Poet Kim Jin-myung Releases His Sixth Collection, "Yes, I Am Here"

Born in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province, in 1964, Kim Jin-myung graduated from the Department of Creative Writing at the Graduate School of Culture and Arts, Dongguk University. He made his literary debut in 2017 when “Ice Wall,” his winning entry for the New Writer’s Award from Korean Literature and Arts, brought him into the poetry world. He later expanded his range into fiction in 2021, winning the New Writer’s Award in the fiction category of Monthly Literature with the story “Molting.”

Since then he has published the poetry collections Ice Wall, I Want to Fall for You, The Time of Nomads, The Scent of Raw Earth, The Rock and the Ivy, and Yes, I Am Here, along with the short-story collection The Flower of Resurrection. He has been recognized for his craft and literary depth through numerous honors, including the Gangnam Literature Award, the Yun Dong-ju Centenary Memorial Literature Award, the Tagore Literary Award, the Asan Literature Award, and the National Fire Agency’s 119 Culture Award.

Having drawn readers’ attention through his first fiction collection, The Flower of Resurrection, and his fifth poetry collection, The Rock and the Ivy — works that gave literary form to the narratives of human wounds and recovery, of silence and vitality — Kim now turns, in this sixth collection, a lower and deeper gaze upon the meaning of what remains and what survives in human existence.

Published on May 15, 2026 by Ogamdo Publishing, “Yes, I Am Here” comprises 76 poems across five parts. Moving through spring blossoms and open fields, wound and death, ruin and silence, the collection ultimately arrives at a declaration of life: “And still, I am here.”

What makes this collection especially notable is that its central axis is the message that “existence is proven not by completeness, but by what remains.” In her commentary, poet Do Bok-hee (deputy editor of the reporting desk at Dongyang Ilbo) observed that the collection “begins not as a proclamation but as a breath, and finally arrives at the single sentence, ‘Yes, I am here.'” She described it as “the moment when the weight of endured time becomes a sentence, and the temperature of a life withstood erupts into poetry.”

In the title poem, “Yes, I Am Here,” the poet confesses: “I have shattered countless times / and countless times, I am here.” The line carries the poet’s deepened understanding of human existence — not as a narrative of growth or achievement, but as a form of repeated rupture and remainder. Though a person crumbles and wavers a little each day, the poet holds fast to the lingering glow of a being that, in the end, refuses to disappear.

I have shattered countless times and countless times, I am here. — from the title poem, “Yes, I Am Here”

The collection also gathers works that stir the reader’s emotions, such as “Spring Is,” “We Were Looking at Different Places,” “A Person Who Smells of Grass,” and “The Silence of November.” Though each holds a different sentiment — love and parting, recovery and silence — they all converge upon the warmth and the life-force of human existence, showing the very essence of Kim Jin-myung’s poetic world.

Kim’s literature never consumes nature as mere backdrop. Fields and azaleas, dandelions and moonlight, forest and sea, the growth rings of a tree — all appear as mirrors and as witnesses that reflect human existence. In “A Night of Embroidering Poems,” he redefines poetry itself as an act of suturing a wounded world through the line, “A poem is not written — it is sewn together.” And in “Ssitgimgut,” he gravely contemplates the essence of life, regarding being alive itself as an obligation owed to the dead.

Critics have called this collection a “deepened turning point” in Kim Jin-myung’s poetic world. Where his fifth collection, The Rock and the Ivy, explored an ethics of coexistence and solidarity even amid wounds, “Yes, I Am Here” moves beyond a poetics of relationship toward a “poetics of survival,” in which a being left utterly alone comes, in the end, to prove itself.

Kim Jin-myung remarked, “Rather than becoming a grand language of salvation, if a poem can reach someone in this harsh world as a small measure of warmth, that is enough.” He added, “I will keep walking quietly from a low place, following the grain of existence.”

Recently, at the Gangnam Writers’ Association’s 30th-anniversary “Literary Festival,” Kim Jin-myung — serving as the association’s secretary-general — steadily hosted and guided the event, earning praise from attendees for its dignified organization. He contributed to the smooth running of the day, which featured a special lecture by Professor Kim Hyung-suk, Korea’s oldest living philosopher. In June, he also won the Grand Prize in the smart-fiction category of the 26th Korea Living Literature Grand Prize, earning recognition for his literary achievement as well.

Carrying on both his devotion to the literary community and his own creative work, Kim Jin-myung’s recent activity is being regarded as a meaningful example of a writer demonstrating, at once, the social role of the literary figure and the strength of his creative craft.