Son Taek-su

Son Taek-su made his debut in 1998 when he won the Hankook Ilbo Spring Literary Contest for poetry and the Kookje Shinmun Spring Literary Contest for children’s verse. As a poet who depicts the loss of unity in modern daily life and the values of farming culture and folklore prior to modernization, Son opens up new possibilities for the coexistence of two completely different time zones and cultural histories. In his first two collections of poetry, Tiger’s Footprinting and Magnolia Streetcar, he exposes the cracks in myth and modernity centered on a poor family history and proposes to suture them shut. His poetry is like the seam that is formed between them.