Description
Song Kyeong-dong
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé
Free Verse Editions
Edited by Jon Thompson
Information and Pricing
978-1-64317-507-2 (paperback, $16.95); 978-1-64317-508-9 (PDF, $9.95); 978-1-64317-509-6 (EPUB, $9.95). © 2016 by Changbi Publishers, Inc. (Korea). English translation © 2025 by An Seonjae (Brother Anthony of Taizé). This English edition is published by Parlor Press in arrangement with Changbi Publishers, Inc. This book is published with the support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea). 96 pages.
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Description
Song Kyeong-dong is a social activist and a poet. He is surely the only Korean poet capable of writing a poem denying that he is Korean, being filled with shame on reading of the way Korean companies, having relocated their factories to Southeast Asia to profit from cheap labor, systematically exploit and abuse their underpaid workers, with sometimes tragic consequences. For decades, Song was a construction worker and at the same time a leading figure in all the great social protest movements of recent Korean history. This collection evokes many heroic protests and some tragic incidents, but the poet never loses his sense of humor and never loses sight of what is worthy of truly human sympathy. He can write a poem evoking the agonies of severe constipation with a wry smile, while other poems quietly evoke the suicides of workers in despair. Song’s poems are records of a heroic commitment to social justice.
About the Author
Song Kyeong-dong is a major Korean participatory poet and resistance activist. He has published five poetry collections: Kkuljam (Honey Sleep), Sasohan mureumdeure dapham (Answers to Small Questions), Naneun Hangugini anida (I Am Not Korean), Naeil dasi sseugesseupnida (I Will Write Again Tomorrow), and Kkumkkuneun sori hago jappajyeossne (I Made a Dreaming Sound and Fell Asleep). He has also published a prose collection Kkum kkuneun ja japhyeoganda (The Dreamer Is Arrested). He has received numerous literary awards, including the Shin Dong-yeop Literary Award, the Gosan Literary Award, the Cheon Sang-byeong Literary Award, and the Jo Tae-il Literary Award. He was also selected for two awards given to social activists. He was an invited poet at the Brooklyn Book Festival held in New York, USA, in 2018.
He has been involved in many major labor and social movements in Korea for the past twenty years, including the Committee Against the Expansion and Relocation of the US Military Base in Pyeongtaek, the Committee for the Sewol Ferry Disaster, the Action for the Resignation of President Park Geun-hye, the Committee for the Reinstatement of Ssangyong Motors Dismissed Workers, and the Culture and Arts Blacklist Truth Investigation Committee. In 2011, he was arrested for leading the Hope Bus movement, a movement against neoliberal restructuring.
As of 2024, in addition to his creative activities, he is working as a committee member for various activist groups and a standing director of Ikcheon Cultural Foundation, Gildongmu.
About the Translator
Brother Anthony was born in 1942 in England. He completed his studies in Medieval & Modern Languages at Oxford, then joined the Community of Taizé (France) in 1969. Since 1980, he has been living in Korea. He is now an Emeritus Professor in the English Department at Sogang University.
He has published over seventy volumes of English translations of modern Korean literature, including including Park Nohae’s “Dawn of Labor” and other poetic works by Kim Seung-Hee, Lee Si-young, Sin Yong-mok, and many others. He was awarded the Korean Government’s Order of Cultural Merit in 2008. He took Korean citizenship in 1994. In December 2015 he was awarded an honorary MBE by Queen Elizabeth. He recently received the 2024 Manhae Award for Literature. His home page is at http://anthony.sogang.ac.kr/
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