VOL.78/2025.01

 

Poetry Collections: The Trend of the Era and
the Compass of the Heart

 

2024.12.02

 

The rise of Korean poetry and its global takeoff

 

There have been a number of “unusual” scenes in Korean literature in recent years. If I told you that Korean poetry is at the center of it, would international readers believe me? The proportion of readers in their 20s and 30s buying poetry books is increasing. The share of teenagers is also increasing, not to mention the number of poetry books being published. It is no longer strange or unfamiliar to see people transcribing poems. There are even bookstores in Korea that sell only poetry books. It’s a curious thing. Haven’t we all moved on to YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix? The thing that’s being “unlocked” should be smartphones, not poetry books, isn’t it?
The year 2024 is poised to be a monumental year in Korean literary history. It is 100 years since the publication of Chu Yo-Han’ first poetry collection Beautiful Dawn, which contains the first free verse Fireworks, and 99 years since the publication of Kim So-Wol’s first poetry collection Azaleas, which laid the foundation for popular poetry collections in the history of modern literature. It’s been 101 years since Kim Uk’s Song of a Jellyfish, the first creative poetry collection in Korea, was released. Korean poetry’s appreciation, legacy, and literary achievements have reached unprecedented heights this year. In March of this year, poet Kim Hye-Soon won the National Book Critics Circle Award with her poetry collection Phantom Pain Wings (Moonji Publishing), which was published in translation in the US in May 2023. It was the first by a Korean author. While poetry is regarded as a field that is “impossible to be translated,” it affirms that Korean poetry, both deeply personal and universal, is resonating across the world. “It reflects, with remarkable originality and boldness, the aftermath of war and dictatorship, the oppression of a patriarchal society, the pain of life, such as the death of a father, and the rituals of overcoming it, into an alternative imaginary world.”

 

 

In the second half of the year, we have Han Kang, without a doubt. She was the first Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. You might ask, isn’t Han Kang a novelist? According to the Swedish Academy’s evaluation, doesn’t her “poetic style” set her apart? Han Kang originally started her creative work as a poet. She began in 1993. Not many readers in Korea knew this until she won the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize Committee for Literature stated the reason for her selection was “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” True, but there’s a problem. This assessment was made without actually seeing Han’s poems and poetry collections.
Han Kang’s poetry collection I Put the Evening in the Drawer (Moonji Publishing), published in Korea in 2013, will make its Western debut next March. It is a French translation (translated by Choi Mi-Kyung). The French publishing house Grasset, which had been holding onto the translation manuscript for almost two years, delaying the final contract and publication, contacted the translator the same day the news of the Nobel Prize broke, saying they would “accelerate the publication of the collection” and immediately began editing. Han Kang, a poet and novelist, writes prose with carefully honed “poetic language,” rather than “poetic prose,” and develops the entire work in “poetic narrative.” The “state of poetry” that Han describes herself is much more specific.

 

 

Readers might miss out on a lot when they skip over the italicized subtext that Han frequently uses in her novels. That’s because the italicized lines contain a lot of “poetic language.” Han, who told the Swedish Academy that she “grew up with Korean literature,” was the “child” who said she wanted to be a poet at the age of 9. She recalls that she read 2 poetry collections every week after joining a poetry club as a university student in 1989. In other words, she was raised in a world of poetry. In particular, the 1980s, during which she completed middle and high school and entered college, is known as the “era of poetry” in Korea. Here’s the background.

 

 

The legacy of the 1980s’ “era of poetry” in Korean literary history

 

