Grasshoppers' Eyes: Poems

The poems of Ko Hyeong-Ryeol are mostly inspired by the landscapes and cityscapes of Korea, occasionally echoing journeys to other lands. The poet allows his memories and imagination free reign so that his poems escape from the limits of naturalistic description and invite the reader to sense both the interrelatedness and the impermanence of all things. Many poems are reflections of the Buddhist sense of unreality, the discontinuity of time and matter. Ko Hyeong-ryeol grew up in the shadow of Mount Seorak, a wild, rocky mountain in the East of Korea, and many poems return to it. These translations make his work available in English for the first time.

KO HYEONG-RYEOL was born in 1954 in Sokcho, Gangwon-do, on the East coast of Korea just south of the DMZ, at the foot of Mount Seorak. In 1985 he began to work as editor-in-chief responsible for poetry in the Changbi publishing company, a position he held for some twenty years before retiring in 2005. He now lives in Yangpyeong, to the east of Seoul.

BROTHER ANTHONY OF TAIZ has lived in Korea since 1980. He taught English literature in Sogang University, Seoul, for more than twenty years. He has published over forty volumes of Korean poetry in English translation, including ten volumes of work by Ko Un and Fifteen Seconds Without Sorrow by Shim Bo-Seon (Parlor Press, 2016). He was recently awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth.

LEE HYUNG-JIN received his doctorate in comparative literature at Penn State University and is a professor of translation studies in the School of English at Sookmyung Women's University, in Seoul. His translations of Korean poetry with Brother Anthony include Walking on a Washing Line: Poems of Kim Seung-hee.