Translation Tuesday: Two poems by Kim Ki-taek

An interaction with a strangely familiar cat and an ode to chewing gum, by the acclaimed South Korean poet

By Kim Ki-taek, Eun-Mi Yang and Ed Bok Lee for Translation Tuesdays by Asymptote, part of the Guardian Books Network

The award-winning poet Kim Ki-taek has been described as “an observer of minute and microscopic details” with a rational but compelling style of description that pulls you in to his universe, where no encounter is ever mundane. The art critic John Berger, who gave us Ways of Seeing, would have found much to commend about the two poems presented below.

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief, Asymptote