Kyo Lee

We move our tongues dozens of times a day. To eat, to whisper love, to curse someone. But the moment the tongue is cut, that taken-for-granted routine becomes a horrific punishment. Published in 2025, Kyo Lee’s debut poetry collection i cut my tongue on a broken country is highly sensory right from its title. Here, the "tongue" is not merely a physical organ for tasting. It is "Language," it is the "Self," and it is an instrument of "Desire" reaching out to others.

The poet is a young Korean Canadian living in Waterloo, Ontario. It is hard to believe she is still a university student, as her poetry targets the reader's wounds as precisely as an experienced surgeon’s scalpel. It is easy for the writing of young authors to drift into immature sentimentality. However, Kyo Lee’s sentences are different. Her poetry condenses the bewilderment of a stranger thrown into an unfamiliar land, along with her desperate struggle to find her roots, into a "desperate intimacy." A precarious beauty, akin to singing with shards of glass in one's mouth—that is the first impression of this collection.