I met the poet Go Seon-gyeong. We talked about housing for quite a while. She said she has been looking into a jeonse loan recently but is worried because there are no listings. She said she wants to stay within Seoul, but to match the price she would have no choice but to move farther to the outskirts than now. As she unpacked her worries that, with no fixed income, jeonse is better than monthly rent, even mentioning the frugality stickers she keeps at home, the stories in her recent poetry collection <Love on the Rocks> felt a little closer.

“I want to tell you about a specific love” (‘Confession’). Opening with this line, the collection presents love stories of precarious beings caught at the tail end of growth in a highly developed capitalist society, where hope is scarce. She said, “It seems that the sensibility of my peers is always to think of ourselves as on the brink of ruin.” ‘On the Rocks’ (on the rocks). Like ice slowly melting into a drink.

I met Go Seon-gyeong at a cafe in Seoul’s Gangseo-gu on the 29th of last month. She laughed, describing herself as “a worldly person whose sense of reality is weak.” ‘The worldly’ is also a key word for reading this collection.

“We will eat this cake and then part/ We will wrap up what remains of our hearts” (‘Guilty Favorite’)

“I tumbled with an angel under the snow-white duvet; my tousled golden hair smelled like Lush Super Milk… The deposit is three thousand; what kind of sum does that seem like to you? Monthly rent fifty including maintenance; then try tapping on the calculator to see how many months of rent three thousand is” (‘Angel of City’ )

“It is not that I want to meet you, but I want to earn money for you. If I go to Taipei, how much could I make? As I stare with a bored face at the cursor blinking on the screen, a call comes in urging me to pay the overdue room rent” (‘A Good Idea That Came to Mind in Snowy March’)

An editor at Changbi, which published this collection, described <Love on the Rocks> as a poetry book that writes down ‘the wistful and sublime confession we can offer in the age of capitalism.’ She said, “There are many poems based on my own reality, so I understand readers taking it that way.”

‘Love in a worldly age’ is a question for her. She said, “I conceived this collection as a book about romance. Love is illogical, and even when it means losing out myself, I may yield to the other person; that does not fit a time that prizes efficiency. Even so, I wondered why people date and love, and what makes us strive to win a particular person’s heart.”

It is often called an era without real love. Older generations also say that young people do not date because they weigh conditions and pursue only convenience. In her view, love overflows.

“Looking around me, people really do date a lot. Even if it is not within institutional fences or aligned with heterosexual norms, even if they have no thought of marriage, they still do.” That is why the ‘Author’s Note’ included in the book is a single sentence: “It felt teeming with real love.”

She debuted in 2022 through the Chosun Ilbo New Year’s Literary Contest. Across collections such as <Shower Gel and Soda Water> and <A Tomato Firmer Than the Heart>, her distinctive, sensuous diction and sentences have been said to represent the sensibilities of the younger generation, earning her labels like ‘MZ poet’ and ‘literary-scene idol.’ Her first collection, <Shower Gel and Soda Water>, recently surpassed its 23rd printing.

Since her debut, she has worked without rest, and there have been results. Some have even said, ‘Are you not burning out too quickly?’

She said, “Why do people decide on their own that I will burn out? I had a stubborn urge to prove them wrong.” Yet, “Lately I have wondered whether I have expected too many roles from poetry. ‘Earn money for me. Give me a sense of achievement. Satisfy my desire for recognition.’ I seem to have kept adding demands, and now I think that to get along with poetry I need to set that burden down. I even think about whether I should hold a second job to survive.”

To the end, Go Seon-gyeong wrestled between poetry as a sensuous art and the realities of daily life. The conclusion she reached is this: “I have very real, practical worries, and perhaps love is what helps me endure that reality.”