POETRY

Korean Literature / Korean Poetry

In This Life

— POEM by

Sungrye Han

(Translated from Korean)

I only have a face,

I have no arms or legs,

I am like a baobab tree,

I have already sold my heart and organs in the swamp,

Now only a shadow remains,

Even the shadows are blurred in the dust.

I am dust floating in the air,

I am hanging in the air like a baobab tree,

I have been looking for myself upside down for a thousand years,

I store the language of water in my thick stem,

I only speak the language of water in the air.

I am looking for someone,

Everyone is lost somewhere,

We are lost in the deepest sea,

In a corner of the universe that no one knows,

In the darkest forest of conscience,

I am a cursed creature wandering lost.

My head has switched to a silent movie-like dead mode,

Not even a spark remains,

Now my brain does not send signals of emotion.

The world is filled with pictures of blood everywhere,

The world is filled with screams everywhere,

My vision is dry,

They are also looking for someone with empty eyes like me,

In this life,

I only own the face.

….

(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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