World Literary Awards

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Yi Seongbok

イ・ソンボク

I Seongbok

Profile

Gender
Male
Born
1952-06-04 （Gyeongsangbuk-do, Korea）
Died
:null
Nationality
South Korean
Languages
Korean
Residence History
Gyeongsangbuk-do → Seoul → Daegu

Career

Occupations
poet, French literature professor
Active Years
1980-2024
Affiliations
Keimyung University
Influenced By
Baudelaire, Kafka, Nietzsche

Education

Seoul National University
College of Humanities / Department of French Language and Literature
Degree: B.A.
Country: South Korea
B.A. obtained

Awards

Kim Suyeong Literary Award
1982
Result: 受賞
Sowol Poetry Prize
1990
Result: 受賞
Contemporary Literature (Hyundae Munhak) Award
2008
Organization: Hyundae Munhak
Result: 受賞

Awards & Nominations

Works

Major Works

When Will the Rolling Stone Awaken?

1980 poetry collection

Namhae's Gold Mountain

1986 poetry collection

The End of That Summer

1990 poetry collection

Memory of the Holly Tree

1993 poetry collection

In My Beloved Brothel

1996 poetry collection

Bibliography

  • When Will the Rolling Stone Awaken? (1980)
  • Namhae's Gold Mountain (1986)
  • The End of That Summer (1990)
  • Memory of the Holly Tree (1993)
  • In My Beloved Brothel (1996)
  • Why Didn't I Say Anything About the Rain-Soaked Pomegranate Petals? (2001)
  • Your Pain Won't Make the Leaves Turn Green (2001)
  • Ah, Those Things Without Mouths (2003)
  • Rippling Marks on the Moon's Brow (2003)
  • Come To Be Sorrowful

Translations by Author

  • I Heard Life Calling Me: Poems of Yi Song-Bok
  • Wie anders sind die Nächte
  • Indeterminate Inflorescence (trans. Anton Hur, 2023)

Style & Themes

Literary Style
Imaginative and multi-layered poetryInfluenced by European writers including Baudelaire, Kafka, and NietzscheCritiques corruption, hypocrisy, and perversion of the modern world
Recurring Motifs
All things exist in relation to othersNo core or isolated actBinary categories are simultaneously one, overcoming life's pain

Legacy

Yi Seongbok's poetry evokes events and landscapes unfolding above a horizon of unlimited interpretive possibilities. It vastly expands its meaning to permit endless questions, not only on an individual or private level, but on a collective and public one as well.

Quotes

  • It vastly expands its meaning to permit endless questions, not only on an individual or private level, but on a collective and public one as well.
    Source: Kim Hyeon

Trivia

  • One work titled from a Silla dynasty hyangga 'Pungyo'