt Lake Community College Chapbook competition, her poetry has won
various other awards such as the Literature Award for Overseas Koreans by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Korea. Although she finds herself busy
with classes at the university of Utah, Wolran still continues to write poetry
on a regular basis.
When Wolran Kim won the SLCC 2012 Chapbook Contest she was
surprised… because she had forgotten about it.
Last year Wolran entered the contest at the request of an instructor but
was certain she didn’t have a chance to win. Not because she didn’t write good
poetry, she knew she did. The problem was she didn’t think her English was good
enough to win.
Born and raised in Korea, Wolran won a poetry contest when
she was a child with a poem entitled “A Rainy Day.” However at such a young age
she didn’t find poetry terribly fascinating or enjoyable. Poetry to her was
tedious, boring and hard to understand. While she had already displayed her
knack for it, she decided only to write poetry for school assignments or
writing contests she didn’t think she would win.
Fast forward to 1988 and she was moving to the United States
after finishing college in Korea. In the years to come life became what it does
for many of us. Soon Wolran had a job and a family to tend to. Such a thing as
poetry was rarely thought of as more than a past memory and nothing considered
at all important. “My dreams were my children,” she said during an interview
with her, “but they grew up.”
In 2007 and at the age of forty one Wolran discovered poetry
again. “One day poetry came to me like it was destiny. Either that or it
accidentally popped up through the internet during my mid-life crisis.” Wolran
wrote playfully in an essay about her writing past. She had been only surfing
the web, an innovation that still amazes her today, and happened to stumble on
a poem. Unfortunately she can’t remember the title of the poem today or where
she found it online but she does remember losing sleep that night as she thought
on the powerful words she had read. This feeling drove her to the keyboard and
she began to write poetry again. “I started to awaken all the memories in my
mind that were sleeping in my heart,” She described the catharsis, “and I
thought that I need to write poems for my tired self, struggling from reality.”
Today Wolran attends the University of Utah after
transferring late last year. She writes her poetry every day and publishes some
of her shorter and simpler works in The Korean Times of Utah. When asked about
her technique and how she is able to conjure up the images and emotion in her
poetry she replied, “Well I translate it all from Korean, I write it in Korean
and my daughter helps me to translate. But not all of it translates well from
Korean to English.” Hence the reason she was convinced she wouldn’t win the
SLCC Chapbook Contest last year, so sure that her English wasn’t good enough
that she completely forgot about it.
Out of some 1300 poems she has written, Wolran has only
translated at best fifty of them, many of which will appear in the Chapbook
being published this year. On top of the Chapbook Contest Wolran also won an
award for Overseas Koreans by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Korea
last year. She intends on still writing poetry and entering other contests,
however she won’t write poetry for the sake of that. Wolran describes her need
and desire to write poetry as something that she simply has to do, there is no
way around it. Poetry is, “a miracle and a mystical experience, showing me that
not everything is out of reach in this world.”
As a result of her win the SLCC English department will be
publishing her book of poems Reason next month. There will be a reading of her
work, refreshments, a chance to meet Wolran as well as pick up a copy of her
book at Nox Contemporary Art Gallery, 440 South 400 East Suite H, on April
11th, 2013 at 7pm. It is free and all
are welcome to join us for the unveiling of her book. On April 12th there will
also be a meeting where Wolran’s work will be read and a book can be picked up
for free. The event will be at the Redwood Taylorsville Campus at 9:30-11:30am
in AD226. The English 1820 class will also be printing and binding the book,
come and see how it’s done and even bind a copy of Reason yourself to take
home!
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