LA-based poet Chiwan Choi will read from and discuss his new poetry collection, Abductions, and also from his debut collection, The Flood.
In Abductions, Choi sets out to write poems about aliens. According to Choi, it seemed like the hot thing to do, with zombie poems and such being published. What he ends up with is a mythology about alien abduction that helps tells the story of his family, including parents who escaped North Korea when they were young, and the miscarriage that he and wife went through.
Choi will discuss the creative process between the two very different poetry collections, and the battles he went through in trying to define the personal/political (The Flood) and myth/fact (Abductions), as well as the opinions he has faced being a fringe member of the literary world, not fully embraced by the mainstream, and yet also not being Korean/Asian enough for the Korean-American/Asian-American community.
