Write Out Loud (Reviews and Writing)

This collection of poems, solely focusing on life, and the people ‘existing’, in North Korea is, to say the least, dark and depressing. The poet has not pulled any punches with this her second collection. We get the bleak picture of life in the communist dictatorship. It is hard to read but certainly compelling.

Yet, somehow, it isn’t entirely convincing. As I continued reading I felt oddly disquieted. Something felt…dramatized. It led me to checking out more about the poet herself. As I suspected, it turns out that while she has family links to North Korea, she herself was born in New York and has lived in the US all her life. She identifies as Korean American (from what I can source online – there’s very little on her) and there is nothing to indicate she has any first hand experience of life in North Korea. I’m surprised she has not faced more criticism – in much the same way British writer Monica Ali did for Brick Lane – for being a kind of a ‘fake’. Perhaps it says more about the fact that we in the west don’t actually know an awful lot about North Korea: just what we get from the news and reruns of MASH? So we just accept her words because they fit our world view? Anyway, she’s won plenty of accolades but I simply don’t see it.

I guess this means this all feels much more like propaganda rather than lived experience. Don’t get me wrong – I have no love for North Korea nor am I doubting that any of the things this poet writes of may have happened – and often. I just doubt the authenticity.

Is that a bad thing? No, not necessarily. All governments and media present some form of propaganda – either positively about themselves or negatively about whoever is considered ‘the enemy’ at any current time. And if they don’t, we do it ourselves anyway. We tell our families, friends, neighbours, colleagues or whoever our views and why our views are right. We spread our own biases. It’s what humans do. That does give us core values and beliefs essential for society to function. But it leads to stereotype and discrimination when  continued in peace time for too long.

So this collection of poems is a fascinating and often heartrending work but don’t mistake it for authoritative statements of facts. You might think that a strange thing to say – who thinks of poetry as a collection of ‘facts’? But this poet writes with such grim vivid in-your-face lines that sometimes it reads more like a list of war crimes than it does poetry. I liked that, but it was irksome to disbelieve the heart of it all.

Social Entrepreneur, educationalist, bestselling author and journalist, D K Powell is the author of the bestselling collection of literary short stories “The Old Man on the Beach“. His first book, ‘Sonali’ is a photo-memoir journal of life in Bangladesh and has been highly praised by the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. Students learning the Bengali language have also valued the English/Bengali translations on every page. His third book is ‘Try not to Laugh’ and is a guide to memorising, revising and passing exams for students.

Both ‘The Old Man on the Beach’ and ‘Sonali’ are available on Amazon for kindle and paperback. Published by Shopno Sriti Media. The novel,’The Pukur’, was published by Histria Books in 2022.

D K Powell is available to speak at events (see his TEDx talk here) and can be contacted at dkpowell.contact@gmail.com. Alternatively, he is available for one-to-one mentoring and runs a course on the psychology of writing. Listen to his life story in interview with the BBC here.

Ken writes for a number of publications around the world. Past reviewer for Paste magazine, The Doughnut, E2D and United Airways and Lancashire Life magazine. Currently reviews for Northern Arts Review. His reviews have been read more than 7.9 million times.

Get a free trial and 20% off Shortform by clicking here. Shortform is a brilliant tool and comes with my highest recommendation.

Social Entrepreneur, educationalist, bestselling author and journalist, D K Powell is the author of the bestselling collection of literary short stories “The Old Man on the Beach“. His first book, ‘Sonali’ is a photo-memoir journal of life in Bangladesh and has been highly praised by the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. Students learning the Bengali language have also valued the English/Bengali translations on every page. His third book is ‘Try not to Laugh’ and is a guide to memorising, revising and passing exams for students.

Both ‘The Old Man on the Beach’ and ‘Sonali’ are available on Amazon for kindle and paperback. Published by Shopno Sriti Media. The novel,’The Pukur’, was published by Histria Books in 2022.

D K Powell is available to speak at events (see his TEDx talk here) and can be contacted at dkpowell.contact@gmail.com. Alternatively, he is available for one-to-one mentoring and runs a course on the psychology of writing. Listen to his life story in interview with the BBC here.

Ken writes for a number of publications around the world. Past reviewer for Paste magazine, The Doughnut, E2D and United Airways and Lancashire Life magazine. Currently reviews for Northern Arts Review. His reviews have been read more than 7.9 million times.

Get a free trial and 20% off Shortform by clicking here. Shortform is a brilliant tool and comes with my highest recommendation.