POETRY

Korean Literature / Korean Poetry

Ending the Night

— POEM by

Sungrye Han

(Translated from Korean)

A peaceful landscape.

The future races along a winding road,

Black clouds move low to the north,

The moon rises,

Candles on the table shine.

A peaceful landscape.

Above the waves of uncertain time,

Your soul turns black,

So that your soul doesn’t burn out,

Recharge your soul a little.

Every step we take,

An autobiography full of misreadings,

Full of empty memories of jokes.

A peaceful landscape.

I stand at the end of a winding road,

To meet you,

I have always stood there.

A peaceful landscape.

Ending the drifting night,

The stars are tense,

Outside the window is a swirl of darkness,

I hang a dream on that dark window for a moment,

I am still standing there,

The world always stretches into darkness.

I will never learn how to die.

….

(Self-translation from Korean)

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Sungrye Han

Sungrye Han, born in 1955, is a representative of Korea. She hails from South Korea. She is a poetess, translator (Japanese – Korean) and (Korean – Japanese), and Adjunct Professor at Sejong Cyber University in Seoul, South Korea. She majored in Japanese language and Japanese literature at Sejong University and earned her master’s degree in Japanese studies at Sejong University’s Graduate School of Policy Science. Her poems express Korean tradition, life and death, sadness, pain and anguish in surrealism, modernism and avant-garde forms.

Work:

Sungrye Han has published 4 books of Poetry: “The Beauty in a Laboratory”, “Smiling flowers” in Korean; and “The Sky in the Yellowish Red Korean Skirt”, “Drama of the Light” in Japanese. She has also published historical essay “The Formation of the Ancient Nation in Japan and Japanese oldest anthology Manyo-shu” and so on.

Sungrye Han has also translated and introduced Korean and Japanese poems in literary magazines between the two countries since 1990. Her translation work reaches to more than 200 volumes of poems, novels, essays, poetry anthologies, books for children, humanity books, self-enlightenment books and scientific books. Korean textbooks used in Korean middle Schools and high schools contain 40 kinds translations of her for educational purposes.

Awards:

Sungrye Han’s works have earned her the Newcomer Award of “Poem and Consciousness”, Korea’s “the Heonanseolheon Literature Award” and Japan’s “Sitosozo Award”, Korea’s “Poetry Slam Translation Literature Award.”

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