The Colors of Dawn:
Twentieth-Century Korean Poetry

Series Editor Frank Stewart.
Guest Editors Brother Anthony of Taizé and Chung Eun-Gwi.

In The Colors of Dawn, over forty poets tell the story of Korea’s twentieth-century struggles. While their styles are diverse, all express the passionate conviction that poetry is fundamental to bringing to light what is good and enduring in a darkened world.

The volume is divided into three parts: Poetry of Today, Survivors of War, and Founding Voices. The introduction, “Modern Poetry in Korea: A Historical Background,” looks at the development of poetry amidst such events as Japan’s invasion and occupation, the aftermath of World War II, the Korean War, the dictatorships of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee, and democratization and modernization of the country.

The introduction is written by Brother Anthony of Taizé, co–guest editor of the volume and a well-known translator who has published more than thirty volumes of Korean poetry in translation. Born in Cornwall in 1942, he has lived in Korea since 1980 and was naturalized as a Korean citizen in 1994. He has received the Republic of Korea Literary Award in translation, the Daesan Award for Translation, the Korea PEN Translation Prize, and the Ok-gwan (Jade Crown) Order of Merit for Culture from the Korean government.

Chung Eun-Gwi was born in 1969 in Kyungju, Korea. She received her doctorate from the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and is now an associate professor in the Department of English Literature at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, in Seoul. Among her translated works is the volume Ah! Mouthless Things by Lee Seong-bok. She has received a Daesan Foundation translation grant for Korean literature and a translation grant from the  Literature Translation Institute of Korea.

In addition to Brother Anthony and Chung Eun-Gwi, the translators in The Colors of Dawn are Susan Hwang, YoungShil Ji, Kim Jong-gil, Myung-Mi Kim, Lee Hyung-Jin, Lee Sang-Wha, Jinna Park, Daniel T. Parker, and Yoo Hui-sok.

The artist is Hye Woo Shin, a doctoral student at the Institute of Life Sciences and Biotechnology of Korea University, in Seoul.

In mid-February, Brother Anthony was in Hawai‘i for events featuring three poets in the volume: Lee Si-Young, Kim Seung-Hee, and Kim Soo-Bok. For a write-up of the events, please see our Facebook page.

Our gratitude to the Literature Translation Institute of Korea for its generous support of the events and The Colors of Dawn.

192 pp., winter 2015 (27:2), $20
ISBN 978-0-8248-6622-8
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