Recipient of the 2026 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
"I'm writing this after the theater I live in a small, squalid place I'm always pondering how to leave When stability sounds like the night waves I take it as a sign to leave" —From "Writing Masterpieces at Night" in Doesn’t Everyone Write Masterpieces at Night? (Typist Press, 2024)
Kim Yideum is an established Korean poet.
1. Life
Kim Yideum was born in a village in the countryside of Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province. She studied German literature at Pusan National University and earned her Ph.D in Korean literature at Gyeongsang National University for her thesis on modern Korean feminist poetry.
Kim made her literary debut in 2001 winning the literary quarterly Poesie's 1st Newcomer's Award. She is the author of numerous collections of poems, essays, a novel, and scholarly works.
She previously hosted a poetry show on KBS Radio Jinju and her first poetry collection, A Stain in the Shape of a Star, was adapted for the stage as The Metamorphosis, taking home three awards at the 2014 Seoul Theater Artists Awards. As a participant of Arts Council Korea (ARKO)'s writer-in-residence program, she spent six months each at the Korean literature departments of the Free University of Berlin and the University of Ljubljana.
Kim is active on the festival circuit, participating in readings, book concerts, and conferences at the Stockholm International Poetry Festival (2025), the Singapore Writers Festival (2025), the Miłosz Festival (2022), the Berlin Poetry Festival (2022), the Poetry International Festival (2022), the George Town Literary Festival (2019), the Gulangyu Poetry Festival (2018), AWP 2016, and the Val-de-Marne International Poets Biennale (2015).
For six years, Kim operated a bookstore café in Ilsan while serving as adjunct professor of creative writing at Hanyang Women’s University. She is currently a columnist for Kookje Shinmun and Segye Ilbo, and teaches poetry writing at Seoul National University's department of Korean literature.
2. Writing
Kim Yideum is a poet with an eagle eye for the other in life, who does not shy away from confronting the other within herself during that process. To pin one's expectations on others is to bet on them, and few other poets have gone in so hard on this undefined speculation as Kim. If the energy and freshness of Kim's poetry stems from her characteristic way of taking perfectly ordinary scenes and rearranging them in unexpected ways, it is thanks to the risk-taking idiosyncrasy of her phrases achieved through allegory and transposition. The poet's language demonstrates a depth that goes deep under the surface of life in order to welcome life's fundamental experiences as hardship, drawing up words from unknown depths or casting them down to the lowest places, endlessly expanding their possibility in a spring of reality that never runs dry. With each such expansion of the consciousness, the poet's words deposit unknown shapes by our side. —Cho Jae-Ryong (literary critic, professor of French literature at Korea University)
“In Kim Yideum’s elegant and grotesque poetry, objective cool, violence and despairing megalomania all rage with the crystal-clear bitterness of vulnerability. When you read her beautiful, terrifying poems, you will go to pieces.” —Aase Berg (Swedish poet)
Reference
Poems
I Passed a Season Without Hating Anybody 아무도 미워하지 않고 한 계절이 지나갔다 (Minumsa Publishing Group 민음사, 2025)
Doesn’t Everyone Write Masterpieces at Night? 누구나 밤엔 명작을 쓰잖아요 (Typist Press 타이피스트, 2024)
The Invisible and the Nonexistent 투명한 것과 없는 것 (Munhakdongne Publishing 문학동네, 2023)
Song of Berlin, Dahlem 베를린, 달렘의 노래 (Munhakdongne Publishing 문학동네, 2023)
Wearing a T-Shirt That Won’t Dry 마르지 않은 티셔츠를 입고 (Hyundae Munhak Publishing Co., Ltd. 현대문학, 2019)
Shipwrecked Brunette 표류하는 흑발 (Minumsa Publishing Group 민음사, 2016)
Hysteria 히스테리아 (Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 문학과지성사, 2014)
Inexpressible Love 말할 수 없는 애인 (Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 문학과지성사, 2011)
Cheer up, Femme Fatale 명랑하라 팜 파탈 (Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 문학과지성사, 2007)
A Stain in the Shape of a Star 별 모양의 얼룩 (poemsijak 천년의시작, 2005)
Novels
Blood Sisters 블러드 시스터즈 (Munhakdongne Publishing 문학동네, 2011)
Essays
Goodbye, My Little Table 안녕, 나의 작은 테이블이여 (Yolimwon 열림원, 2020)
Dear Slovenia 디어 슬로베니아 (Logopolis 로고폴리스, 2016)
Friends of Every Nationality 모든 국적의 친구 (Nanda 난다, 2016)
Scholarly Works
Modern Korean Feminist Poetry 한국 현대 페니미즘시 연구 (Korean Studies Archive 국학자료원, 2015)
*Co-authored works redacted
Poems in Translation
Hysteria (Biuro Literackie, 2022)
Hysteria (Action Books, 2019)
Cheer Up, Femme Fatale! (Action Books, 2017)
Novels in Translation
Blood Sisters (Deep Vellum, 2019)
*Overseas anthologies redacted
Reference
황현산, 잘 표현된 불행, 난다, 2019. 8.
정윤서, 석사학위 논문, 김이듬 초기시 연구 : 시적 상징과 교란된 자아를 중심으로, 동국대학교 문화예술대학원, 2025.2
정은경, 봉인된 플럭서스FLUXUS : <별 모양의 얼룩_김이듬 書評>, 한국문연, 2006.01.01.
윤민우, <빨간 구두의 굴레와 여성주의적 재해석 : 섹스튼, 데이비스, 김이듬 = Bondage of the red shoes and its feminist reinterpretation : Anne Sexton, Kathryn Davis, Yideum Kim>, 한국비평이론학회, 2023. 2. 28.
심선향, <김이듬 시 『히스테리아』 영어 번역본의 감정 번역 연구 = A study on the emotion translation of the English translation of Hysteria by Kim Yideum : 레이코프(Lakoff)와 쾨페세스(Kövecses)의 '인지모형'과 '원형적 화 시나리오'에 바탕하여>, 한국외국어대학교 통번역연구소, 2021. 11. 30.
오형엽, <모성과의 길항, 다중적 알레고리 : 김이듬 시의 구조화 원리>, 시인동네. 통권69호 (2019년 1월호)
성현아, <흐르는 피가 아닌 흘린 피로 자매가 된다면 : 김이듬, 『마르지 않은 티셔츠를 입고』>, 고요아침, 2021. 3.
신진숙, <증상으로서의 시와 주체 : 김이듬, 『말할 수 없는 애인』>, 오늘의 문예비평, 2011. 8.
이경수, <푸른 수염의 마지막 여자 : 김이듬론>, 문학·선, 2006. 3.
Lorena Badioiu, 학위논문 Translator's intervention in translating poetry : a case study of Jake Levine's translation of Yideum Kim's Hysteria from domestication, foreignization and appraisal perspectives = 시 번역에 번역가의 개입 : 제이크 레빈의 자국화, 이국화, 평가 관점에서 본 김이듬의 히스테리 번역 사례연구, 계명대학교 대학원, 2022.2.
나탈리 엘리버트, <김이듬의 시집 ‘히스테리아 연구>, 국제펜클럽한국본부, 펜文學. 제139호 (2017년 9/10월),
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