The first-ever poetry collection series by poets in Korea began in 1974. This was when Korea’s GDP per capita was only $563. It was ranked 30th in the world, with Indonesia (26th) and Nigeria (29th) ahead of it. Considering such hard times in the country, most of the previous poetry collections were self-published by the poets themselves. They would print around 500 copies. Then, half a century ago, the publishing house Minumsa launched the Poet of the Day series, and the first volume was Kim Su-Young’s (1921-1968) poetry collection, The Great Root. It’s a compilation of some of the poet’s poems collected in a single volume. Unlike the usual poetry collection, a new series of collections exclusively devoted to new poems was launched the following year. Changbi Sisun from Changbi Publishers, the same publishing house that published Han Kang’s full-length novels, The Vegetarian and Human Acts. The first volume was Farmers’ Dance by poet Shin Kyung-Rim (1936-2024). In 1975, Farmers’ Dance became the No. 1 nonfiction bestseller the month after its publication and the No. 4 bestseller of the year. It sold 10,000 copies, along with Kim Su-Young’s The Great Root, by the following year. At that time, the press commented, “It’s the biggest sales since Seo Jeong-Ju’s poetry collection or Kim So-Wol’s poetry collection. This phenomenon is a miracle compared to the old days when poets used to publish their poetry books voluntarily through gye (a form of gathering and saving money by a number of people, usually between close friends)” (Kyunghyang Shinmun, December 2, 1976). This has broken the old formula where the author would publish a poetry collection with their own money and consider it a success if it sold 4,000 to 5,000 copies. And, with the release of the Poetry Collection by Moonji Publishing in 1978, which continues to sell over 200,000 copies a year even in the 2020s, the “era of poetry” in the 1980s reached full bloom.

 

 

The year 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Minumsa’s Poet of the Day series, the 500th issue of Changbi Sisun, and the 600th issue of Poetry Collection by Moonji Publishing. It is difficult to find other examples outside of Korea where publishers have managed to keep their distinctive “genes” in publishing poetry collections with such consistency. There are also a number of new poetry collection series that have been launched in the 2020s. Just like the poetry collections released by the Chungrokpa (靑鹿派; referring to Park Mok-Wol, Park Du-Jin, and Cho Ji-Hoon) in the 1940s, younger poets are coming together to publish poetry collections as well. I wonder if this is really something that can happen in a publishing market that has been described as going through “the worst period since the country’s foundation.”

 

Generation Z and Millennials embrace poetry again

 

Even in France, the home of Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Authur Rimbaud, and Paul Valéry, poetry is said to be something that is “rarely read” anymore. It was January 2023 when the translated manuscript of Han Kang’s I Put the Evening in the Drawer, which had already gone through more than 45 printings in Korea before winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, was handed over to the publishing house Grasset. However, the publisher had told the translator that they “don’t do poetry collections very much,” leaving it uncertain whether it would be published.
This is why international publishers are often surprised to find themselves in the poetry section of large Korean bookstores. As of 2019, there were 3,069 poetry collections published in Korea. The number increased to 3,102 in 2020, 3,257 in 2021, and 3,361 in 2023. This means that the number of “poetry collections” out there has increased by more than 9.5%. The trend was reflected in the sales as well. According to Yes 24, a large online bookstore in Korea, the overall sales of poetry collections increased by 25.4% in 2021 compared to 2017. Most notable is the change in those in their 20s and 30s, who are smartphone and video generations that seemed to be uninterested in poetry. Over the six-year period from 2018 to 2023, the proportion of readers in their 20s who purchased poetry collections through Yes 24 has steadily increased from 7.5% to 8.2%, 11.7% to 13.2%, and 14% to 14.5%.
It is worth noting data from Kyobo Book Center, another large bookstore in Korea, which this year showed that people in their 20s accounted for 26.5% of all purchases of poetry collections, and people in their 30s accounted for 20.2%, the first and second largest age groups. This is a stark difference from the past trend, where poetry was perceived as the realm of the previous generations, who had experienced the “era of poetry” in the 1980s and 1990s.
It’s also worth recognizing the depth and format of poetry collections that the young generation is looking for. According to Yes 24, the most popular poetry collection purchased by people in their 20s in 2023 was I Love You Like an Old Street (Moonji Publishing) by philosopher-poet Jin Eun-Young. Other titles in the top 10 included Ahn Hee-Yeon’s Summer Lessons on the Hill (Changbi Publishers), Hwang In-Chan’s Let’s Call This My Heart (Munhakdongne), Yang Ahn-Da’s Dear My Depressed Love Refusing Angels (Munhakdongne), Park Eun-Ji’s Permanent Summer Show (Minumsa), Park Jun’s I Spent Days Thinking of a Name for You (Munhakdongne), and Yook Ho-Soo’s No Eternity, No Boys, and No Angels (Munhakdongne). Aside from the commonality of being young poets, the poems vary in style, sensitivity, and temperature.

