Ko Un
Ko Un, as he has done for years, continues to increase the profile of Korean poetry abroad. Ko has been a tireless traveler, promoter, and most importantly of all consistent writer. I should also say, that his work has generally been extremely well translated by Brother Anthony of Taize, and that his poetry seems fundamentally sound for translation, for a variety of reasons that will be gone into in a different post.^^
He has been recognized both at home and abroad and among his foreign awards are:
- Bjørnson Prize Order for Literature(2005)
- Cikada Prize (Swedish literary prize for East Asian poets) (2006)
- Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award (2008)
- America Award (2011)
With Ko’s brilliant writing and hard work, it is little surprise that he has won another award, 2014’s Golden Wreath Award (as reported by the Korea Herald. the Golden Wreath is one of the most prestigious poetry awards given by Struga Poetry Evenings, an international poetry festival held each year in Struga, in the Republic of Macedonia.
The Korea Herald reports:
The Golden Wreath international award was established in 1966. The first recipient was Soviet poet Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky (1932-1994), who is considered one of the pioneers of poetry in the former Soviet Union.
Other past recipients of the award include several Nobel Prize laureates in literature, such as Pablo Neruda, Eugenio Montale, Seamus Heaney and Joseph Brodsky.
You can go see more at the article, but it is another evidence of Korean literature gaining more awareness overseas, and that can only be a good thing.^^
