Poetry: I took your name as medicine by Park Joon

Until only a few years ago, poetry was not as popular as other forms of writing. However, with the successful debut of a young poet named Park Joon in 2012, the poetry market revived itself.

His first poetry collection ‘I took your name as medicine’ and prose collection ‘Although crying would not change anything’ have sold more than 160 and 200 thousands copies, respectively. His relatable and heartwarming poems are considered to have shattered the preconception that poetry is difficult.

Here is one of his poems.

The study hall

by Park Joon. Tr. Anton Hur

In the evening my friends changed out of their uniforms in the bathroom and worked as delivery boys around the Jugong apartment complex and the girls from Sungdong Vocational High didn’t let their hiked-up hemlines get in the way of hoisting themselves atop the back seat of a raised motorcycle saddle

Yeonhwa as she left home stole her impoverished mother’s thick hair and the lower half of her late father’s face, leaving to roam from station to station

My jaundice was an excuse to play truant for a long time and underneath my desk my pincushion heart would surely be rolling around and graduation was so far away and the words carelessly spat from my yawning craw sat in gangs in every dark alley, cackling