 

 

The Seoul International Book Fair in 2023 and 2024 cannot be summarized without mentioning poetry. With 130,000 and 150,000 visitors on each of the 5 days of the event, it would have been hard to find a booth that wasn’t crowded, but Moonji Publishing’s booth in 2023 was a real eye-opener. There was nothing special about the event. It was just that the sheer presence of the poets whose names filled the Poetry Collection by Moonji Publishing —more than 500 volumes at that point—was enough to draw a crowd. The case of 2024 was made by the publisher Munhakdongne. The publishing house, which has published more than 200 volumes of its own poetry collections since 2011, attracted visitors with a small “poetry telephone” set up at one of its booths. Visitors would enter the red payphone booth, pick up the receiver, and a random poem would be read out. There were nearly 2,000 people in line to call. When the event was expanded to the general public the month after the book fair, 230,000 calls were made to hear a poem in the first 6 days. People said, “I waited with excitement to see what poems would be read,” adding, “I was having a hard time at work, and the poem heard on the line brought me comfort.”

 

The “unconventional era of poetry” - a new wave in Korean literature

 

It’s doubtful to say that these few market reactions have revived poetry, or that the age of poetry has returned. While the total number of poetry collection titles has increased, the number of copies per title has been plummeting. Even large publishers are now printing a maximum of 2,000 copies, down from 2,000 to 3,000, and 1,000 copies is not uncommon for other publishers. Also, the so-called “healing poems,” especially those appearing in dramas, movies, and celebrities’ Instagrams, sometimes determine the sales market for poetry collections. No matter how much poetry has been revitalized, it can’t compare to the 1980s and 1990s. Plus, there are tons of issues and mechanisms that captivate the public today, so it’s unlikely that the “era of poetry” will ever return. Still, the bizarre phenomena we are witnessing, especially the purchase of poetry collections by teenagers that increased by 1.2 times in the first half of this year compared to the previous year, cannot be more accurately described without calling it a “turnaround” in poetry. Though we may not see the “era of poetry,” we are at least in an “unconventional era of poetry” in Korea.
In the first half of this year, Hankyoreh published a feature on a large-scale survey of poets (“100 Years of Contemporary Korean Poetry: Asking Poets About Today,” Hankyoreh, September 3, 2024). It asked poets who have published poetry collections through Changbi Sisun and Poetry Collection by Moonji Publishing 31 questions about their favorite poetry collections and poets, their favorite novels and novelists, and the reasons behind their choices. In other words, it was a collective in-depth interview with 80 contemporary poets, seeking to explore not only their favorite poems and poets but also the role of poetry and poets, the relevance of poetry today, and the gap between poetry and readers. The response to the article was tremendous. Some readers wanted to know when the follow-up article would be published, while others wanted to know more about poets and poetry collections that were not on the poets’ top 10 favorite poetry collections and poets.
During the interview, Hankyoreh asked the poets, “Why is poetry necessary or unnecessary in this age?” They replied, “It is necessary because it is a country with its own language,” and “poetry is the most sensitive native language.” Poetry transcends the dichotomy of necessity and unnecessary by its very existence. In Poetics, Aristotle insightfully noted that “a historian tells what has happened, and a poet tells what is probable; therefore poetry is more philosophical and greater than historical narrative.” As our “most sensitive native language,” poetry captures our plight, the unknown sorrows, joys, and pains of the heart, and also what the heart thinks is likely to happen.
Albert Camus once confessed after reading a poem by René Émile Char, the French poet credited with writing “the poetry of poetry.” “Before I knew you, I could do fine without poetry.” It doesn’t mean that he was really doing fine - it means that he didn’t fully realize what “doing fine” was before reading the poem. That’s why I’m glad to see the “unconventional era of poetry.”

 

 

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Written by Im In-Tack (Literary reporter at Hankyoreh)