“Esther Ra’s A Glossary of Light and Shadow carves a glass lens through which she delivers a pure gift—glacial, crackling, blueing—poems that press into the tongue. Ra delivers an exciting record of self, body, and world, interrogating boundaries of selfhood and nationhood. There’s no mistake so big as war, and these poems tell us to remember what we’ve chosen to forget.”

— E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others and A Lesser Love

“Esther Ra’s words arrive as quiet faith-spangled proof of a poet’s power to navigate and defy the overwhelm of human violence and affliction … Ra offers a sustained lyric meditation on what it means to be alive suspended between—identities, geographies, sensibilities, desires, times. Like bruised Alice far from a mother and sister, Ra’s speaker … moves haunted amidst landmines and cakes to find home in a chapel made of song. In monologues conjuring Randall Jarrell with their empathy and child-like clarity, Ra enacts complex reflections of befriended refugees. In sequences borne from forms appropriated precisely to repurpose constraint (the corona, abecedarian, anagrams), honeyed silken strands leak through taut barbed wires. Ra rearranges shards (political, pestilent, pleading) to illuminate faith, transforming bandaged mouths into bouquets, translating rain into confession, and “eat me!” into embrace. Though its juice stings in the cuts, Ra’s book is an exquisite, delicious prayer for each day to be unwrapped, and savored: elegant, urgent, necessary.”

— Katrina Roberts, author of Likeness

“Once in a while, there’s a book I’ve waited for without knowing I was waiting. Esther Ra’s A Glossary of Light and Shadow is one of those books. Now that these poems are here, I can’t imagine ever having been without them. Prayerful, profoundly compassionate, and utterly generous, they are encouragement in the truest sense: to put heart in. And though the poems never look away from suffering, their empathic witnessing returns me to a sense of wonder at human existence. ‘Today,’ Ra writes, ‘I am given a small, shining life.’ Today—how lucky we are!—we are given this poet, these shining poems.”

— Kasey Jueds, author of The Thicket

“Esther Ra’s stunning full-length debut stings the reader’s eyes with the clarity of fresh daybreak. These poems build affecting images from simple and beautiful language to offer us meditations at the scale of human experience. The poems approach their subject with a wisdom and sensitivity that is rare. The poems speak to the complexity of the Korean peninsula’s political strife and to the emotional complexity of third culture existence in the 21st century. This is a special book.”

— Nate Marshall, author of Finna

creative writing (poems and projects)

 

Poetry Manuscripts

Poetry Youtube channel

A Glossary of Light and Shadow (Diode Editions, 2023)

book of untranslatable things (Grayson Books, 2018)

Prose Manuscripts

Tadpole Pond: upcoming YA novel co-written with Kay Aekyung Sin

Ocean, Elsewhere: upcoming literary adult contemporary novel (read excerpt on The Write Launch here)

The Underwater Railroad (literary unification project)

The Korea Times (Opinion Article): If Spring Arrives

Translations of articles for Daily NK

Selected Prose

The Indiana Review: The Consolations of Snow (2024, recipient of The Indiana Review Creative Nonfiction Prize, selected by Lars Horn)

The Florida Review: A Time to Burn (2023)

orangepeel literary magazine: Rain (2023)

Selected Performances (*invited)

Juris(diction): A Poetry Reading, Stanford Law School (recipient of the Stanford Arts + Justice Grant), April 2024

* Virtual poetry workshop on gratitude, literature, and North Korea, UCLA, February 2021.

* Commencement and Baccalaureate Student Speaker, Whitman College, May 2019.

* Visiting Student Scholar, Performed spoken word and led poetry workshops at California State University of San Bernardino (funded by the Korea Foundation), February 2019. 

* MLK March and Celebration, Performed poetry with collaborating singer on Martin Luther King Jr, civil rights, and justice across different countries. January 2019; January 2016. Walla Walla, WA.

* University of Oxford, Performed at Hertford College Chapel. June 2018. Oxford, UK.

* Freedom Songs Concert, November 2018; November 2017. Walla Walla, WA.

Blackwell’s Bookshop, May 2018. Oxford, UK.

* International Celebration, February 25 2017. Walla Walla, WA.

* DaMa Wines, April 29, 2016. Walla Walla, WA.

College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI), Placed twentieth as student representative for Whitman College, performed group piece on finals stage, September 2015 – May 2016

Selected Poems

Michigan Quarterly Review: a prayer for smallness

Chestnut Review: White Christmas

TulipTree Review: Laundry (semifinalist for Poetry Prize)

Leavings Literary Magazine: wintering with you, the (sum)mer of your name, things I do in the name of you, Lovable

Gulf Stream Magazine: self-portrait without a mirror

diode poetry journal: View from a Torn-out Window, Thaw, my mother turns soft in my grandmother’s arms

Bluestem Magazine: i know it’s annoying

The Good Life Review: (Non)detrimental Reliance

Abandon Journal: love poem with dead leaves & color

The Penn Review: Elegy for my Harabeoji

Lucky Jefferson: lunar new year

American Literary Review: Through the Blurry Window

Painted Bride Quarterly: the liquid truth

Vineyard Literary: First Love with a Knife (recipient of Vineyard Literary Poetry Prize)

The West Review: Want

Sweet Lit: Laundry (recipient of Sweet Lit Poetry Prize)

Breakwater Review: a river runs through your locked mouth (Peseroff Prize finalist)

Josephine Quarterly: Hwanjeolgi

Coastal Shelf Review: Apricots in the Old Country

Boulevard: [Hagar], Bright Nights

The Bellingham Review: A Bouquet of Bandaged Mouths (recipient of the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry)

Sky Island Journal: Autumn, Aubade with North Korean Mother, Apology

Twyckenham Notes (Voices of Color Issue): self-portrait as a child in america, for my friends the black & beautiful

Atlanta Review: What’s In a Name

Red Eft Review: Communion

Ligeia Magazine: Anatomy of a Korean Inheritance (Pushcart Prize recipient), A Lonely City

Border Crossing: (selected for Featured Poet Interview) Some Eyes are the Color of Rain, Self-Portrait Without a Brassiere, My Mother’s Mother (Speaks), Today

The Rumpus: The Girl from No Gun Ri (republished in The Raw Art Review; recipient of the William Wantling Prize), A Quiet Terror

Exposition Review: self-portrait as alice in wonderland (Best of the Net finalist)

Rattle (Poets Respond): At the Border, Late Summer

Watershed Review: Dear America / Beautiful Country, (Han)nam / Korean Boy

CONSEQUENCE Magazine: […—…] (Recipient of the 2017 Women Writing War Poetry Award)

The Scriblerus: You, my Lord

 

“Coupling intellectual curiosity with affective depth … [Esther’s work] conjures an exceptional sense of intimacy … Esther Ra both elucidates her subjects, but also knows when to retreat, when to leave that which is observed unsaid or beyond reach. Committed to better understanding that which it so intently observes, [her work] nonetheless conserves a sense of reverence for that which approaches the unknowable, the holy.”

— Lars Horn, Graywolf Nonfiction Prize-winning author of Voice of the Fish

“… brave and haunted, revelatory and mysterious … [Esther’s work] is a testament to the power of speech over silence”

— Daniel Donaghy, Paterson Prize-winning author of Start the Trouble

“…grapple[s] with the very language that makes war known to us … keen and reverberating”

— Danielle Legros Georges, Poet Laureate of Boston

“[Her work] is like gentle breezes causing ripples …  It resonates all my senses and beyond. It is powerful and at the same time, empowers me.”

— Bomi Hwang, CSUSB Lecturer in World Languages and Literature