KIMIKO HAHN
Kimiko Hahn has cast a wide net for subject matter over her ten collections. In the forthcoming The Ghost Forest: new and selected poems, she plays with given forms while creating new ones, and, in doing so, honors past writers. Reflecting her interest in Japanese poetics, her essay on the zuihitsu was published in the American Poetry Review. Hahn is the 2023 recipient of the Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement from The Poetry Foundation. She teaches in the MFA Program for Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York.
When I go, the chair sobs. Her children have grown cold.
I pretty much approach writing in the same way no matter the subject — I am prompted by something and then I try to let go and allow the material to take me. Truthfully, I’ve been writing about grief for decades. In a sense, everything is about loss, isn’t it?
January 19, 2025
