Judy Lee
- Georgia -
Judy Lee (Pen name of Tamar Korkotashvili) was born in 1988 in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 2010, she graduated from the faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. In 2014, she earned her Master’s degree in Cultural Management at Ilia State University.
Since 2016, Tamar Korkotashvili's texts have been published in various Georgian literary periodicals under the pseudonym Judy Lee. She participated in the 6th, 7th, and 8th editions of Tbilisi International Festival of Literature. From 2019 to 2021, she was a member of the troupe of "Margo Korobleva's Performance Theatre." In 2022, her performance "Reunification" became a finalist at the Zurab Rtveliashvili Tbilisi International Performance Festival.
In 2023, publishing house “Kalmosani” published Judy Lee’s debut poetry collection, The Age of Disposability. The book was shortlisted for the “Litera 2024” literary prize in the category: “Best Debut of the Year.”
Judy Lee’s poetry is included in the Queer Anthology of Georgian Poetry (published by Indigo, 2023). Also, an excerpt from her novel Digital Water was selected through an open call and is featured in the book Menstruation (GrlzWave, 2024).
She lives in Tbilisi with her two sons and two cats.
Review of Judy Lee’s poetry - Between Singularity, Simultaneity, and Protest By Shota Iatashvili
"Parallel poetry" is a sacred ritual rendered in the language of dreams — this is how Judy Lee, a new-generation Georgian poet, explains one of her poetic cycles, distinguished by its experimental nature.
Judy Lee is the artistic pseudonym of Tamar Korkotashvili. I deliberately avoid calling it a poetic pseudonym because this image likely stems more from her experience working in performance theater. And it is highly probable that the idea of “parallel poetry” also originates from there. Since the 1990s, Margo Korabliova's Performance Theater in Tbilisi (founded and directed by David Chikhladze) has consistently explored non-linear and simultaneous forms of storytelling. However, it is one thing to realize such formalist views on stage, and quite another to see how they function in a literary text. How can several poetic streams unfold like railway tracks — sometimes merging, then diverging again, and so on? Yet in Judy Lee's "parallel poetry," none of this is resolved so schematically. There is no single defined method by which the cycle was constructed. Her attempts to create the effect of parallelism are often more impulsive than structurally calculated, though not entirely devoid of structure.
In this cycle, she calls an entire series of poems dreams but assigns them the name of the mathematical constant π. The difference is that the further we go into these new poems, the closer they approximate the non-periodic decimal expansion of this irrational number. That is, through the variations of these parallel dream-like poems, the author seems to strive to describe something irrational with increasing precision.
But that’s only one direction in her poetry. Her 2023 poetry collection is titled The Age of Singularity (published by Karmosani). The first poem in its first part is “Poetry in the Age of Singularity.” So, on the one hand, there is parallelism, simultaneity, irrationality; on the other — singularity, which is the opposite of all this, which cannot endure complexity and delicacy, lacks a future perspective, and even denies the possibility of “re-reading.” The first person to notice the phenomenon of singularity was probably Heraclitus of Ephesus with his phrase, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” The modern world applied this saying to nearly everything: “You can’t drink twice from the same cup,” and so on.
What happens to poetry in this case? What does a poem look like that should be read only once?
“What should we do with poetry,
in the age of singularity
that can’t find
a place anywhere?”
So asks the author at the end of that poem, after her characters have spent time with disposable knives and forks, disposable table settings, disposable fun — and eventually touch on the topic of poetry.
In the “singular part” of the book, another question arises: “Where is duende?” That is, the angel (or benign demon) that brings inspiration and gives passion to a work of art. In the age of singularity, duende must have lost its power — and perhaps that’s why it is no longer found in poetry, but only in intimacy, in sex, though still associated with the act of writing:
“Where is my duende?
he asks, and with a sharp gaze
undresses the text from my body.
His hands begin to swim through my words,
our tongues swap
wet thoughts,
and on a happy night filled with stars
we don’t care at all.
We are alone in the world.”
So where is duende in her work? Again, perhaps in “parallel poetry”? Maybe, but perhaps it's elsewhere — in poems filled with sharp protest. These make up the next two cycles after the book’s main sections, and fittingly, both have direct and raw titles. One is called “Protest,” the other — quite bluntly — “Ass.”
“Even peace is beautiful —
when dreams lie in a blue coffin.
Even this cart is beautiful,
its rear raised toward the sky.
But where is the road?
I sent the road a friend request,
the road doesn’t reply,
it thinks I’m a troll.”
(“I Think I’m a Troll,” from the cycle “Ass”)
At this point, it’s probably worth asking what significance her pseudonym holds for the author. Judy Lee is a nearly invisible character in Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull — mentioned only once in the text — who breaks the law of the gulls and takes the side of truth. That’s the principle Judy Lee holds to in both life and art: to be invisible, if necessary, but always on the side of truth.
As we see, Judy Lee’s poetic explorations follow several paths: performative “parallel poetry,” free verse on “singularity,” socially and politically charged protest poems... and perhaps something new is still to come. If not, even just revolving within these three realms already offers a wide enough range for a poet.
Poetry
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How many more times must I die? / კიდევ რამდენჯერ უნდა მოვკვდე
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Forbidden Icon / აკრძალული ხატი
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Time / დრო
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When Night Crackles Like a Ripe Peach / როცა ღამე მწიფე ატამივით სკდება
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The Blind Owl Sees / ბრმა ბუ ხედავს
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Come on, Dad! / კარგი რა, მამა!
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Men Go Mad Over Solid Poetic Structures / კაცები გიჟდებიან მყარ სალექსო ფორმებზე
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You, My Joyful Nation / ჩემო ბედნიერო ერო
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Cancelled Message / გაუქმებული შეტყობინება
