As we continue introducing the #SarahMaguirePrize 2022 shortlist, this week we’re highlighting Unexpected Vanilla written by Lee Hyemi, translated from Korean by Soje and published by Titled Axis Press. Unexpected Vanilla’s exchange of liquids often involves sex, but intercourse can be nonsexual: drinking tea or alcohol, going to the beach, sitting in the same tub, crying, feeling your lover’s sweat on your palm. In this way, Lee explores a wide variety of relationships, attractions, and sensations. Her erotically charged, surrealist sensibility can be traced back to the paintings of Leonor Fini, a bisexual Argentinian artist whom she admires. Lee subverts the titular “vanilla” norm without denying its pleasures. Detailing various intimacies in her “world of the second person,” which feels clandestine but safe from the threat of exposure, Lee explores the Korean language’s scope for ambiguous gendering. The task of the queer translator is to feel out the subtleties with respect, as one does in life, and not presume heterosexuality. Just as Lee spoke out during the 2016 hashtag movement that began calling out sexual violence within South Korean literary circles, her poems recreate and hold space for agency and queerness in women’s sexuality. Find out more about the Sarah Maguire Prize, Unexpected Vanilla & the other 2022 Shortlisted works on the link in our bio🌺 #PoetryTranslation #KoreanPoetry #Artoftranslation #PoetryTranslationCentre #literature