Kim Sun-woo (born 1970) is a South Korean feminist poet and author.
Life
Kim Sun-woo was born in 1970 in Gangneung, Gangwon Province. She is considered part of the new feminist wave of Korean poetry. Kim made her literary debut in 1996, publishing ten poems including "Daegwallyeong yetgil" (대관령 옛길 Old Daegwallyeong Pass) in the quarterly Changbi.
Kim is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Nae ttaseuhan yuryeongdeul (내 따스한 유령들 My Warm Ghosts); four novels, most recently Barwon: yoseok geurigo wonhyo (발원: 요석 그리고 원효A Prayer: Yoseok and Wonhyo); several young adult novels and poetry collections, and numerous essay collections and books of literary criticism. She has received the Hyundae Literary Award and the Cheon Sang-byeong Poetry Award. Her books in translation include the collections Nae hyeoga ip soge gatyeo itgil geobuhandamyeon (내 혀가 입 속에 갇혀 있길 거부한다면 If My Tongue Refuses to Remain in My Mouth) in English and Dohwa arae jamdeulda (도화 아래 잠들다 Falling Asleep under Peach Blossoms) in German. From September to October 2013 she was poet-in-residence at the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation at Victoria University, Wellington.
Writing
According to the poet Ra Heeduk, Kim Sun-woo's poetry is filled with “bashful yet intense sensuality reminiscent of moist flower petals.” The women in her poetry are “embryos, mothers and midwives all at once.” The image of women as bountiful, life-giving and life-embracing entities dominates her first volume of poetry, If My Tongue Refuses to Remain in My Mouth. The poet's celebration of the female body is often accompanied by her revulsion of male oppression. In the title poem, the protagonist is forced to sew strips of new skin onto a monster that grows bigger and bigger. Her attempt to kill him ultimately fails because her “good tongue is obsequiously locked up in his mouth.”
Her second volume of poetry, Dohwa arae jamdeulda, reveals the force of nature in its primeval state through the physicality of women's bodies and uniquely feminine functions of reproduction. In "Mindungsan" (민둥산 Bare Mountain), it is women's sexuality and sexual desires that find their expression in nature: “cloud children” pucker their lips toward the “bright nipples of flowers,” and “the tongue of the wind” passes over the waist of the mountain and lifts up the eulalia seeds while “licking the deep valley.” The winter grass bends down to have sex in various positions and the mountain itself is “lying with its legs open towards the shadow.”
Of her fiction, Kim says: "My poetry has a certain level of impact on my fiction—it’s the reason I can use such rich metaphors in my novels. But it doesn’t work the other way around. My novels and short stories are generally slow-paced narratives; stories from history that have meaningful social implications. I turn ideas that are difficult to express in poetry into prose: stories about the nature of society, history, and the multilayered relationships between people. For instance, my novel Barwon: yoseok geurigo wonhyo, based on the Silla-era philosopher, Buddhist monk, and religious reformer Wonhyo, is also a story about the kind of democracy that can be realized in this human world. My novel Murui yeonindeul (물의 연인들 Lovers of Water) is about the South Korean government’s thoughtless Four Major Rivers project (and the violent destruction of the environment it caused). But it also connects environmental destruction to the destruction of connections between people, conveying this message through a narrative of love. Stories like these were just too big to put into poetry." [1]
References
[1] Korea Literature Now. Vol. 42, Winter 2018. https://kln.or.kr/frames/interviewsView.do?bbsIdx=389
