Email: Several poems from Seoul, Korea

 

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HI, Mr. Info-of-the United Kingdom Poetry Society, 

Nice to contact with you for the first time in my life.

I am Elliot M. Kim living in Seoul, Korea.

I once lived in  New Zealand, and from then and there I 've written some poems and essays.

 

You know, my native tongue isn't English but I've written my works both in Korean and in English.

Translating is always the hardest,

so because of my short English, most of my works are under 'this and that' modifications.

Regrettably, some cannot be translated properly due to the linguistic differences between English and  Korean.

English belongs to the linguistic family of the Indo-European language

but Korean, Mongolian, Japanese[Japanese is a linguistic offspring of Korean],

Manchurian[now almost an obsolete language], Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish 

to the family of the Ural-Altaian language.

The main difference is the position of 'verb' in a sentence.

In the Korean and Japanese language 'subject' comes first in a sentence like in English,

but 'verb' always comes last. Owing to that ordering, 'object', 'complement' and 

'modifiers', such as 'adverbs' and 'adjectives' always come in the middle.

 

Especially, there are lots of 'adjectives' indicating one similar color or object or phenomenon

depending on the shapes, moods, tinges and movements.

I' ll take one comprehensible simile, a human face!

It can be expressed as 'complexion'.  

Such is the case in Korean adjectives'. In a sense, they are numerous 'sophisticated linguistic complexions' themselves.

That aspect makes it very difficult to translate Korean literary works into western languages.

Above all, I feel that Koreans need to make more and further efforts to translate.  

 

Without even  having any mutual recognition in advance, I am sending several poems of mine below.

I think that sometimes, just one first touch in our one-time lives will do for freindship heartfelt.

Sorry for my email without any notice,

and thanks for your future considerateness expected.

 

PS:I have much interest in your UK poetry society? 

      I will be deeply obliged to you if you send an answer email to me ASAP.