Kim Hyesoon

In 2025, she received Internationale Literaturpreis – Haus der Kulturen der Welt for *Autobiographie des Todes*. It was the first time in the award’s history that a poetry collection was honored.

• Name — Kim Hyesoon • Born — 26 October 1955 • Birthplace — Uljin County, North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea • Occupation — Poet, professor • Genre — Poetry • Movement — Feminism

Kim Hyesoon was born in Uljin County, North Gyeongsang Province. She was raised by her grandmother and had tuberculous pleurisy as a child. She received her Ph.D. in Korean literature from Konkuk University and began her career as a poet in 1979 with the publication of the poem "Dead body Smoking a Cigarette" along with four other of her poems in the literary magazine Literature and Intellect (Munhak-kwa Jiseong). Kim Hyesoon is Poet, essayist, and critic. She is one of the most prominent and influential contemporary poets of South Korea. She has published fifteen poetry books and five books on poetics. Kim, who currently lives in Seoul where she teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Kim was in the forefront of women published in Literature and Intellect.

Kim started to receive critical acclaim in the 1990s. Her own belief is that her work was recognized at that time in no small part because the 1990s in South Korea were noted for a generally strong wave of women poets and women's poetry. Kim is the recipient of multiple literary prizes including the Kim Su-yeong Literature Award (1996) for her poem "A Poor Love Machine", the Sowol Poetry Prize (2000), and the Midang Literary Award (2006), which are named after three renowned contemporary Korean poets. Kim was the first woman poet to receive the Kim Su-yeong Literature Award, Midang Literary Award, Contemporary Poetry Award, and Daesan Literary Award. More recently she has also received the Lee Hyoung-Gi Literary Award (2019), the Griffin Poetry Prize (2019), the Cikada Prize, the Samsung Ho-Am Prize in the Arts (2022), U.K Royal Society of Literature International writer (2022), and National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (2023, she is the first foreign poet laureate who won the award). Kim Hyesoon was named the T.S. Eliot Memorial Reader at Harvard University Library (2023). Her poetry collection Phantompain Wings was named poetry book of the year (2023) by the New York Times and Washington Post, The Poetry Society (U.K), among others. Her poems have been translated into many languages (Swedish, French, German, Polish, Persian, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Danish, etc). Kim's profile appeared in The New Yorker, and her poems have appeared in The New York Times, Guernica, The Paris Review, The Nation, The Poetry Foundation, The Boston Review, The European Review poetryinternationalweb, and Tricycle. Kim's poetry collections include: From another star (1981), Father's scarecrow (1985), The Hell of a certain star (1987), Our negative picture (1991), My Upanishad, Seoul (1994), A Poor Love Machine (1997), To the Calendar Factory Manager (2000), A Glass of Red Mirror (2004), Your First (2008), Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (2011), Blossom, Pig (2016), Autobiography of Death (2016), and Wing Phantom Pain (2019). After Earth Dies, who will Moon Orbit? (2022). Kim has participated in readings at poetry festivals all over the world. Kim Hyesoon's poetry was used for Jenny Holzer's exhibit at the Korean National Museum of Modern contemporary 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, Danish 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

• Lady No Ecco Books • The Hell of that Star Weslyan Poetry Series • Phantom Pain Wings New Directions Publishing, translated by Don Mee Choi • A Drink of Red Mirror Action Books • Autobiography of Death New Directions Publishing, translated by Don Mee Choi (the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize) • Poor Love Machine Action Books • I'm O.K, I'm Pig Bloodaxe Books • Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream Action Books • Mommy Must be a Fountain of Feathers Action Books • Anxiety of Words (Collection with other authors) Zephyr Press • All the Garbage of the World, Unite! Action Books • When the Plug Gets Unplugged • Princess Abandoned (essays), Tinfish, 2012 • Trilingual Renshi Vagabond Press Added to The &NOW Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing (&NOW Books, 2013)

• 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 • After Earth Dies, who will Moon Orbit?, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul 2022 • Death Trilogy, Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, Seoul 2025 • Synchronized Sea Anemone, Nanda, Seoul 2025

• To Write as a Woman: Lover, Patient, Poet, and You (Seoul: Munhakdongnae, 2002) - Essay on Poetry • Thus Spoke No (Proems) (Seoul: Munhakdongane, 2016) • Women, Do Poetry (Seoul: Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, 2017) • Do Womananimalasia (Seoul: Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, 2019) • Kim Hyesoon's Words (Seoul: Maumsanchaek, 2023, Interview Book) • Ventriloquism of the Air (Seoul: Munhak kwa chisŏng sa, 2026)