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Transitions: Poems by H.C.Kim
(2004, ISBN 0-9723864-6-7, The Hermit Kingdom Press, 7817 Gayl Road, Cheltenham PA 19012 USA, 81pp, £6.99)

Apparently “serious lovers of poetry will find something new every time they read it: absolutely beautiful metaphor, symbolism and writing!” So says the press release from the spooky sounding Hermit Kingdom Press, which also contains an interview with Cambridge student H.C.Kim on the “poetry-in-motion” style he’s supposedly invented. Maybe he did, it’s certainly nothing to be proud of. Anyway, the release makes it clear that “permission is granted to quote from up to 3 poems” (any more and you get turned into a hermit?) so here goes:

     “It is Christmas again
     Time just seems to fly
     It seems like yesterday
     That I celebrated the last Christmas”
                                                          (from It is Christmas Again)

     “I can hear the call of friendly voices in Bangalore
     Wrapped in thousands of years of India’s beautiful
     traditions
     Yet advanced in all things important and modern
     Technological centre of the world”
                                                            (from Bangalore’s Calling)

I hear the voices too – I get cold-calls about fitted kitchens about five times a week.

     “A cow here
     A cow there
     Cows everywhere
     Frolicking in freedom”
                                                                         (from The Cows)

Sorry Mr Kim, they’re not free – shades of the slaughterhouse and all that. Sod it. I can’t resist a fourth:

     “A dog barks
     Another one responds
     Soon
     A chorus of barking dogs

     Where are they all?
     Don’t they ever sleep?
     Do these canines not need a glass of
     Water?”
                                                                             (from Barking)

Dogs drinking glasses of water! That last title says it all. Mr Kim has no excuses for this idiotic writing – he’s Cambridge educated for God’s sake. Maybe God is the problem though.