Kim Yeong-mu (1944-2001) was a South Korean poet, literary critic and translator.
1. Life
Kim Yeong-mu was born in 1944 in Paju, near Seoul. After earning his B.A. and M.A. from the English department of Seoul National University, he received his Ph.D. from the English department of SUNY at Stony Brook with a dissertation on George Eliot. He became a professor of English literature at Seoul National University in 1981.
Kim made his literary debut in 1975 with the critical essay "Yiyuksaron" (이육사론 On Yi Yuksa), published in the quarterly Changbi. He published a number of translations from English, including a volume of translations of poems by William Blake, and several works on religious themes. Together with Brother Anthony, he translated and published poems by Cheon Sang-byeong, Kim Kwang-Kyu, So Chong-ju, and Shin Kyeong-nim, as well as Ko Un. He began to write his own poems in 1991 and published three volumes. His last collection, Gasang hyeonsil (가상현실 Virtual Reality), which centered on his struggle with cancer, received the 2001 Baek Seok Literary Award. He died on November 26, 2001.
2. Writing
Kim published a volume of personal essays, Jebikkoche neoreul bomyeo (제비꽃에 너를 보며) in 1988, and a volume of literary criticism, Siui eoneowa salui eoneo (시의 언어와 삶의 언어 The Language of Poetry and the Language of Life) in 1990, which received the prize for criticism at the 1991 Republic of Korea Literary Awards.
In 1991, during a 2-year stay as visiting professor in Toronto, he began to publish poems in a local Korean-language newspaper. The following year, he and five others published a collection of their poems in Toronto: Eoreumbi on daeum nal (얼음비 온 다음 날 The Morning After the Hail). His first volume of poems to be published in Korea, Saekdong danpungsupeul noraehara (색동 단풍숲을 노래하라 Sing of the Colors of the Autumn Forest), appeared in May 1993. A second volume, Saneun saesorimajeo ssaa duji anneunguna (산은 새소리마저 쌓아 두지 않는구나 The Mountains Do Not Even Keep Birdsong), was published while he was still in hospital recovering from an operation for lung cancer in August 1998.
Kim and his family spent a year in Perth, Australia in 1999-2000 and his third volume, Virtual Reality, including poems inspired by his illness and others about Australia, was published in April 2001. It earned him the Baek Seok Literary Award, which his widow received in his place, four days after his death. In the acceptance speech he prepared for the Baek Seok award ceremony, he described how he had begun to find poems arising in him after seeing, in the church of a monastery outside Toronto, a crucifix on which was hung an image, not of the human body of Jesus but of the green globe of the natural creation, crowned with thorns and bleeding. This image, combining his own ecological concerns and his Catholic faith, deeply impressed him and the sight of it served as a moment of epiphany.
