Yoon's poem "The theory of the bell", which produced the final title of her new collection, highlights this balancing act between the personal and the political. Published for the first time in the March 2017 issue of Poetry Magazine the poem begins with a reminder of Yoon as a student mocking his English, and in the end touches on the current debate about refugees in the United States and the United Kingdom. Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1920s.
"I try to address current events in both Korea and the US, and my own position to live in this historic moment," said Yoon. "It is exhausting to keep up with both countries, especially since both are going through chaotic periods."
Navigating through these difficult spaces is one of the reasons why Yoon was selected as the winner of the Offen Poetry Prize in 2017. The award, given annually by the Poetry and Poetics University Program, is awarded to an established poet in Chicago who then Select a UChicago student to read your work. The winner, Roger Reeves, selected Yoon for his inventive ability to deal with politics and art.
"I think she faces the difficult in a really interesting way and understands that beauty is in that difficulty," Reeves said in his Yoon presentation in the February 2017 reading. "Your ability to assemble several spheres at once I think he can do many things. " I think he's doing an incredible job, incredible. "
added Kyeong-Hee Choi, associate professor of Eastern Asia Languages & Civilizations and Yoon's academic advisor:" Your most recent poems are certainly witnesses, not just of the emergence of a young poet with extraordinary talent, but also of the constant emergence. of a young and serious scholar. "
In addition to juggling her academic studies and poetry, Yoon is also the editor of poetry for The Margins a literary magazine published by the Asian American Writers Workshop He has published poems by contemporaries such as Chen Chen, Fatimah Asghar and Kimiko Hahn, and Yoon has endeavored to publish works that surprise and challenge her, important qualities to help revive the place of poetry in the modern world.
"A lot of people say that poetry is dying, but I think it's because people think that poetry is out of reach or irrelevant," Yoon said. "I think especially when times are tough, poetry is more necessary. "
: this story was adapted from an article that originally appeared in UChicago News in March 2017.
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