Poetry
Monica Sok is the author of A Nail The Evening Hangs On and Year Zero. Her poetry mythologizes her family’s experiences during the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime and addresses the role of U.S. imperialism in Cambodia. While her early poems come to terms with intergenerational trauma and familial silence, her new work challenges the singular refugee narrative of resiliency while celebrating the refugee lifeworld. Sok teaches at Barnard College at Columbia University. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Stanford University, NEA, and Poetry Society of America. Her new poems appear in POETRY, The Believer and New England Review.
Sok’s project, The Octopus Tree, is a book of poems about the refugee lifeworld––that is, the continually negotiated space of loss and survival. During her residency, Sok will work with residents of the Red Wing Correctional Facility.