Poet Ahn Hee-yeon gathered every moment of 'travel'
What clues of the most delicate and poignant poetry!

Poet Ahn Hee-yeon wrote with earnest sentences about the fact that we live in a heaven where sadness grows day by day and we struggle with it.
His collection of essays, “The Moment of Picking Up,” which covers his travels from 2005 to 2025, has been published by Nanda Publishing.
He has been traveling every year without fail since he was nineteen, when he started college.
Even when the pandemic blocked air travel and made physical travel impossible, I didn't give up on the form of travel, but instead faithfully walked through the travel destinations of daily life and life, turning my gaze towards a blank sheet of paper.
The book, which consists of four parts, travels through 'the beginnings of life', 'art', and 'people'.
The propeller that caused the wind and waves to blow away Ahn Hee-yeon time and time again, the final destination reached after passing through those stops is 'poetry'.
Traveling has nurtured poets and made them poets.
An Hee-yeon does not seek out places where poetry is found, but rather wants to discover poetry in any place.
For him, travel is a life that makes life, which was like a bruised grape, vivid and makes him reveal the clean face inside him.
Ahn Hee-yeon's travel collection is filled with moments that stab, penetrate, and strike like cymbals, striking and crashing together, leaving a chill, and jewel-like scenes that fill the soul's hunger.
A circuit of stories that continues from head to heart, from crown to soles of feet, long after the journey is over.
Waiting for yourself without prodding until a single story has completely circulated through your entire body.
For Hee-yeon Ahn, this book is a map of the heart, a walk down the “unknown alleys” collected by a “fake mapmaker,” a collection of such waiting.


In 2017, he built a small house called ‘Book’ by collecting memories of his travels (Goodbye to the Scattered Heart, Weather of the Drawer, 2017). Eight years later, he is preparing to leave again for the place where he stayed during that time.
In front of the Paul Valéry Beach Cemetery, which reminded us that life and death are one, in front of Camille Claudel's statue, which taught us the end of love, in front of Michelangelo's Pieta, which was the core of suffering.
What did your past self see and what did not see there, and what did your present self see and what did not see.
So this book is also about a second life, a second encounter, where we break down simple and naive beliefs and embrace more complex and difficult beliefs.
A journey that allows you to discover faces you had previously been unable to see because of the greatness of your own sorrow and pain.
The concentric circles of love that center around me are infinite, without boundaries or bottom, so what can be put into them, an infinity whose pi cannot be measured?
Poet Ahn Hee-yeon says that as we fill the remaining days by reading and writing scenes from the past, we sometimes discover the meaning of time by crossing out sentences from the past and writing new ones.
The process of returning after failing and growing closer after growing apart is called a journey.
The pain that only those who have overcome that time and completely crossed the boundaries of a world can experience.
It's a reaffirmation of the fact that there is something we can never have now, something that exists only in the past.
Perhaps only those who have traveled far away learn that they have arrived at the same place, that life here and now is the only life there is.

The poet, with a heart that knits together the precipice between the past and the present, decides to leave a few new pieces for the readers.
An Hee-yeon says:
All time leaves a stain.
Big or small, dirty or beautiful, they are all stops of love.
Every time I turn a corner, I see myself standing there waving, imperfect, scraggly, embarrassing, yet passionate.
I present to you a poem written by a poet in response to all of my feelings.
Something that will completely leak out from within us and age us prematurely.
To you who cherishes the longing for the tenderness of life, I believe that you will become the opposite cymbal.
What kind of person are you?

A conversation between a father and daughter overheard on a hill in a French setting: "Do you hear that? That's the sound I love the most."
The sound of waves… … ” It occurred to me that the drop of water that awakens us each day of our lives is not something that exists far away, unreachable.
It was a prayer for me to discover the jewels meticulously embroidered in each and every passing moment here and now.
All the paths and roads I walked were places of prayer.
Our prayers will not be in the hanging lights, rosaries, or crucifixes in the temple.
Prayer is present in every step of our lives, at every table.
Anyway, the moment you think of prayer as prayer, it scatters.
It is only after walking for a long time that we can see how beautiful the fragments of our lives become like stained glass.
_From “Prayer, the moment you think of it as prayer, it scatters”

The reason I travel is to collect.
What do you pick up? Moments that stab me.
These are the emotions that run through me.
I often get goosebumps when I encounter scenes that come at me like cymbals and crash into me.
Encounters that can only be expressed with one syllable: 'Ah.' or 'Wow.'
I keep those moments in a collection box and relive them long after the trip is over.
To experience is to create a circuit of stories that runs from the head to the heart, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet.
Waiting for myself without nagging until one story has completely circulated through my entire body.

--- From the author's note

There was only one reason why I came all the way to Schwabing in Munich, Germany.
To find traces of Jeon Hye-rin, a name that was particularly dear to me when I was in my twenties.
At that time, literature was nothing but pain, wounds, and death to me, and Jeon Hye-rin, who ended her own life, was the person who best embodied the literary image I longed for.
It wasn't just Jeon Hye-rin.
Names that sparkle painfully, like Sylvia Plath, who stuck her head in a gas oven, Virginia Woolf, who filled her pockets with stones and waded into the river, and Emily Brontë, who died young of tuberculosis.
Back then, I only chose and loved those names.
To me, they were people who never took their eyes off the sun even though they were blinded by its light, and people who had so much to say but 'said nothing.'

--- From "Did you come to find Jeon Hye-rin?"

Traveling has taught me that there are countless windows into the world.
What particularly fascinated me was the fact that nowhere in the world is there a window that is 'still'.
Each window was flowing at its own pace.
All I had to do was sit in one place like a buoy.
Then, thousands of square meters of vineyards, a sunset on a beach, sunlight splitting the darkness, and lovers sharing a kiss would arrive as gifts before my eyes.
It was nice to have that long period of time anchored.
I was shaken by the comfort of the scenery and hoped that my life could also flow beautifully outside someone's window.

--- From "All windows exist to make separation understandable"

I love traveling so much that it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that it was traveling that raised me.
I've been on quite a few trips since I first went backpacking with the money I saved from my part-time job in college.
I was always alone, and if I carried a backpack, it was usually for a month or two.
When someone asked me why I travel so much, I would jokingly say, "I have something to find."
People would always ask me what on earth I was looking for, but I would just laugh.
Because I myself had no way of knowing what it was.

--- From "From Backpack to Sleeping Bag"