Poet Jo Jae-do from Buyeo publishes 16th poetry collection ‘Please Take Care of the Weak’

(Daejeon, Chungnam = News 1) Reporter Choi Il = ‘When the weak hit the strong, we jump up and applaud. When the strong fall to the weak’s punch, people feel a strange sense of pleasure. It’s the same with revolutions, boxing, and Hong Gil-dong.’

Poet Jo Jae-do, who is from Buyeo, South Chungcheong Province, has published his 16th poetry collection, “Please Take Care of the Weak” (published by Small Forest).

He sings of ‘peace’ while revealing various aspects of the lives of the weak through 80 poems, and talks about ‘circle’, the category of one’s own world that a mature person should have, and ‘fact’ that removes the world’s falsehood and hypocrisy.

“There are words that are increasingly on the verge of being discarded, as if their expiration date has passed. Words like ‘fatherland,’ ‘nation,’ ‘unification,’ ‘hometown,’ ‘people,’ and ‘class.’ Young people don’t even mention them, and even older parents find them boring. In this collection of poems, I also use the word ‘weak’ instead of ‘people.’ Is this the trend of the times? Or is it a trap?”

Jo Jae-do’s poetry goes beyond objective description and representation of the situation of the weak and shows a poetic ideology that raises it to the level of active reflection, awareness, and practice.

In an era where poems with vague meanings that sound like one’s own dialect and are confined to self-consciousness are rampant, his poetry collection is evaluated as continuing the lineage of the people’s poetry of the 1980s, a brilliant era of poetry.

Poet Jo Jae-do. /News 1

Poet Jae-do Jo, born in Buyeo in 1957 and raised in Cheongyang, graduated from the Department of Korean Language Education at Kongju National University.

He was a middle school Korean language teacher, and began his literary career in 1985 by publishing the poem “To You” and four other poems in the educational magazine “People’s Education,” and was forced to leave the teaching profession twice due to the formation of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union in 1989.

After his reinstatement in 1994, he devoted himself to teaching students how to write until his retirement in 2012. Since his first poetry collection, “Teacher’s Diary,” in 1988, he has published over 60 books, including poetry collections, novels for young adults, fairy tales, and picture books.

He leads the ‘Together Peace Gathering’ in Cheonan, entered the ‘5-year Life University’ he designed himself in 2020, and is now a graduating fifth-year student. He is currently writing a report on what he has studied and done so far.

choil@news1.kr