2024-03-23 22:53:02
Poet Kim Hye-sun’s poetry collection ‘Wing Phantom Pain’
Korean author-records first award for translated poetry collection
Contains content that goes beyond gender discrimination
Kim: “It’s surprising that the award was given to a woman.”
Poet Kim Hye-sun (69) won the National Book Critics Circle Award (NBCC Award) for her poetry collection ‘Wing Phantom Pain’ (pictured). This is the first time that a Korean literary work has received the NBCC Award, and it is unprecedented for a translated poetry collection to receive this award.
On the 21st (local time), NBCC announced that the English version of ‘Phantom Pain Wings’ was selected as the winner in the poetry category of the ‘2023 NBCC Award’ held at the New School in New York, USA. The NBCC Award, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the United States, selects the best books written in English in the United States over the course of a year and selects winners in the categories of poetry, novels, nonfiction, biographies, and translations.
On this day, poet Kim said through his publisher, “I did not expect to win the award at all. “I am surprised and happy that the award was given to an Asian woman,” she said of the award, adding, “I am grateful to Choi Don-mi, who has been with me for a long time with her excellent translations.” Jeffrey, editor of New Direction Publishing, an American publisher who attended the awards ceremony instead, said, “Gender is a verb, not a noun. “Thank you for choosing another woman like this,” she said, conveying poet Kim’s thoughts on behalf of poet Kim.
‘Wing Phantom Pain’ is poet Kim’s 13th poetry collection published by Munhakwajisungsa in 2019 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his literary debut. In the title poem of the same name, the speakers, ‘I’ and ‘the bird’, are portrayed as beings who suffer phantom pain together while being exiled from those in power. Poet Kim included content that goes beyond gender discrimination through the concept of ‘doing a bird (becoming a bird).’
Gwang-ho Lee, CEO of Literature and Jisungsa, said, “By making the bird a verb rather than a subject or an object, we amplified the poetic effect of breaking down the boundary between subject and object.” ‘Wing Phantom Pain’ was translated by Korean-American poet Choi Don-mi (62) and published in the United States in May last year, receiving favorable reviews from the local literary community. At the end of last year, the New York Times selected this poetry collection as one of the ‘5 best poetry collections of the year.’
Poet Kim is evaluated as ‘the origin of women’s poetry’ in Korean literary circles. In 1978, she won the Dong-A Ilbo Spring Literary Review, and then made her debut as a poet through the quarterly magazine ‘Literature and Intelligence’ in 1979, publishing a total of 14 poetry collections. In her literary circles, there is an analysis that poet Kim’s tendency to embrace feminine characteristics and create a new human image and vision of the world may have been received uniquely in a different sense from Western feminism. Literary critic Kang Dong-ho said, “Poet Kim is taking on experimental and avant-garde challenges by expanding the world of her work from identity as a woman to issues of the human species,” and added, “The universality of a poet who is in sync with her contemporaries has been well received on the international stage.” “I think I received it,” he said.
It is also unusual for an award-winning work to come out in the poetry category, which is more difficult to translate than non-fiction or novels. Prior to receiving this award, poet Kim received four foreign literary awards, including Canada’s Griffin Poetry Award in 2019 for ‘The Autobiography of Death.’ Kwak Hyo-hwan, director of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, said, “Since the 2010s, translators who are good at both Korean and English, like poet and translator Choi Don-mi, have emerged, improving the quality of translations, and the number of overseas literary awards has been increasing.”
Reporter Sa Ji-won 4g1@donga.com
-
- great
- 0dog
-
- I’m so sad
- 0dog
-
- I’m angry
- 0dog
-
- I recommend it
- dog
Hot news now
2024-03-23 22:53:02