The South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon is one of the most influential contemporary poets in the world. She read from her poetry, including newly translated work from her latest collection Synchronized Sea Anemone. This book from 2025, that can be considered a departure from her famous 'Death trilogy', contains a note to her readers, in which she writes: ‘I used to write poems filled with pain. Then, as if doused with cold water, I thought I must write differently. These are those poems.’

Kim Hyesoon was interviewed about this search for a different kind of writing and about her work and life by Mia You, who has translated work by Kim Hyesoon to English. As a tribute, poets Don Mee Choi and Simone Atangana Bekono read from their own work. Don Mee Choi has translated Kim Hyesoon's work for many years; Simone Antangana Bekono's collection Marshmallow was deeply influenced by her writing and thinking.

Kim Hyesoon 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). Her collections If the Earth Dies, Whom Will the Moon Circle? (2022) and Synchronized Sea Anemone (2025) have not yet been translated.

Don Mee Choi is a poet and translator. She was born in Seoul, educated in the United States, and now lives in Berlin. Choi's works of documentary poetry draw on family history as well as archival material to interrogate "the overlapping histories of Korea and the U.S." In addition to her own poetry, she is a prolific translator to English of modern Korean women poets, including several books by Kim Hyesoon. Choi is the author of The Morning News Is Exciting (2010), Petite Manifesto (2014), Hardly War (2016), DMZ Colony (2020), which won the National Book Award, and Mirror Nation (2024). In it, a Mercedes wheel rim rolling down the street evokes memories of her father on the Glienicke Bridge between Berlin and Potsdam. This memory, in turn, becomes a catalyst for delving into the violent, colonial and neo-colonial history of South Korea.

Simone Atangana Bekono is a writer of prose and poetry. Her collection of poems and letters titled Hoe de eerste vonken zichtbaar waren (How the first sparks became visible, 2018)was awarded the Poëziedebuutprijs Aan Zee. Her debut novel Confrontaties (Confrontations) was highly praised and won the Hebban Debut Prize, the Anton Wachter Prize, and the Best Book for Young Adults Award. In 2022, Simone wrote the novella Zo hoog de zon stond for the Brabants Boek Present. In 2024, her second poetry collection Marshmallow was awarded with the Jan Campert-prijs.

Mia You is a poet, translator of Korean poetry, and lecturer at the Department of English at Utrecht University. She grew up in the United States and lives in Utrecht. Motherhood, birth, heredity, and the racialization of everyday life form the common thread in her balanced lyrical work. She is the author of the (English-language) poetry collection I, Too, Dislike It (1913 Press, 2016) and has published in De Gids, Artforum, Boston Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. In 2024, her second poetry collection, Festival, was published in English by Belladonna Press and in Dutch by Uitgeverij Chaos. She currently works on the translation of Kim Hyesoon's collection Synchronized Sea Anemone (2025).

'When my body is the entire world' - the poetry of Kim Hyesoon was curated for Writers Unlimited Festival by Maarten van der Graaff.