I was nine years old when I immigrated to the U.S. My body of work attempts to understand this “yes,” the heterogeneous meaning of this “yes.”

I am asked often whether my shift from one language to another (Korean to English) “made me into a poet.” Over time I have realized that I invariably answer, “yes,” to this question. Read below a full detailed bio/author statement on her history followed by a detailed publication bibliography:Īn in depth biographical and publication history reflection: Her collection of poems Under Flag (1991) won the Multicultural Publishers Exchange Award of Merit subsequent collections include The Bounty (1996), DURA (1999), Commons (2002), River Antes (2006), and Penury (2009). She earned a BA from Oberlin College, an MA from The Johns Hopkins University, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She immigrated with her family to the United States at the age of nine and was raised in the Midwest. She has taught at San Francisco State University and in the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo.

Kim’s work seeks “a relationship with readers that owns to and remains critical of the political and systematic nature of that encounter,” from books that construct their own grammar to lyric speech that explores the problem of silence to work that foregrounds practice as performance.' (Jacket 2 sidebar intro) A large feature on her work, including criticism and a series of interviews, appeared on Jacket 2: here is a link to one of those works: Myung Mi 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). As CJ Martin states, she 'explores the problem of legibility: legibility of the book, of the subject, of the work of art. Author of 7 books of poetry, and professor at Univ of Buffalo, NY, Myung Mi Kim is known for her strong explorations of history, personal and political narratives in fragmented space which open the page and the English language to the othernesses in all of us.

Dura by Myung Mi Kim