Kang Jae-nam
Poetess Ms. Kang Jae-nam was born in Tongyeong, a small port city in the south of Korea. Tongyeong, called the Naples of the East, is also the capital of art in Korea. She entered the literary world by winning the 2010 Poetry Award for Best New Writer. In 2017, her first poetry collection ‘Strange and Beautiful’ was selected for Sejong Book Literature Sharing. The same year, she won the 6th Korea East-West Literary Award and received the Korean Culture and Arts Promising Artist Creation Support Fund. Since 2017, she has been working as a head instructor at the Tongyeong Youth Literature Academy and is working to expand the literary base of Tongyeong. Since 2019, serializing of Kang Jae-nam’s Poem Walk is being done in the Gyeongnam Ilbo, introducing many poets’ poems. She also won the 6th Dongju Literary Award in 2021. The Dongju Literary Award-winning poetry collection ‘The Shadow Grew Without No One Knowing’ was published as her second poetry collection. She won the 3rd Sisanmag Poetry Award for her poem ‘Because It’s All Rain,’ published in the fall of 2022. She received the 2023 Korean Culture and Artist Creation Support Fund. Currently, she is a member of the planning committee for the Dongju Literary Award and the chairman of the steering committee for the Tongyeong Poetry Literary Award (Cheongma Literary Award, Kim Chun-su Poetry Award, Kim Sang-ok Sijo Poetry Award, and Kim Yong-ik Novel Award).
Because it’s raining all over
How did we meet like this? Useless things always become useless.
On the night that measured you, a flower tree appeared.
Scattered and changed shape
Like it knows how to meditate after it’s gone!
The flower tree is crying
After crying with a tough texture
We think about disappearing
Coming and going for a while or calling a flower tree an oak tree
It becomes an umbrella that gradually expands!
Lying in the dark and touching the life that has passed away
If this were your nature, the ventriloquist’s whistle that day would have been all yours. The darkness lived in the world with a bare face, and you would have left behind a detailed story.
A heart that has endured for a long time and has become worn out, a heart that is falling apart over generations, a heart that has not reached the end, and a heart that must diligently forget.
My heart, which cannot stay anywhere, does its best to become transparent. You, who are hot, can also become me. Since we suffer from the same pain, it will be okay to bloom as a flower any year.
Have you finally become comfortable?
You have a cheerful face
Without despairing
Raindrops hit the window and draw an unfamiliar map
A flower tree brightening from the edge
The kind tree just smiles
The unfolded leaves pile up into good dreams.
So even if our backs are not complete
I assume that the word “death” in the completed narrative never existed in the first place.
Dark clouds pass slowly
The context of the rain is steep and sloping
It’s like a bellflower and it’s unexpected.
A place where smokeless and harmlessness endlessly exist.
Your feelings flow out and soak my life. Today is far away, and tomorrow will be in a light place.
A world is destroyed
Quietly, like an acrobat with his own style
***
온통 비라서
어쩌다 이렇게 만났을까요 부질없는 것은 늘 부질없는 것이 돼버려요 너를 가늠하는 밤엔 꽃나무가 생겨났죠
흩어지다가 모양을 바꾸다가
사라진 후 묵념하는 방법을 아는 것처럼
꽃나무가 울어요
질긴 질감을 가진 울음이 지나면
우리는 사라지는 것을 생각해요
잠시 왔다 간다거나 꽃나무를 떡갈나무로 부른다거나
조금씩 넓어지는 우산이 되어
어둠에 누워 흘러간 생을 만져요
이런 일이 너의 속성이라면 그날 복화술사의 휘파람은 온통 네 것이었겠군요 어둠은 민낯으로 세상을 살았고요 너는 촘촘한 이야기를 남겼겠어요
오래 참아서 낡아버린 마음과 누대를 거쳐 허물어지는 마음과 끝까지 가보지 못한 마음과 부지런히 잊어야 하는 마음
어떤 곳에도 머물지 못하는 마음이 최선을 다해 투명해져요 뜨거운 너는 내가 되기도 하죠 우리는 같은 통증을 앓으므로 어느 해 꽃으로 피어도 괜찮을 거예요
비로소 편해졌나요
너는 경쾌한 얼굴을 해요
함부로 절망하지 않은 모습으로
빗방울은 창문에 부딪히며 낯선 지도를 그리고
가장자리부터 밝아오는 꽃나무
친절한 나무는 그냥 웃어요
펼친 잎이 착한 꿈으로 쌓여요
그리하여 우리의 뒷모습이 완성되지 않는다 해도
완결된 서사가 죽음이라는 말은 애초 없던 것으로 해요
너의 세계가 이런 거여서
꺼내기 어려운 마음을 한꺼번에 쏟아버리는 거여서
먹구름이 천천히 지나요
비의 문맥은 가파르고 기울어지고
도라지꽃 같고 느닷없고
무연과 무해가 끝없이 생기는 거기
너의 기분이 흘러나와 생을 적셔요 오늘은 멀고 내일은 가벼운 곳에서
한 세계가 멸망해요
혼자의 형식을 갖는 곡예사처럼 가만히
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