Poems of Oh Sowho (South Korea)

 

Oh Sowho is a Korean poet, translator, poetry reciter, and literary educator based in Gwangju, South Korea.

She earned a B.A. in English Literature from Chonnam National University and an M.A. in Korean Language and Literature from Honam University. She made her literary debut in 1993 through the Korean literary magazine Literary Space and gained wider recognition in 2001 when she was selected as a winner in the poetry category of the Mudeung Ilbo New Year Literary Contest.

She is the author of five poetry collections, including Jomkkotmari (2005), Permeation, A Dot of Blue, Walking with My Schwabing, and her fifth collection, Meditating on Erik Satie and a White Stone (2022). She also published the Korean-English bilingual poetry collection I Am a Flower (2010).

From 2001 to 2015, she served as an adjunct professor at Jeonnam Science College. She has also worked as a poetry recitation instructor, literary judge, translation editor, and university lecturer. She served as the head of the Korean-English Translation Team of International PEN Gwangju and has participated extensively in international literary exchanges, poetry exhibitions, and cultural programs.

Her literary honors include the International PEN Gwangju Literary Award, Gwangju Literary Award, Digital Literature Prize, Kang Hang Literary Prize, and several other national poetry awards. She has also received multiple creative grants from regional and national arts foundations in Korea.

 

Wild Grape Vine

 Poet Oh Sowho 

On the black basalt wall

of Aewol,

a single vine leans its body

toward the sea.

 

Feeling its way through the wind

lodged between the stones,

it slowly learns how high the light can reach.

 

One green.

One blue.

One violet.

 

Ripening in different rhythms,

within a single cluster

 

yesterday's sea,

today's sea,

tomorrow's sea

 

lift one another's colors into bloom.

 

Whenever sunlight passes,

each tiny berry

 

quietly,

 

once again,

 

sets

the sea of the world

trembling.

 

 

 

My Star, Spica

 Poet Oh Sowho 

Only from this distance

have I come to look at you.

 

On a spring evening, in the southern sky,

deep within the constellation Virgo, my star burns with a blue-white light.

 

When you were close,

I never understood

 

that you were farther than I had thought,

that you were brighter than I had imagined.

 

Only now do I look at you

as one looks upon a flower,

as one gazes up at the spring night sky.

 

Could it be that even eternal love

can only be understood

after we have grown this far apart?

 

Like a meteorite fallen upon a desolate field,

like a traveler entering an unfamiliar village,

 

At the observatory beneath Byeongpungsan,

I can finally gaze upon you

from this far away.

 

 

Let Your Pain Go

 Poet Oh Sowho 

Are you troubled by a purity that is too white?

Lay it down on the coral-white sands.

 

Are you weary of a greed that is too black?

Lay it down on the black sands of Geommeolle.

 

The waves are a sewage treatment plant,

caring neither for what is white nor what is black.

 

The waves are the folds of a mother’s skirt.