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Kim Myeong-sun was the first woman writer in modern Korean literary history. There are not many photographs that remain of her: short hair, a faint smile on firmly closed lips, and eyes that must have carried a daring gaze, if only we could see them in colour.
The three poems that follow—bruises, saemal, and quiet sunshine—are written as a conversation with what resists easy language. They move through questions of identity, memory, and the quieter afterlives of trauma: how harm imprints itself in the body and how to translate the seemingly untranslatable.
Three Poems by Beth Eunhee Hong: bruises, new speech, quiet sunshine.
It was October 2025 when Yun Ko-eun and I met at Fairshot Café in Covent Garden. She greeted me with a polite but warm bow as if I was her long-time friend she hadn’t seen in a while.
As we mark the soft launch of this issue in recognition of International Women’s Day and its call to Give to Gain, Nabillera turns toward the idea of reciprocity: what we offer one another through language, what we inherit, and what becomes possible when knowledge is carried forward through care, mentorship, and translation.