Poet Koon Woon on his verses of solitude and the working-class immigrant life

Each day during the month of April, KUOW is highlighting the work of Seattle-based poets for National Poetry Month. In this series curated by Seattle Civic Poet and Ten Thousand Things host Shin Yu Pai, you'll find a selection of poems for the mind, heart, senses, and soul.

Koon Woon has been an important member of the Seattle poetry community for decades. He’s the publisher of Goldfish Books and Chrysanthemum Poetry Journal, as well as a formidable poet in his own right. But his poems aren’t lofty and highbrow — they're deeply rooted in his lived experiences of poverty, working-class immigrant life, and living on the margins.

Shin Yu Pai met with Woon at Hing Hay Park, in the center of the Chinatown-International District. Here, Woon read "The High Walls I Cannot Scale," from his poetry collection, "Water Chasing Water."

In the poem, the speaker is trapped by their economic circumstances. He grapples with the immensity of the city, a place where everything feels alive but separate from the self, at a distance. It’s a poem of diaspora, a search for community and connection in the face of the monolithic forces of the modern world that keep him alone.