Moon Chung-hee is a poet and endowed chair professor at Dongguk University. She has received the Sowol Poetry Award, the Chong Chi-Yong Literature Prize, the Mogwol Literature Prize, and Sweden’s Cikada Prize. She participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1995. Her books in English translation include Windflower, Woman on the Terrace, AND I Must Be the Wind.
1. Life
Moon Chung-hee was born in Boseong, Jeollanam-do, on May 25, 1947. She attended Jinmyeong Girls' High School, majored in Korean Literature at Dongguk University, and completed her graduate studies from the same university, where she has also taught. While still in high school, she published her first collection of poems, Kkotsum (꽃숨 Flower Bud), to which Midang So Chong-ju wrote the preface. She made her official literary debut in 1969, publishing her poems "Bulmyeon" (불면 Insomnia) and "Haneul" (하늘 Sky) in Wolgan Munhak's feature on new poets. In 2014, she served as chairman of the Society of Korean Poets.
2. Writing
The core of Moon Chung-hee's poetry reveals a distinctly romantic consciousness, expressed in crystalline language, dominated by a complex interplay of vivid emotions and sensations.
Moon's similes and metaphors are entirely subjective, having been internalized to chart the evolutions and dramas of her own emotions. Her figurative language becomes a register of her sensitivity, and movingly treats the themes of romantic love, reticence, suffering, and freedom. In a few poems such as "Gamja" (감자 Potatoes), "Saranghaneun samacheon dangsinege" (사랑하는 사마천 당신에게 To My Beloved Samacheon) and "Namhangangeul barabomyeo" (남한강을 바라보며 Gazing on Namhan River), Moon Chung-hee makes use of the elements of fairy tale narratives in order to arrive at an allegorical distillation of present reality.
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