Part 1: Writing about a strange day

Pot/ Tennis/ Sister Misun/ A certain community/ Summer there/ In Chujado/ In Palestine/ Cannon/ Turnips are only turnips/ Like a novel/ Flame/ Night friend

Part 2 Twelve sheets of white paper

Haji/ Misun's dough/ Reset/ Symbols and noise/ The future is at the end of the Yeongdong Expressway/ Interview/ Main job/ Life and noise/ Revolution and noise/ Investigation/ Misun's life/ Reset

Part 3: Quiet and Round

Autumn and the scenery / Tomorrow's weather / Black temple, white dream / There is no night that appears as if it was waiting / Scene / What happened under the zelkova tree / Enter the destination / In another country / The appearance of an apple / Evena Parker / My untitled songs, poems, paintings, and novels / Become an audience

Part 4: Through the summer meadow and the winter meadow

When you roast tofu, winter comes / Novelist / Beauty and Terror / Night Safari / The Absent / The King of the Vacant Lot / The Train Passed Ulsan / A Night in the Snow / Winter Novel / Hanging in the Affectionate Closet / Miss Misun, No News / Reset

Commentary | Sister Misun and I
Cho Dae-han (literary critic)

When you grill tofu, winter comes.

In the novel I was reading
The characters hated each other

Because that's not the only ending to this book.

(…)

Even in moments when no one speaks
Tofu is baked very peacefully.

Is this a novel or not?

When I look up, everything outside the window is white
A scene of people coming and going covered in white

Even when everything ends
Some hearts continue to deepen
_From "When you roast tofu, winter comes"

As the title, “Winter Comes When You Roast Tofu,” and the pure white cover suggest, the color white stands out in Han Yeo-jin’s poetry.
The background of many poems, including the title piece, is a winter day filled with white snow, and the main images are all white, from sheep (“A Certain Community”) and white whales (“There Is No Night That Appears as If It Was Waiting”) to turnips (“Turnip Is Only a Turnip”), wheat dough (“Misun’s Dough”), and “white gates” (“Black Temple, White Dream”).
This generous whiteness places the entire collection in a quiet beauty, like a snow-covered world.
However, the color white, which adds strength to the quiet scenery of the poem, meets Han Yeo-jin's speaker and allows for another kind of thinking.
It is when white is revealed as white paper on which something can be written.

If you look into a black pot, there is black water that never overflows no matter how much you fill it. What on earth is inside that makes the pot so infinitely black? I do not write about things I do not know. I write about a day without a pot. I write about things that do not come from a pot. I write about things outside the wall surrounding the yard. I write about things that are not my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, my aunt, or my older sister.
_In "Cauldron"

The story you told me while walking down the alleys of Sinchon
Someone heard that story, cried for a long time, and then said they would write it into a novel.

You smiled faintly
Actually, I wanted to say that I was writing something too.
Then a train passed by with a loud noise.
_From "Like a Novel"

As can be seen from the poems cited above, the speaker of Han Yeo-jin's poetry often exists as a 'writer'.
But for some reason his writing seems to keep failing.
While someone who shared the same story declares that he is “going to write it as a novel,” ‘I’ cannot say, “I am also writing something” (“Like a Novel”).
A dream that was vivid until just a moment ago becomes “unrememberable the moment I put it into words” (“Reset”), and a writing that I thought was complete is “reset” at some point, and “I” am “back in front of a blank notebook when I open my eyes” (“Reset”).


As we follow Han Yeo-jin's poems, which can be read like a story with a narrative, we can guess the reason through several hints.
For example, through my aunt who died after being hit by a pot lid, my older sister who died after burning under the pot ("Pot"), and my uncle who died in a truck overturning accident on the Yeongdong Expressway ("There is a Future at the End of the Yeongdong Expressway"), or more precisely, through the "ending" they faced.

