by Claire Ehr, ETA ’20
4th September, 2021. Kpop, jjajangmyeon and jampong smells and photobooth pictures adorn the small apartment in Naju. We sing along to the parts we know, hum along to others, harmonize occasionally and interject every now and again with tangents of thoughts from our day. On the side of the fridge, I find a moment of chaos and a moment of calm. A circus of words, cartwheeling over each other, tumble for my attention. As I focus, the Kpop fades, smells dissipate and room decorations become irrelevant. I spend the next 20 minutes playing with the words, meaning metal detector and museum curator rolled into one.
And out comes this poem. It’s reaching at something, some expression of our experience in Korea, of working for the government and of being “in-between”. But it’s also inherently pretty silly. 20 minutes at 11:46 will not produce the world’s next great poem. But poetry doesn’t have to be a competition; art doesn’t have to be “the best” to mean something to those who experience it. It can just be a moment by a fridge in a satellite city, surrounded by music, food and friends.
With that said, I’ve left the other unused words to the side, and invite you to join in with this play: see what you come up with! If the whim beckons, take a moment to engage in poetry and expression; it doesn’t need to be too grand or cerebral. But if you end up writing the world’s next great poem from a set on a fridge, please let me know! I’d love to see what you create and share this kind of creative process with you.