Every night, South Korean poet Hwang In-suk takes to the streets of her Seoul neighborhood, Haebangchon, pushing a shopping cart and trailed by stray cats. She feeds them out of recycled instant-rice containers, and her nocturnal routine has informed her poetry about loneliness and impermanence. Hwang’s work documents the milieu of convenience store clerks, street sweepers and other late-night workers, as well as her favorite muses, cats. She has written about one-fifth of her oeuvre on cats, making wistful, whimsical observations about them and the humans who struggle to understand them. Hwang’s poems often fuse details of her corner of Seoul with the emotions of their wry, melancholic speakers. Her work has earned her many national literary prizes, and her readings draw diverse audiences. Hwang’s relationship with cats is more than perfunctory, and her poems reflect her conviction that Seoul is a place where the rich and poor live in separate worlds.
Categories