This Side of Time is a new volume of translations of Ko Un’ short poems drawn from several of his collections in Korean and is a companion to The Three Way Tavern: Selected Poems also translated by Clare You and Richard Silberg. Ko Un is one of the most respected poets in Korea and has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He is a prolific author with over 100 volumes of poetry as well as many volumes of fiction and non-fiction in his native Korean. His work had been widely translated into many languages and he has a number of books in English translation including: Beyond Self, Ten Thousand Lives, Songs for Tomorrow, and Little Pilgrim. He was imprisoned several times and lived for a decade as a Zen Monk before returning the secular world. He has recently been a professor at Seoul National University.  

Ko Un is one of the best-known poets in Korea and abroad, and has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a prolific author with over 100 volumes of poetry as well as many volumes of fiction and non-fiction in his native Korean. His work has been widely translated into many languages, including a number of works in English translation such as The Three Way Tavern, Beyond Self, Ten Thousand Lives, Songs for Tomorrow, and Little Pilgrim. Ko Un was imprisoned several times during the military government in Korea and lived for a decade as a Zen Monk before returning the secular world. He is currently a professor at Seoul National University.  

Clare You, is the Chair of the Center for Korean Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and received the Korean National Silver Medal of Culture in 2003 for her work in the advancement of Korean culture. She is author of two language textbooks including College Korean.

Richard Silberg is the associate editor of Poetry Flash, is author of five books of poetry including The Fields, and Doubleness and the book of essays Reading the Sphere. 

“Ko Un’s poems evoke the open creativity and fluidity of nature, and funny turns and twists of Mind. Mind is sometimes registered in Buddhist terms — Buddhist practice being part of Ko Un’s background. Ko Un writes spare, short-line lyrics direct to the point, but often intricate in both wit and meaning. Ko Un has now traveled worldwide and is not only a major spokesman for all Korean culture, but a voice for Planet Earth Watershed as well.”

—Gary Snyder

“Ko Un is a crucial poet for the twenty-first century, and this is an enormously fresh and vivid translation.”

—Robert Hass

“No one has done more for what is coming gradually but ever more clearly to be recognized as Korea’s literature of the twenty-first century.”

—David McCann, Director of the Korean Studies Institute at Harvard University