For Han Yeo-jin's narrator, recording seems to be an act of fixing what happened.
The moment you put a period at the end of a sentence, it becomes the irreversible “only ending” (“When you roast tofu, winter comes”).
In order not to fix the future in this way, the speaker chooses to ‘rewrite.’
He covers the black letters that fill the white paper with white again, and writes something new on the white paper that has been created.

Misun, who said, “I can’t believe in happy endings” (from “Misun’s Life”), will probably never come back.
What we truly fear is not the vast, endless reality, but the future that appears so bleakly, with all possibilities gone.
That is why the poet seems to be holding on to past memories and rejecting a closed ending, constantly returning to the initialized first sentence.

_Jo Dae-han (literary critic), in the commentary

So, it is natural that ‘Sister Misun’ does not believe in ‘happy endings’.
As literary critic Cho Dae-han pointed out, it is an attempt to close off future possibilities.
Therefore, Han Yeo-jin's speaker continuously rewrites the future by adding white over and over again on the already written paper.
Because only the white dough that remains “in a state of nothing” has the potential to become the universe, a quilt, or an angel (“Misun’s Dough”).

I didn't know that it was a space where I couldn't breathe, and that it was emptiness and ruins.
Having never learned anything else, I decided to create such a world.

(…)

I open my eyes and sit in the forest. A forest that is quiet but full of living things. Tarsier, bracken, sky lily, pine tree, coral blue, flock of clouds, feather clouds. Besides these names, they must have other names. Real names. Things that are not recorded.

If I told you that I had my own songs, poems, paintings, and novels, wouldn't you want to see them?

Standing at the edge of the forest
The road leading to the village
Looking at the old road
But the road had been deserted for a long time
With a spark in hand

And I think about my future, where I will give names to the soft things, the things that are not history, the things that are not recorded, the things that I could not be, and I will go find a man who has lived a long time and reach out to him and name him in my own way.
_From “My Untitled Songs, Poems, Pictures, and Novels”

The future that Han Yeo-jin's narrator wants to rewrite is not his own.
The speaker says that he will build a world where “women who are not men/women who are not women/women who are not women” can also breathe, on top of the world “in which I cannot breathe” created by “men who have lived a long time” (same poem), and that he will remember the names of his colleagues who died at the scene today (“Signs and Noise”) and rewrite in his own way those who fell in a place where gunfire rings out endlessly.


Poet Han Yeo-jin, who tenaciously clings to the threads of forgotten memories and seeks to give names to those who have not yet been recorded, is the rightful successor to the legacy left behind by the anonymous generations.
In the gap where the future and the past collide, on top of the traces of failed memories and beings who have not yet arrived, beyond the gap between “what I have forgotten” and “what you have forgotten//” (“Initialization”), the poet’s poetry seems to begin right there where “records of past records” and “stories to come” (“My Untitled Songs, Poems, Pictures, and Novels”) overlap.

_Jo Dae-han (literary critic), in the commentary

Therefore, starting from poems like “Winter Comes When I Roast Tofu,” “Black Temple, White Dream,” “Night Friend,” and “Night Safari,” which are reminiscent of a quiet, round, and beautiful white light, and going through works like “Cauldron,” “Canon,” “Untitled My Songs, Poems, Pictures, and Novels,” and the “Sister Misun” series, where a feminist voice can be clearly heard, and “In Palestine,” “Flame,” “Beauty and Terror,” and “Revolution and Noise,” which strongly convey current events messages, we can finally see that the white of “Winter Comes When I Roast Tofu” is not a purely innocent and transparent color, but a soft yet strong color like snow that embraces various colors and even “emptiness and ruins.”
Outside the window, white snow falls, and in front of the empty notebook where tofu is being roasted peacefully, the story is not over yet ("Initialization").

A Mini-Interview with Poet Han Yeo-jin

Q1.
Hello, poet. This is your first poetry collection since debuting through the 2019 Munhakdongne New Writer's Award.
I imagine you must have a different feeling. Please share your thoughts along with your greetings.

