CBC Poetry Prize winner Kyo Lee releases 1st book called I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country

A newly released collection of poetry from 18-year-old Waterloo poet Kyo Lee explores the search for love through the lens of a young queer Korean Canadian.

In 2023, Lee was 16 when she became the youngest winner of the CBC Poetry Prize for her poem Lotus Flower Blooming into Breast.

Now, she's released I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country, an intimate collection of poems covering topics including lineage, family, war, and hope.

CBC K-W's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris caught up with Lee to see what she's been up to since.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Audio of the interview can be found at the bottom of this article.

Craig Norris: It's been about a year and a half since we last spoke Kyo. What's changed for you?

Kyo Lee: Not much because most of the book was written by the point that I won the CBC Poetry Prize. I did a lot of editing for that book, which actually was quite rigorous. I think it was harder than writing the book. But other than that, I've been doing regular high school stuff, attending school and applying to universities.

I think I've been having a couple of months, maybe a year of creative fermentation, as I like to call it. I haven't written that much since I wrote the collection, but I've been trying to be more porous to the world. I've been trying to gain inspiration in everything that I see.

Craig Norris: And now your book I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country is set to be released. How would you describe this collection?

Kyo Lee: I think of it as a collection of growing up while trying to learn how to love. It's a story about the Asian-American diaspora and about womanhood and about the struggles, typical or not typical, associated with growing up. You know, about learning how to be yourself really while dealing with a bunch of different identities and learning, trying to love yourself and to love the world while growing up.

Craig Norris: Does poetry do that for you?

Kyo Lee: Yes, absolutely. I think poetry is kind of a coping mechanism for me. And it's also the way I learned how to survive, how to become myself.

LISTEN | Kyo Lee reads The Rain, The Bamboo, The Burning' from her book

The Morning Edition - K-W1:03Kyo Lee reads 'the rain, the bamboo, the burning' from her book of poetry

Hear Waterloo poet Kyo Lee read a poem from her book 'i cut my tongue on a broken country'

Craig Norris: Where do these poems come from?

Kyo Lee: A lot of the poems are based on my own experiences, but I also do say that they're not always completely non-fiction the way people expect them to be. Whether that means I'm collecting different images from different experiences in my life and putting them all together.

But I also do sometimes just pull from different settings, from images from photographs, you know, other artists. And then I put them all together into one scene.

Craig Norris: You also run poetry workshops for teens. What is the number one piece of advice that you give to new writers?

Kyo Lee: Whenever I'm asked that, I think often about what the director of Citizen Kane, Orson Wells, said about how he made Citizen Kane, which is ignorance and sheer ignorance. Not to compare myself to Orson Wells, but I think about that a lot, that the reason that I was able to write this book is because of ignorance because I didn't know it was going to be so hard.

So I think my advice is to you have to gaslight yourself a little bit into thinking that it's not hard at all. Tell yourself it'll be easy peasy, that you'll write that book in two months. And then once you're in it, you probably won't write that book in two months. But now it's too late to back out. You just gotta start and then see where that takes you.

WATCH | Former CBC Poetry Prize winner releases a new collection of poems:

Former CBC Poetry Prize winner from Waterloo releases a new collection of poems

8 days ago

Duration 0:47

On top of being the youngest person to ever win the CBC poetry prize, Kyo Lee's work had also been recognized by several prestigious literary organizations like The RBC Bronwen Wallace Award, Prism International, New York Times, just to name a few. Now, at 18 years old, the Waterloo-based poet is releasing a new book called I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country.

Craig Norris: This is your last year of high school. What's next for you?

Kyo Lee: I'll be going to university next year and hopefully I'll be studying English. I'm going to Yale, I think, well, I'm almost confident I'll be going to Yale. I just haven't committed officially.

Craig Norris: Congratulations! You also mentioned that you started writing again, is it poetry?

Kyo Lee: I've been writing maybe the beginnings of a novel. Fingers crossed it becomes more than a beginning. I've also been writing a little bit of poetry, but I would really like to explore what else I can do.

LISTEN | To the full interview with Kyo Lee here

The Morning Edition - K-W6:5718-year-old poet Kyo Lee from Waterloo releases collection of poetry

At just 16 years old, Kyo Lee became the youngest person to win the CBC poetry prize. That was in 2023. Now at 18, she is set to release her first collection of poetry. Kyo tells us more about the collection as well as a launch event this Thursday at the Waterloo Public Library.