A brief synopsis

Radiant is Lee Byeong-ryul’s third poetry book. Published three years and three months after his previous poetry book, Private Life of Wind, it is full of trembling lives that were encountered through ‘being alive’. This book contains 55 poems, into which the poet sculpted the ‘radiant’ moments of life, utterly transparent and luminous, through his eyes and fingertips.

What is ‘radiant’? The poet tells us: ‘The attempt to live is radiant’. The dictionary definition of ‘radiant’ is a state in which light or numerous lights shine brightly. It is the state in which light is so intensely bright that it feels ornate and beautiful. In lieu of this light, the poem substitutes the state of ‘being alive’. Therefore, all things that attempt to live are radiant. ‘Radiant’ sings admiration and volition for life. The language of poet Byeong-ryul Lee is as urgent and pure as that of a baby who has just started to learn to speak. His poems are the inside stories of life that is molded in his fine language. In this book, the reader will be able to discover another self, and to feel the poet’s earnest and silent gaze into bottomless sadness.

About the Author

Born in 1967, in Jecheon, Chungcheongbuk-do, the poet graduated from the Creative Writing in Literature program at Seoul Institute of the Arts. He started his literary career with two poems, ‘Good people’ and ‘That day’, that were selected by the Hankook Ilbo (a Korean daily Newspaper) for its spring literary contest in 1995. His publications include four poetry books: You are Trying to Go Somewhere (2003), Private Life of Wind (2006), Radiant (2010), and Snowman Inn (2013); and four essays: Attraction (2005), Wind Blows, I Like You (2012), One Day 1 (2013), and The Person Next to Me (2015). His latest poetry book, Snowman Inn, sold over 10,000 copies in the first month. His travel essays, Attraction and Wind Blows, I Like You, have sold 500,000 and 300,000 copies, respectively. He also worked as a script writer for music programs at an MBC radio broadcasting company in Korea from 1996 till 2006. In 2006, he won the 11th Contemporary Poetry Award. He is currently a director of the publishing company ‘Dal’ in Korea, and a member of ‘Sihim’ (a Korean poetry society).

Critical reviews of ‘Radiant’:

‘A deep eternal gaze into another self inside the self’ - Kukmin daily

‘A dizzy feeling of life in discomfort and confusion’ - Kyunghyang Shinmun

‘A radiant groping of life’ - Yonhap News Agency

About the Translator

Soyoung Park has university degrees in art and visual culture and works as a freelance translator. She revised the Korean translations of A History of the World in 100 objects, All the Light We Cannot See, Oscar and Lucinda, and The Sympathizer. She is currently revising Dorothy Parker’s short stories in Korean. She has received a grant from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea to translate Poet KoUn’s only love poetry, Planetary Love; and Poet Lee Byeong-ryul’s poetry Radiant. Her translations of Planetary Love and Radiant were featured in 'Translation Tuesday' of The Guardian, managed by Asymptote Journal.