1949년 전남 구례에서 태어나 서라벌예대 문예창작과를 졸업하고 고려대 대학원 국문학과에서 수학했다. 1969년 중앙일보 신춘문예에 시조가, 『월간문학』신인작품모집에 시가 당선되어 등단했다. 시집으로 『만월』 『바람 속으로』 『길은 멀다 친구여』 『이슬 맺힌 노래』 『무늬』 『사이』 『조용한 푸른 하늘』 『은빛 호각』 『바다 호수』 『아르갈의 향기』 『우리의 죽은 자들을 위해』 『경찰은 그들을 사람으로 보지 않았다』가 있고, 시선집으로 『긴 노래, 짧은 시』가 있다. 만해문학상, 백석문학상, 정지용문학상, 동서문학상, 현대불교문학상, 지훈문학상, 대한민국 문화예술상, 박재삼문학상 등을 수상했다. 현재 단국대 문예창작과 초빙교수로 있다.
※ 저자 수상정보
- 정지용문학상(1996),
- 동서문학상(1998),
- 현대불교문학상(2004),
- 지훈문학상(2004),
- 백석문학상(2004),
- 대한민국 문화예술상(2007),
- 박재삼문학상(2012),
- 만해문학상(2012)
Lee Si-young, a poet of delicate sensibilities, began his literary career depicting the gloomy everyday life under the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s from the perspective of ordinary people. Lee aims to transform his art into a song for the suffering masses. His early poems are long and even prose-like, expressing his compassion towards the poor and the weak, and at the same time, embodying his fierce determination to preserve his humanity even amidst hardships. In the 1990s, Lee’s poems became drastically shorter in length. Composed of no more than two or three lines, they came to resemble Zen Buddhist poems in their use of minimal language and compacted form to encapsulate profound meaning and symbolic resonance. Most recently, notable is the change from short poems to prose poems with a rich texture of life. The critic Choi Won-sik acclaimed Lee’s recent poems as prose poems that use pure language to revitalize the precious memories embedded in the painful history of Korea. Lee is the recipient of 1994 Sorabol Literature Prize, 1996 Jeong Ji-yong Literature Award and 2004 Paik Suk Literature Award.
