Pirowa Padowa

by Lee Jenny, Archana Madhavan (Translator)

From award-winning South Korean poet Lee Jenny, and translated for the first time into English, comes a collection that takes the reader on a journey through a fantastical linguistic landscape exploring the existential yearning and passions of youth through lively wordplay. These fifty-six poems probe universal, yet complex human emotions—from alienation and disappointment to triumph and resolve—whose ever-shifting gradients are difficult to contain within standard language. Instead, Lee sheds conventional grammar and syntax and makes use of repetition, rhythm, alliteration, and other sonic devices to stretch one’s notions of language and introduce infinite possibilities of meaning. Indeed the title of the collection, PIROWA PADOWA, transliterated from the Korean, expands beyond its definition and serves as an onamatopoeia for the ebb and flow of Lee’s poetic language. In these poems, Lee juxtaposes real-world locations like Peru and Africa with imaginary lands like Kariponia, populating them with indefinable creatures that speak in neologisms—in doing so, she asks us to abandon preconceived notions of any specific place or word to arrive at our own interpretations.

104 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2025

Reviews

[Dora Prieto · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books of poetry I've read this year. Archana Madhavan’s translation is so alive to Lee Jenny’s wordplay, sound, weirdness, and ambiguity; it lets the poems remain mysterious while still carrying all their emotional weight and immense childlike wonder.