It was a slightly overcast afternoon when I arrived in Norwich. Docked boats lined the river bank as I crossed the small footbridge over the River Wensum to the cottage at Dragon Hall. With the wheels of my suitcase rhythmically clattering against the concrete, I recalled the precious summer minutes I spent squinting and sweating limply at congested intersections, waiting for the crosswalk light to flash white.

In New York, where I now call home, I never leave the apartment without noise-cancelling earphones to dampen the constant wail of ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars. The sounds of emergency manage to reach me even behind double-paned windows, and my nervous system seems to be still adjusting to the noise pollution in general. Last spring, when I hiked outside of the city for the first time, I felt as though I were rinsing my eardrums with fresh air and birdsong. Taking in the shades of green all around me, I realized the extent to which my body had been straining to obstruct stimuli, rather than to receive and observe it. I tried my best to store away the details of tranquility like a squirrel would bury its nuts.

Likewise, each time I crossed the Lady Julian Bridge or any other bridge over the course of my month in Norwich, I paused to take in the scenery. Joggers, cyclists, and packs of teenagers passed by me as I watched the swans dip their heads underwater, exposing their conical derrieres and casting ripples across the sunlit surface. Less frequently, I saw families canoeing and wondered what the small children made of the swans silently pedaling beside them. The silliness of these birds never failed to charm me on my walks, especially at the golden hour, when gratitude came naturally. But I did not keep much of a routine; I let the whims of the sky shape my days as I worked at the desk beside the cottage kitchen and waited for rain showers to finish pattering against the skylight.

I do not mean to paint such a pastoral portrait of Norwich, which is both a cathedral city and a UNESCO City of Literature. After all, my predecessor Paige Aniyah Morris found herself ‘overwhelmed by all that the City of Stories had to offer’ —and I felt similarly engrossed during my residency, enriched by local literary events such as the European Poetry Festival and the Escalator Showcase of emerging writers from the East of England. Norwich is a lively place made livelier by writers and translators traveling from near and far to share their work.

There was also, of course, the night England and Spain faced off in the Euro Cup final. At the tail end of a working Sunday, my cottage-mate Christina Ng invited me out to watch the last hour of the game at a sports bar for ‘the proper English experience,’ but we found every pub within walking distance at capacity with security standing outside, shaking their heads at us. We meandered through the emptied streets and remarked on the ghostliness of the town until a collective cheer or groan sounded from around the corner. The only other person we saw on the street was a food delivery worker on a bicycle, who may have been streaming the game on his phone.

But for a while, only our footsteps echoed on the cobblestone. I can cast my mind back to the sound and the cool air of that night, for which I am grateful. Even if I may be squinting and sweating again under the New York sun, the swans continue to drift along the calm currents of my memory.

P.S. Not to worry, Christina and I indulged in plenty of pub meals before and after the Euro Cup. I highly recommend the pie and sticky toffee pudding at the Rumsey Wells; the mussels and tartiflette at the Belgian Monk; and the curried goat at the Last Pub Standing!

Soje 

Soje is a poet and the translator of Lee Hyemi’s Unexpected Vanilla (Tilted Axis Press, 2020), Lee Soho’s Catcalling (Open Letter Books, 2021), and Choi Jin-young’s To the Warm Horizon (Honford Star, 2021). They served as Modern Poetry in Translation’s 2020 Writer in Residence, were shortlisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Poetry and the 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation, and were longlisted for the 2022 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Soje also makes chogwa, a zine that features one Korean poem and multiple English translations per issue.

Soje’s residency at National Centre for Writing was supported by LTI Korea.