Watching Television in a Love Motel

In this unforgettable first book of poetry by Haro Lee, television – like love – binds us and liberates us; inspires, infuriates and illuminates us.

Watching Television in a Love Motel is a poetic chronicle of Haro's time in Aotearoa, South Korea and the United States of America. In four parts – ‘Daytime Television’, ‘Primetime Television’, ‘Late Night Television’, and ‘Graveyard Slot’ – she looks at her past, family and self with the help of the unwavering cultural force that is TV. Big subjects are caught in its glow: God, drugs, love, anti-motherhood, intergenerational trauma, loneliness, failure, and 3am existential anxiety.

The final section is a love letter to a dying neighbourhood in Seoul. Set against the heartache of a rapidly developing nation, this is the story of one girl and her life with a beloved grandmother.

Haro Lee was born in the Year of the Rat in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her work has been published in The Spinoff, Michigan Quarterly Review and Poetry Northwest, among others. Watching Television in a Love Motel is her first book.

Cover photo (on television): Seonhye, 1983
Cover design: Spencer Levine