Recipient of the 2025 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
Kim So Yeon is a South Korean poet.
1. Life
Kim So Yeon was born in Gyeongju,North Gyeonsang Province in 1967. She studied Korean literature at the CatholicUniversity of Korea, where she also earned her master’s degree in modernpoetry. She made her literary debut in1993 publishing “We Praise the Wasted Time” and other poems in the literaryquarterly Poetry and Thought. Kim defines the poet's way of being as"the right to not belong to this world." From her first collection, Pushed to the Limit (Moonji, 1996), to the present, Kim has passionately exploredthe boundaries and outskirts of this world. The path of Kim's poetry, which maybe best summed up as "decentralization," charts the same course asher life. She signed the Writers’ Declaration 6.9, which petitioned the SouthKorean government to investigate the deaths of six people during a police raidin 2009, an incident known in South Korea as the “Yongsan Tragedy.” Kim alsoparticipated in the writing and production of Gulttuk Shinmun, anewspaper dedicated to the controversial mass layoffs conducted by SsangyongMotor Company in 2009. More recently, she was an active member of “With NoReferences,” a project to help victims of sex crimes reported within SouthKorean literary circles. Since her fourth collection, A Mathematician’s Morning (Moonji, 2013), Kim has proved without doubt that aesthetics andpolitics can coexist, publishing work enthusiastically received to bothcritical and popular acclaim. Kim is the recipient of the Nojak LiteraturePrize (2010), the Hyundae Literary Award (2011), the Yi Yuksa Poetry Award(2015), the Modern Poetry Award (2020), and the Cheongma Literary Award (2024,for Catalyzing Night). The 2022 Japanese translation of her Lexicon of Monosyllabic Words (一文字の辭典) received the best translation award (日本翻訳大賞) in Japan as well.
2. Writing
Kim'sacute poetic world owes its characteristic tension to the poet's unique abilityto simultaneously reveal both the absurdity of this world and that of the humanpsyche. Her first collection of poetry, Pushed to the Limit (Moonji,1996), is a well-known record of the rites of passage of youth. The star amidstthe debris of this enthusiastically lived youth is the female gender, cast atthe mercy of the patriarchy. This intersects with the persona who acts as awitness to the shadows in the wake of Korea's democracy movement. Her third poetry collection, Bones Called Tears (Moonji, 2009), features multiple female speakers. From children tocrones, the poet records the various voices that were once hers or that she haswitnessed, in a repertoire depicting the reincarnation of women's tears/womenand tears. Her fourth poetry collection, the Yi Yuksa Poetry Award-winning A Mathematician’s Morning, offers a vision encompassing the potential of anew kind of community as well as the ways it is calculated to fail. Last butnot least, her poetry collections Dear i (Achimdalbooks, 2018) and Catalyzing Night (Moonji, 2023) give free rein to the actively, deliberately queervoices of those outside the mainstream. Kim is also a much beloved essayistwith a loyal following, whose works include the steady-seller Lexicon of the Mind (Maumsanchaek, 2008), the first of her Lexicon trilogy followed by TheRealm of S[iot] (Maumsanchaek, 2012) and Lexicon of Monosyllabic Words(Maumsanchaek, 2018); There’s No Love in Love (Moonji, 2019), composedfrom the point of view of women as a gender; Clenching My Molars(Maumsanchaek, 2022), written during the Covid-19 pandemic; and Everyday Exercise and Poetry (Achimdalbooks, 2022), dedicated to everyday life andwriting in the aftermath of tragedy and disaster.
Reference
1. [시인 특집] 김소연 “마음껏 아슬아슬하기 위해 시를 쓴다”
“Featured Poet Kim So Yeon: ‘I Write Poetry for Unreserved Thrill.’” Channel Yes. http://ch.yes24.com/Article/View/29495.
2. 피플 – 김소연 시인 : 시옷의 세계에서 찾아낸 시의 속내
“Poet Kim So Yeon: The Intention of Poetry as Found in The World of Siot.” Street H.
http://navercast.naver.com/magazine_contents.nhn?rid=2602&contents_id=74996.
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