Kim Hyesoon

Kim Hyesoon is one of South Korea’s most significant contemporary poets, striving for a freedom from form in her work. She experiments with language, focusing on the sensual—often female—body, directly opposing male-dominated lyrical poetry. Her poems are direct, deliberately grotesque, theatrical, unsettling, and visceral, employing playful linguistics to subvert traditional roles for women. Her writing is characterized as feminist surrealism.