Watching Television in a Love Motel by Haro Lee

Unexpected, untraditional and surprisingly moving, the four sections of this new collection move us through a series of television viewing schedules – Daytime Television, Primetime Television, Late Night Television and finally the Graveyard Slot. They also spin us around the world from Aotearoa to South Korea and also to the United States.

The first three sections follow a traditional pattern, with seven poems in each. It is the Graveyard Slot that delivers a powerful but different burst of nostalgia; a continuous prose poem of 38 sections, it covers just over forty pages. The author goes to live with her Grandmother in an old part of Seoul which has been condemned for demolition. Here is a little scene setting:

“Our little neighbourhood in Noryangjin, Seoul, was just one street, about 500 feet long, full of the lives of ajummas and ajusshis. Those middle aged women and men who lived as shopkeepers, fishmongers, hairdressers, hagglers, shamans, churchgoers, messengers of God and gossip. For so many families – for many, many years – this street in Noryangjin existed. Here we had lived.” 

The depiction has a host of characters, occupations, oddities and endearments. I loved the simplicity of the narrative, seen through the eyes of the twenty-two-year-old author returning to live in Seoul having grown up in Aotearoa. Experiencing the same home her mother grew up in and seeing the same scenes around her. It is a world and a way of life on the cusp of vanishing and so is precious.

The observations in South Korea are also interesting. “The nation as we know it today is one of perpetual construction – it strives to be a better version of itself, to build with reckless abandon, to prove the absolute power of modernity. Buildings get knocked down around the clock; businesses are literally seasonal.”

While the Graveyard Slot is anything but what its name suggests, the earlier sections do carry strong links to those TV themes. In Daytime Television, I particularly liked the poem called simply “Maria Callas”, which begins:

“Because my mother loves you,

you sing in my apartment.”

And concludes with these wonderful lines:

                                                “Even

so, you are only to be listened to

in moments when I miss her.

If brought out too often, just as

any gold-rimmed porcelain

becomes a dinner plate, you

would only be a voice to me.”

In the same section is a longer poem called “How to Refill a Disposable BIC Lighter”. It chronicles five days with a girl called Kay and plenty of drugs in the form of “an 8 ball of cocaine”. The poem ends with this beautiful highlight:

“So five days pass. My only souvenir

is Kay’s Playboy lighter

in the back pocket of my jeans.

For a long time, until the lighter

runs out of fluid, I spark it

and the first couple of puffs

are always for her. It’s just a piece

of plastic, but while it works,

it’s the most precious thing I own.”

I really enjoyed Haro Lee’s first collection of poetry, it was gritty and real but with a sense of nostalgia too. I look forward to reading more of her work.

Reviewer: Marcus Hobson

Te Herenga Waka University Press