Poetry explores inside of unconscious minds
An illustrated image in “I have always been beside you”/ Courtesy of Doors
Culture critic Kang Young-hee
By Baek Byung-yeul
Culture critic Kang Young-hee has been seeing into the minds of people while running what she called a “healing center” near Gyeongbok palace in Seoul.
There, Kang had consulted with some 5,000 people with illnesses of the mind at the place for five years from 2010 to 2015. The center is called “Koomoonjadap,” literally meaning “nine questions and one answer,” but she wants it to be translated as “the ultimate question and the right answer” because she could read what people don’t recognize what’s inside of them.
Based on her experience with counseling people, Kang recently released a book of poetry called “I have always been beside you.”
At a glance, the poetry book seems to contain romantic Valentine’s Day poems as it is decorated with colorful pastel illustrations and English translations, but Kang said those poems are “entirely based on heartbreaking real cases.”
“While running the healing center, I have consulted with people who suffered from terrible mental illnesses such as a young student who attempted suicide several times,” Kang told The Korea Times.
Kang is not a doctor. She doesn’t have any license for counseling. However, by word of mouth, people found out about the healing center with many questions and left there with an answer.
Kang said she just helped them breath a little easier after she could “read their wound embedded in their unconscious.”
“Though I am not a doctor, I was influenced by my father who was a psychiatrist, and I studied the psychiatric books of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan.
“And as Lacan said ‘the unconscious is structured like a language,’ I read people’s wounds embedded in their unconscious. I couldn’t give them an exact solution, but by only reading their wounds in the unconscious, they could leave the center with peace,” she said.
Kang added that people in the modern day have overlooked the power of love. “Many of us say I need healing for my bleeding soul, but they don’t really think about taking care of their neighbors. We have to look into what’s inside me and heal the wound of mind with love.”
Under the 12 subtitles, “I have always been beside you,” is comprised with short poems. Among them, Kang picked one poem on page 82 explaining it is a penetrating theme throughout the poetry book.
I played hide-and-seek
I was to seek and you were to be hidden
My eyes were covered by a white cloth
The rivers of tears were running down as if they were running for eternity
The white cloth fell from my eyes
And I saw you smiling at me
“What have you been searching for?”
“I have always been with you, right here.”
Kang said she could publish the poetry book thanks to her four translators.
“With the help from the four translators, I could publish this poetry work. Three London-based translators ― Mi Na Sketchley, Anthony Charles E. Banks and Hyangkue Lee ― translated my poems into English and illustrator Lee Sung-pyo also colored the book with his illustrations,” she said.
Now the place is turned into a cafe, but she still stays there and communicates with visitors.
“I have been posting my poems on my Twitter and Facebook accounts every day. When I get up in the morning, I sit in front of the computer and write a poem of whom I met yesterday,” she said.