Loneliness and Love from a Perspective of a Poet

So-yeon Kim, Poet (Majored in Korean Language & Literature, 86’)

“Loneliness” that Everyone Encounters

We live in a so-called “smart era” where we can be connected to anyone anytime, and anywhere. People received the gift of convenience, but they had to open the package of loneliness to open the box. “Steve Jobs, the representative of the smart age, has shown both heaven and hell to human beings, I believe. The smart era he unfolded became an era where the ‘value of loneliness’ disappeared. About 10 years ago, when smartphones were starting to be grabbed by people’s hands, I talked about the future of poetry with a poet Bo-seon Shim. In the process where the human life and language are compressed through smartphones, the written language has transformed into a new form, but the spoken language through human lips is dying noticeably.” Alumni So-yeon Kim said that the value of poet and the poetry come to life at this point. “Language is getting poorer and starving, as people exchange short sentences through the smartphones. A poet is a person who looks at the language in a new perspective and invigorates it, so I think poetry is more needed in the era like this.” A world where people can meet anyone with a few finger taps. People were choosing loneliness to escape from the loneliness. “Many people click on the world of desires like shopping and dating apps and YouTube, to give first aid to the scars of loneliness. Of course, this may seem like a luxury to people who don’t have time to be lonely, but everyone struggles to relieve their loneliness. Contemporary people tend to forget loneliness for a while with various activities using smart devices, but those who provide them are recognizing the loneliness as a means to develop contents. In the smart age, loneliness is such a big chunk of desire like this. In my case, I installed a social networking app, but at some point, the fact that someone is earning money because of my loneliness was getting to me, so I stopped using it (laughs).” What was the loneliness that she first encountered?

After deep in thought, she brought out her childhood experience in her hometown. “When I was young, I lived in Gyeongju. The area is now Boeun complex. Like these days, Gyeongju was a famous tourist spot at that time as well. There were many foreign tourists, as well as domestic tourists. When I was playing in the neighborhood, foreign tourists used to ask me to take a picture together, giving me a one dollar bill. That one dollar bills I received were so strange to me. I remember that I just store them aside, even though I didn’t know where to spend them. That feeling of emotion, which made me feel like a stranger in my own neighborhood, is never forgotten.”

Living as a Poet

From the girl who used to write something all night long to a middle-aged female writer who writes poetry as a poet. What does it mean to her to live as a poet? “I didn’t have to blunt my senses. I rather lived as a sensitive person. In fact, I’ve lost a lot. The form of a poet was fulfilled, but other dreams are lost. I can say that ‘I realized my dream in a state of loss.’”

There is a 10 year gap between her first and second poems. What is that 10 year gap in Kim’s life filled with? “My only dream had been publishing a poetry book, but when I published my first poetry book in my earlier 30’s, I felt empty. Until publishing my second poetry book, I ran a children’s library called ‘Laughing Books.’ I established a library by gathering books for children that I had bought and collected as a poet, and I read books with children and talked with them. Now it’s nice to meet those children sometimes, who are now college students. These children sometimes say that they want to rebuild the library, as they have a lot of memories in ‘Laughing Books’ which helped them in many ways.”

Where are the eyes of poet Kim looking at?

She recently published a prose book, <There is No Love in Love>. “When I feel like life is overwhelming, I sometimes visit my senior poet Hae-soon Kim to show my weak side. About ten years ago, she said, ‘for a female poet, there’s an enemy looking from across the threshold, but don’t throw him out or disturb him, and just leave him there.’ I didn’t quite understand what this meant at that time, but when I think about it now, I think that the enemy would be probably the ‘patriarchy.’

It’s like the hardship that a woman takes when she loves. That barrier cannot be removed by adults. Women can understand this and sympathize with this, but this cannot solve things. I just try to get rid of that ‘barrier’ a little more.”