TRANSLATING 할머니HALMEONI SERIES (BOOKFORM)
The book's etching pieces transcribed some of my grandmother's drawings. Throughout her life, she kept journals where she sustained a practice of automative writing. My long-term project is to find a way to translate these drawings, utilizing an intuitive and technical framework that analyzes her gestures through impression and feeling. This book is my first endeavor to translate the images into a poem that is sequenced through my own work and the work of other Korean/Korean-American poets. The back of the book includes scanned images of her drawing and stills from 통일T’ONGIL (2023), a short film I made the summer she passed away.
Sources included:
Dictee, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Phantom Wings, Kim Hyseoon
DMZ Colony, Don Mee Choi
할머니Halmeoni’s journals
Text: awaken and let the water overflow into stream
opens cover page flips open
[scene of still ocean]
opens to first page
[excerpt from Book of Change, IChing]
flips up half circular shape and reveals text
Text: mother cradles
turns page
[excerpt from Book of iChing]
unfolds weathered paper with typewritten phrases
Text: maybe it☒
a soft hallowing.
vast projection
of moutainous roks spearheading
out of oceanscape
reminding us.
turns page
[image of an iota, sumukhwa 수묵화 inkwash]
Text: pheonixs(fold)ound
flips back to half circular shape and folds it back in
flips page and flips again
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
(left side) Text: the language the language
pulls out accordian paper
Text: the happening spea(fold)p spe(fold)king
continues to pull out accordian paper
Text: sight o f the pe pheonix
[image of an iota, sumukhwa 수묵화 inkwash]
folds paper back in and turns the page
[excerpt from Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, with selected highlights]
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
(left side) Text: moths weave silkhanbok
white dustsnows, fingers
pluck 12 silkstrings;
a ballad for the occasion.
turns page
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
(left side) Text: melodyscz(fold)meldoyscape
overlayed on folded Kozo paper
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
(left side) Text: a breaking
she cries,
overlayed on strip of torn Kozo paper
flips page while birds sing
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
(left side) Text: the song
overlayed on strip and folded Kozo paper
flips page
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
(left side) Text: an image of a bird
flips page and birds sing
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
(left side) Text: she spreads her wings,
the empress upon the floor
[excerpt from Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon]
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
Text: birhting through fire
(left side) [excerpt from Phantom Pain wings by Kim Kyesoon]
turns page
(right side) Text: each, time. each. one by one.
memories slip thorugh. nothing is random
everything. everything. every time.
image of my grandmother washing my hair
(left side) [excerpt from DMZ Colony, Don Mee Choi]
Text: :it was speaking
:it was, it was
turns page
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
(left side) [excerpt from DMZ Colony, Don Mee Choi]
Text: my grandmother spoke in strangetongue singing one song
turns page
(right side) [image of archived grandmother’s drawing]
(left side) Text: i heard in the waterswomb.
hearing again and again i
turns to back of book
flips book
opens from back end
Text: i will share with you all a story from he
her grave
moving images
of water
and grandmother
flipping
to Text: LOCATION
for my grandmother
tell me what you were thinking
as you sat on the heavenly mountain,
____Baekdu, the sacred volcano that
crosses over the borders. close to the
periphery-just enough to feel
image of bojagi in sand
flipping into
grandmother’s journals
and close frame of bojagi unburied
and grandmother drawing
two braids stretching agcorss frame
with bojagi in the corner
white hanbok
journaling red ink
a circle of rocks
around where she stands
her mountain
Baekdu San—
memories
unfound
in
water.