Meet Ae Hee Lee
Born in South Korea and raised in Peru, Ae Hee Lee is an immigrant, scholar, translator, and poet currently living in Milwaukee. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Bedtime || Riverbed (Compound Press, 2017) and Dear bear, (Platypus Press, 2021). She holds an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her poetry has been published by or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, New England Review, and Southern Review, and elsewhere.
2021 Judge Tiana Clark’s Praise for Connotary
There is an exquisiteness to the jewel-like poems inside Connotary. This is a poet who polishes every line with stunning prosody, imagery, and a keen attention to aesthetics. Each poem shimmers as the poet investigates the endless relationship to family and language. Korean, Spanish, and English are braided throughout the chapbook as the speaker in these poems negotiates the idea of home in what we lose, gain, carry, pass down, and offer up inside the various translations. Each poem is a gleaming facet. Each poem is a miracle of its own making. Each poem is a gesture at defining the abstractions and comparisons between words and worlds. I was left in awe at the dazzling mastery.
—Tiana Clark is the author of I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), and Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition.