Lee Sumyeong
Lee Sumyeong is a South Korean poet, critic, and translator. Her poetic style has reputation of being unfamiliar and difficult, but some also comment that she is a classicist as well as a modernist. One critic has said that she has already "laid out a completed road", upon the genealogy of modernism and that "many younger poets are working on that road", emphasizing the fact that her poetry was pioneering in how she overturned common usage of words and stereotypes.
Life
Born and raised in Seoul, Lee Sumyeong studied Korean language and literature at Seoul National University. Her debut publication of 5 poems in the literary journal Jakkasegye won the journal's 1994 New Writer Award. In 2007, she received her doctorate from Chung-Ang University with a study of Kim Ku-yong, a major literary influence. Her monograph is one of the pioneering works about the hitherto rarely discussed poet.She is known as one of the poets that represents Korea's modernism since the 1990s. She has published many essays on poetry, critical essay collections, and research papers on modernism. She has won the 2nd Park In-Hwan Literary Award in 2001, the 12th Hyeondaesi Award in 2011, the 12th Nojak Literary Prize in 2012, and the 7th Yi Sang Poetry Award in 2014. She participate in the 2016 Seoul International Writer's Festival. She has won the Kim Chunsu Poetry Award in 2018 and the Cheongma Literary Award in 2022.
Lee Sumyeong's first collection in English, Just Like, translated by Colin Leemarshall, is published in 2024. This collection won Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize from American Literary Translators Association in 2025.
Writing
Lee Sumyeong has been strongly influenced by Korean avant-garde poets, including Yi Sang, Kim Ku-yong, and Kim Jongsam, as well as by Western poets like Wallace Stevens, Paul Celan, and René Char. Renowned for the "impenetrability" and the deceptive "tidy-style," Lee Sumyeong's works, some critics claim, may be interpreted as the search for a radical way to "let things, not humans, speak".Critical appraisal
Critic Park Sang-su said, Lee Sumyeong was a poet who "started from the position of reflecting on the violence of lyric poetry and poetic subjects that have become a constituent custom".Works
Collections of poems
Saeroun odoki georireul mewotda, Segyesa, 1995.Waegarineun waegari nolireul handa, Segyesa, 1998.
Bulgeun damjangui keobeu, Minumsa, 2001
Goyangi bidioreul boneun goyangi, Moonji Publishing, 2004.
Eonjaena neomu maneun bideul, Moonji Publishing, 2011.
Machi, Moonji Publishing, 2014
Mullyuchanggo, Moonji Publishing, 2018
Doshigaseu, Moonji Publishing, 2022
Just Like, translated & introduced by Colin Leemarshall, Black Ocean, 2024 - English translation of Machi.
Prose works
Kim Gu-yonggwa Hanguk Hyeondaesi, Korean Studies Information, 2008.– monograph
Hoengdan, Munye Joongang, 2011. – essays on poetics
Gongseubui sidae, Munhakdongne, 2016. – an idiosyncratic history of Korean poetry in 1990s
Pyomyeonui sihak, Nanda, 2018. – essays on poetics
Naneun chilseongsyupeoreul boattda, Achimdal, 2022. – essays
Naega eopneun sseugi, Nanda, 2023. – diary of 2022
Jeongjeoggw soeum, Nanda, 2024. – diary of 2023
Heuin keobui hyushik, Nanda, 2025. – diary of 2024
Translations
Duncan Heath, Introducing Romanticism, Gimm-Young Publishers, 2002.Darian Leader, Introducing Lacan, Gimm-Young Publishers, 2002.
Jeff Collins, Introducing Derrida, Gimm-Young Publishers, 2003.
David Norris, Introducing Joyce, Gimm-Young Publishers, 2006.
Awards
1994 Jakkasegye New Writer Award.2001 Park In-Hwan Literary Award.
2011 Hyeondaesi Award.
2012 Nojak Literary Prize.
2014 Yi Sang Poetry Award.
2018 Kim Chunsu Poetry Award.
2022 Cheongma Literary Award.