I, Too, Dislike It

MIA YOU

i too dislike it cover

Purchase from SPD here.

For me this book is a companion, an aria to bodily discomfort and impossibility. I want to say more about the body of the writing as being Korean-American, “post-colonial,” female – no, woman’s – globalized high capitalist, but Mia You’s lyrical list goes on, like all that is required, limitless in its container. Enter, without caution.

Rachel Levitsky
author of The Story of My Accident is Ours


When asked about having left Russia, Marc Chagall replied he had never left, the dirt of Russia remained on the soles of his shoes. In this stunning poetry book, Mia holds our hands and guides us through the familiar and unfamiliar, urging us to remember the unpacked libraries of our lives, gathering dust on her shoes, dust everywhere, dust, not dirt.

Gina Kim
director of Never Forever and Faces of Seoul


The conflict of interest in my writing this blurb is pretty blatant, since there’s a section here called “The Bob Perelman Quartets.”

But conflict of interest has never stopped interesting poetry. In fact, you could say conflict of interest is the mother’s milk of poetic invention in Mia You’s I, Too, Dislike It. If you drew a sui generis line from Frank O’Hara to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, with many specific stopovers on the way involving diapers, the Harvard Faculty Club, obstetric close-ups, dissertations, K-pop, ad-lib spatial formalism – you would pass through many conflicting subject positions. You – Mia You, that is – inhabits these conflicting positions allusively, bluntly, not afraid to talk back.

Bob Perelman
author of Ten to One: Selected Poems


I suppose I should tell you
What this bitch is thinkin’
You’ll find her in poetry
En aan het bakfietsen

Obe Alkema
author of Het belang van het ogenblikkelijke: kleine meditaties


Mia You was born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the United States. She currently lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands.