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Hi! I'm Elliot Mountlight Kim.
In 1959, I was born in Cheju Island, the biggest island in Korea Which is about 100km south of the southern end of the Korean Peninsula. I majored in English language and literature at the university. For about 24 years from 1977 to 2001, I had never written any poems. I'd been waiting and waiting till my heart opened itself naturally. When I went over to New Zealand in 2001, at last it bloomed there. I wrote many poems amounting to three volumes from then on. Now I am back in Korea. But I had difficulty translating Korean poems into English. I've tried hard to translate. You know Tagor, an Indian poet, translated his works into English himself. In my case, situation is more difficult than he, because the Korean language is not one of the Indo-European languages. It's included in the Ural-Altaian language. one of the most different aspects of these two lanuage families is word order in a sentence. In any Indo-European language, word order is[S+V~ ] in a sentence but in any Ural-Altaian language, word order is [S+~+V]. That always makes me hard. Also, you know some poems can hardly be translated properly or some poems cannot be translated. The Korean language is an emotional language. That makes me harder. Translation makes poetic works simpler than original ones, you know. but I'll try and try. So I'd like to ask a favor of you. I'll send you several poems in English. Could you correct them with English fluency if needed? Thanks for reading me. I truly want you to be my poetic friend. Please, send me a personal line when you are free. I guess you will be a good friend. Be happy with your family and friends in your god. Buy!
-History tells.
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