Celadon reflects on hard work in an era of depersonalization. Ian Haight’s poems portray Midwestern factory workers, Korean farmers, Chinese migrants miners, and exploited child laborers. Through a contemplation of globalization and the refuge from it that art could offer, Celadon searches for a place where one can live with peace and dignity. These poems draw specific inspiration from the valleys of Kaya—an ancient kingdom situated in present-day Korea—where celadon potters have lived for over 1,500 years. The valleys are an enclave for artists of all kinds, many of them ceramicists creating their works of art according to practices and traditions hundreds of years old. The community is a place where people have come together to live, ultimately, for art—and it has endured, regardless of the exertions of war, political gamesmanship, and power, for at least eighteen centuries.

“Ian Haight writes wisdom-in-verse. He understands the mise en abyme of the abyss within the abyss within the mind, and he knows how to make meaning of it all. The poems of Celadon move fluidly from the spiritual to the commonplace to the vulgar. We encounter blue-collar workers and Korean Buddhist proverbs, Aristophanes and military pilots, Isaac Asimov and an assortment of human failures—and in Haight&rsuqo;s deft poetry, these marvelously varied elements form a coherent and utterly human whole. This volume marks the emergence of a new and remarkable talent.”
OKLA ELLIOTT, Judge, 2016-2017 Unicorn Press First Book Competition

“The large amount of geographical territory that is covered in this collection is distinctive and one of its great strengths. Ian’s work in these poems shows an attentive kindness . . . and the poems do not risk appropriation or indulge in privileged guilt.”
JULIANA SPAHR, author of Well Then There Now

IAN HAIGHT was a co-organizer and translator for the UN’s global poetry readings held annually in Pusan, Korea, from 2002-4. He is the editor of Zen Questions and Answers from Korea, and with T’ae-yong Ho, he is the co-translator of Borderland Roads: Selected Poems of Kyun Ho and Magnolia and Lotus: Selected Poems of Hyesim—listed as a 2013 Notable Book in Translation by World Literature Today and finalist for the American Literary Translators Association’s Lucien Stryk Prize. He is the recipient of Ninth Letter’s Literature in Translation prize and five translation grants from the Daesan Foundation, Korea Literature Translation Institute, and Baroboin Buddhist Foundation for the translation, editing, promotion, and publication of Korean literature. His poems, translations, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, and Writer’s Chronicle, among other publications.