A Celebration of Poetry with Li-Young Lee

On Friday, March 31 Hopkins was honored to welcome visiting poet Li-Young Lee to campus for our annual Celebration of Poetry. Lee spoke at an all-school assembly, and shared some of his poetry, both published and new, which explores themes of family, crisis, and immigration. Born in 1957 of Chinese parents in Jakarta, Indonesia, Lee learned early about loss and exile. His great grandfather was China’s first republican President; and his father, a deeply religious Christian, was physician to Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Lee’s parents escaped to Indonesia. In 1959, his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno’s jails, fled Indonesia with his family to escape anti-Chinese sentiment. After a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964.

Throughout the morning, Lee spoke with classes in the Calarco Library. A common theme in the questions from students touched on the balance of writing about a subject versus writing for an audience. For Lee, the audience is a witness to the poem, the poem does not exist for the audience. “I believe the most important thing poetry can do is [present] a human voice possessed by something bigger than itself, whether its love, rage, pain, God, fear of death. [The poem is] about that human voice divinized by this encounter with something greater than itself, and we [the audience] get to witness that.”

Lee has published four critically acclaimed books of poetry. He currently lives in Chicago with his wife and two sons.

Lee was invited to speak at Hopkins by the Celebration of Poetry Committee, pictured above. The committee had a number of Lee's poems printed on signs that are placed around campus for the community to enjoy as they go about their day. Many thanks to Li-Young Lee for his gracious and inspiring visit, and to the committee for making it possible. 

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