Choi Young-mi

Choi Young-mi (born 1961)^[1] is a South Korean poet and novelist. She is one of the most popular poets in South Korea today. Choi's poems are famous for vivid, steely and sensual expressions of love and politics.

Life

Born in Seoul in 1961, Choi Young-mi studied Western history at Seoul National University and art history at Hongik University.^[2] Faced with the military dictatorship, she participated in anti-government protests during and after her college days, and was one of a secretive group of translators who dared to translate Karl Marx's Capital^[2] for the first time after the Korean War; this translation was published under a single pseudonym in 1987 and led to the arrest of the president of Yiron Kwa Silcheon Books.

Following the decline of communism in the late 1980s and subsequent political changes at home and abroad, she came to be sceptical of grand ideologies and to embrace a more inclusive worldview. She has tried to express that significant shift both within and outside herself.

Work

Her first volume of poems, At Thirty the Party Was Over (Seoul: Changbi Publishers, 1994) was an instant bestseller, has sold over half a million copies. In addition to her first volume of poems, She has published four volumes of poetry: Bicycling in Dreamland (Changbi Publishers, 1998)^[1] To the Pigs (Silcheon Munhak, 2005), Life Never Arrived (Munhakdongne, 2009), Things Already Hot (Silcheon Munhak, 2013).

The author has penned the novel Scars and Patterns (2005) and The Garden of Bronze (Seoul:Enhaengnamu, 2014).^[3] She is the author of essay collections Melancholy of The Era: Choi Young-mi’s European Diary (1997), To Whomever Will Read My Diary by Chance (2009)^[3]

A selection of her poems has been translated into English by James Kimbrell and Yu Jung-yul in Three Poets of Modern Korea :Yi Sang, Hahm Dong-seon and Choi Young-mi (Sarabande Books, 2002).^[2] Three Poets of Modern Korea was a finalist for the ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) Awards in 2004. Choi's poems appeared in AZALEA (Journal of Korean Literature & Culture 2013).^[4] At Thirty, the Party Was Over was also published in Japan with Chungsu publishers (靑樹社) in 2005.

Choi Young-mi received the Isu Literary Award in 2006. She has taught Creative Poetry Writing classes at Inha University and Gangwon University. Her poems have appeared in Korean high school textbooks. She has translated Francis Bacon in Conversation with Michel Archimbaud into Korean.^[2]

Three Korean composers made songs with lyrics by Choi Young-mi . Art pop album Love alone (1998) contains 4 songs based on the poems by Choi, composed by Lee Gun-yong, director of the Seoul Metropolitan opera. Vocalist Kang Kwon soon's Virgin Heart (2007) and singer songwriter An Chi Hwan's 10th album Today is good day (2010) singing the famous poem at the temple Sunun .

References