Kim Hyesoon was born in Uljin, Gyeongsangbuk-do. She received her Ph.D. in Korean Literature from Konkuk University and began as a poet in 1979 with the publication of Poet Smoking a Cigarette and four other poems in Literature and Intellect. Kim is an important contemporary poet in South Korea, and she lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Kim was in the forefront of women published in a literary journal, Munhak kwa jisŏng.
Work
Kim started to receive critical acclaim in the late 1990s and it is her own belief that her work was partly recognized because at that time there was a generally strong wave of women's poets and poetry. Kim is the recipient of multiple literary prizes including the Kim Su-yŏng Literature Award for her poem, A Poor Love Machine, Sowol Poetry Literature Award, and Midang Literature Award, which are named after three renowned contemporary Korean poets. Kim was the first woman poet to receive the Kim Su-yŏng Literature Award, Midang Award, contemporary poetry award and Daesan Literary Award, Lee Hyoung-Gi Literary Award, Griffin Poetry Prize. Kim's poetry collections include: From another star, Father's scarecrow, The Hell of a certain star, Our negative picture, My Upanishad, Seoul, A Poor Love Machine, To the Calendar Factory Manager, A Glass of Red Mirror, Your First, and Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream Blossom, Pig Autobiography of Death, Wing Phantom Pain. Kim has participated in readings at poetry festivals all over the world: Smith College Poetry Center, Taipei Poetry Festival, 41st Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, Poesie Festival Berlin, Poetry Parnassus London, Stockholm international Poetry Festival, Hong Kong International Poetry nights, Festival for World Literature Cologne The Center for Art of Translation Poetry Foundation AAWW Fokus Lylic – Festivalkongress, Frankfurt, Mason de Ra Poesie Paris, L Ecole normale Superieure, St, John's College, Cambridge, New Castle Poetry Festival, Litteratur Huset Trondheim Norway, Litteratur pa Bla, Oslo, Terrapolis, Charlottenborg Copenhagen, etc. Kim Hyesoon's Poetry was used for Jenny Holzer's exhibit at the Korean National Museum of Moderncontemporary Art. Kim's skill as a writer resides in her facility at combining poetic images with experimental language while simultaneously grounding her work in ‘feminine writing’ drawn from female experiences. Her language is violent and linguistically agile, appropriate for her topics which often center on death and/or injustice.A landmark feminist poet and critic in her native South Korea, Kim Hyesoon's surreal, dagger-sharp poetry has spread from hemisphere to hemisphere in the past ten years, her works translated to Chinese, Swedish, English, French, German, Dutch, and beyond. Kim Hyesoon raises a glass to the reader in the form of a series of riddles, poems conjuring the you inside the me, the night inside the day, the outside inside the inside, the ocean inside the tear. Kim's radical, paradoxical intimacies entail sites of pain as well as wonder, opening onto impossible—which is to say, visionary—vistas. Again and again, in these poems as across her career, Kim unlocks a horizon inside the vanishing point. The birdlike Kim weaves a pattern of poems, so strangely compelling and curious, and utterly unlike anything I had heard before. —Sasha Dugdale
Added to The &NOW Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing''
Works in Korean
From Another Star, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul, 1981
Father's Scarecrow, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul, 1985
The Hell of a Certain Star, Ch’ŏngha Seoul, 1988. Reprinted by Munhakdongnae, 1997
Our Negative Picture, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul, 1991
My Upanishad, Seoul, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul, 1994
A Poor Love Machine, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul, 1997
To the Calendar Factory Manager, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul, 2000
A Glass of Red Mirror, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul, 2004
Your First, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul, 2008
Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul 2011
Blossom, Pig, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul 2016
The Autobiography of Death, Munhaksilheomsil, Seoul 2016
Phantom Pain of wings, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul 2019
Essays
To Write as a Woman: Lover, Patient, Poet, and You - Essay on Poetry
Thus Spoke No
Women, Do Poetry
Do Womananimalasia
interview
Ruth Williams. "“Female Poet” as Revolutionary Grotesque: Feminist Transgression in the Poetry of Ch’oe Sŭng-ja, Kim Hyesoon, and Yi Yŏn-ju." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 29.2 : 395–415. Project MUSE. Web. 28 Mar. 2012. .
Awards
Kim Suyoung Award
Sowol Poetry Award
Contemporary Poetry Award
Korea Culture and Arts Foundation 'This Year's' Art Prize
