Moon Chung-hee Reads her Poetry at 18th Gerard Manley Hopkins Summer School

Korean poet, Moon Chung-hee, has published numerous books of poems since her first award-winning poem in 1969.

Moon Chung-hee has received many awards, including the prestigious Sowol Poetry Prize (1976), the Contemporary Literature Award (1996), and Qiriu i Naimit Prize for the best work from Macedonia International Poetry Festival (2004).

Her Selected Poems, Windflower, was published in English. Dr. Moon is currently teaching poetry in the Department of Creative Writing at Dongguk University in Seoul, Korea.

 In her Poetry, Moon explores a woman's journey from domesticity to freedom

Moon invites the reader along multiple radii of a married woman's life as she moves into maturity. The conflict between intense longings for freedom and the sober awareness of their self-destructiveness is central to Moon's poetic dialogue. Her anecdotal and autobiographic poems, in particular, take a turn toward self-mockery where sudden insight into necessities of life rescues her poetic persona from despair.

 Dramatic Poetry

  Moon has also been interested in poetic drama. As a result, she wrote several works including The Birth of Butterfly , Domi , and Guunmong (adapted as a style of Pansori from the Korean traditional novel), and presented them on the stage.

Download Programme for Hopkins Festival 2005