Monica Sok

Jul 11, 2024 | thebeliever.net | Monica Sok

She senses that I’m surviving so she doesn’t want to bother me. When she calls me, I whisper, I’m in the library,and we don’t talk for days. It’s my fault that I forget to call. Mother, I’m not prepared for college. In Economics, I’m learning the invisible hand theorybut scribbling poems in the margins. In World Politics,I scour the textbook but find no Khmer faces, no Khmer names. My mother is not an academic and cannot help me. When grandma falls in the hallway, nobody wants to tell me.

Apr 16, 2024 | arts.gov | Monica Sok |Donald Byrd

In my poems, Em Bun weaves night and day, mourning the disappearance of her firstborn son. She weaves using her own hair—long, silver strands that grow out of grief. Seeking refuge in her loom, she works tirelessly. The persona of Em Bun in my poetry is not so far from my real grandmother, my lok yeay. A traditional silk weaver, she didn’t use her hair to weave; she used silk scraps donated by a local tie factory in York, Pennsylvania.

Apr 14, 2023 | washingtonpost.com | Fady Joudah |Kwame Dawes |Marilyn Hacker |Monica Sok

What is poetry? Why does poetry matter? Does it? These questions are often posed during National Poetry Month. They are also boring. Year after year, poetry endures, whether it has definition or significance. So when I began curating a collection of poems to feature for National Poetry Month, the word that nagged at me was not "poetry" but "national." How do you decide what to include in a nation's poetry when the nation is fraught?