- Hello everyone.
When you ask like this, there is no way to get an answer, so I think maybe hello is not a question but just a wish for you to be well.
The poems included here were written over a period of about seven years.
I've been here for seven years.
Thinking about it that way makes me feel a little disgusted.
But I, who believe that even the ugly is a form of beauty, stand here trembling with these.
How much effort and hard work will it take for you to reach these things?
I hope that you, who have overcome everything, have a peaceful mind like white tofu.
Even if it's just a fleeting moment.

Q2.
The winter atmosphere felt in the pure white cover and the title, “Winter Comes When You Roast Tofu,” is impressive.
In fact, there are many scenes in the poetry collection that make you feel winter, such as “When I raise my head, outside the window is all white / and the scenery of people coming and going covered in white” (“Winter Comes When I Grill Tofu”), “White snow piles up on the black roof / The world has stopped / Quietly and endlessly” (“Black Temple, White Dream”), “When I opened my eyes, white things were falling down” (“Novelist”).
What does winter mean to you, poet?

- Actually, I feel very cold.
On my winter commute, I always shudder and curl up.
In the heavy darkness and cold that has settled down, my nose and ears are sore, my shoulders are tense and hunched, and my ankles feel like they are being grazed by a cold blade with every step.
The living body is troublesome.
If I die on my way to work, I briefly think useless things like, "Is it an industrial accident or not?"
In an alleyway empty of people and filled only with the sound of my footsteps, when the sound of my own breath is heard more clearly than ever before and my breath unfolds before my eyes like steam, a strange sensation sweeps over me, as if I have actually died and lived many times.
Then I realize that now is the time when I am most alive.


Q3.
As mentioned earlier, there are some neat and lyrical poems, while others, such as the "Noise" series, "Flame," and "Beauty and Terror," seem to contain suggestive messages.
In particular, poems like "Signs and Noise" and "Investigations" reminded me of your profession. Could you briefly introduce your current work? I'm also curious about how your professional background influences your poetry.

- I work at a construction site as an architectural engineer.
You may have seen me sometime wearing a hard hat, safety shoes, and seat belt among the crowds pouring out of the tall temporary fences in the city center.
Writing poetry and working in architecture are so different, yet sometimes I feel they are very similar.
When I ponder the details of where floor meets wall, when I bury pipes that will never be seen in the ceiling, when I gaze at the piles of building materials left behind after the workers have all left, I think about the power of the smallest things.
I write poetry by collecting such small thoughts.
The scene depicted in "Signs and Noise" is also my daily life (I am an architect, not a civil engineer). At lunchtime, I leave the site and eat alone (these days, I eat kimbap instead of dumplings). I try to look at the place I belong to from afar and keep some distance.
But I always fail.


Q4.
I also want to talk about 'Sister Misun'.
In addition to the 'Sister Misun' series, the voices of female characters are particularly distinct in works such as 'Cauldron', 'Canon', and 'My Untitled Songs, Poems, Pictures, and Novels'.
Please tell us what kind of person Misun is and how she connects with these voices.

- I don't know Sister Misun.
Sister Misun could be the kid next door, a coworker, the engineer on Line 2, or a baker.
Like an unknown actor practicing becoming various characters with countless scripts found in the library, I vaguely thought of myself as someone who could have been anything, and I wanted to tell the stories of people who had no voice, people outside the logic of power, people who were not given names.
Even that, I often think, might be my arrogance or something beyond my ability.


Q5.
Lastly, please say hello to the readers of 『Winter Comes When You Roast Tofu』.

- I hope this winter arrives safely for you all, and that you all stay safe during it.

Poet's words

Many winters came and went while I was compiling these poems.
I often dozed off while listening to the stories of living people.
There were nights when I felt like I could just keep sleeping like this.

October 2023
Han Yeo-jin