Kim Hyesoon

(South Korea, 1955) is one of South Korea's most important contemporary poets. She teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Kim published her first poems in 1979 and was one of the first women to have her work included in the literary magazine Munhak kwa jisŏng (Literature and Intellect), which led the resistance against the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s. Since the 1990s, her work has gained increasing recognition and she has received numerous awards. In her experimental work, she explores the complex existence of women who are grandmothers, mothers and daughters in the context of Korea's highly patriarchal society. Many of Kim Hyesoon's poems have been translated from Korean into English by the Korean-American poet Don Mee Choi, including Kim's books Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers (2008); All the Garbage of the World, Unite! (2011); Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (2014), I'm OK, I'm Pig! (2014), Autobiography of Death (2018), Phantom Pain Wings (2019), If the Earth Dies, Whom Will the Moon Circle? (2022) and Synchronized Sea Anemone (2025).
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Go to the website of Kim Hyesoon