Myung Mi Kim (b. South Korea / USA)
1957
Born in 1957 in Seoul, South Korea, Myung Mi Kim immigrated with her family to the United States when she was nine years old, growing up the Midwest.
She earned her BA degree from Oberlin College, her MA from The Johns Hopkins University, and a MFA degree from the University of Iowa. She lectured for several years on creative writing at San Francisco State before becoming a Professor of English at the State University of New York, Buffalo, where she holds the James H. McNulty Chair.
Asian poet and critic Timothy Yu places Kim in a group of Asian American poets at the close of the 20th century (also including John Yau and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge) who have focused on "fragmentation, linguistic exploration, and cultural hybridity". Her work has been described as having the strongest influence on the direction of Asian American poetry throughout the 2000s.
Her collection of poems Under Flag(1991) won the Multicultural Publishers Exchange Award of Merit; subsequent collections include Civil Bound (2019), Penury (2009), River Antes (2006), Commons (2002), DURA (1999), and The Bounty(1996).
Among the many subjects Kim’s poetry explores are issues of colonization, immigration, dislocation, and the personal effects of history.
Kim is the subject of the book The Subject of Building Is a Process / Light Is an Element: essays and excursions for Myung Mi Kim (2008).
BOOKS OF POETRY
Under the Flag (Berkeley, California: Kelsey Street Press, 1991); The Bounty (Tucson, Arizona: Chax Press); Dura (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1999); Spelt(with Susan Gevirtz) (a+bend press, 2000); Commons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); River Antes (Buffalo: Atticus/Finch, 2006); Penury (Richmond, California: Omnidawn, 2009); Civil Bound (Richmond, California: Omnidawn, 2019)