Recipient of the 2025 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
my howl-like self
became an empty bell
-in dreams, Today‘s Morning Vocalary, trans. Stine An (Zephyr Press, 2025)
Yoo Heekyung is an acclaimed younger South Korean poet, playwright, and essayist who also runs Wit N Cynical, a popular poetry bookstore and project space in Seoul.
1. Life
Yoo Heekyung is an acclaimed South Korean poet, playwright, and essayist. He is the author of over ten collections of poetry and prose, including Today‘s Morning Vocabulary(Moonji Books, 2011),Somewhere in the World: Stories of a Poetry Bookshop(Dal Publishers, 2021), Winter Night Rabbit Worries(Hyundae Munhak, 2023), Photography and Poetry(Achimdal Books, 2024), and Oggi and I(Nanda, 2024). Yoo studied creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and playwriting at the Korea National University of Arts, and debuted as a poet in 2008 when his poem won the spring literary contest sponsored by the Chosun Ilbo, a major South Korean daily newspaper. He is a playwright with the theater company dockand a member of the poetry collective jaknan. A recipient of Today’s Young Artist Award from the South Korean Ministry of Culture (2023), Hyundae Munhak Literary Award (2020), and the Gosan New Writer Award (2019), Yoo lives in Seoul where he runs the poetry bookshop and project space Wit N Cynical.
2. Writing
The poems of Yoo Heekyung are a beautiful resistance against time; they are landscapes painted with vestiges of sorrow. Reading his work, we begin to understand Yoo’s insistence that “tragedy demands courage.” His poetry is a canvas of light with endless folds. Our work as readers is to hold onto this light, letting its canvas unfurl into the stretches of space and time. Yoo’s poems require meticulous attention and readers must smooth out the furrows of their hearts to align with his to absorb the precise beauty of language. Scenes from the past he conceals within vanished light are resurrected as present-day losses. Because of this, his landscapes betray the very notion of a landscape. With a casual demeanor, he calms his entire being, like death, to arrange objects and people beneath the light of his poetry—but, in the end, readers will drown in the breathtakingly sad and beautiful ravines of light.— Kim Hyesoon
Reference
①Books
Oggi and I (Nanda, 2024), hybrid (poetry, essays, and plays)
Photography and Poetry(Achimdal Books, 2024), hybrid (essays and poetry)
Winter Night Rabbit Worries(Hyundae Munhak, 2023), poetry
And Next Spring We Will(Achimdal Books, 2021), poetry
Somewhere in the World: Stories of a Poetry Bookshop(Dal Publishers, 2021), essays
Lone Words on a Starlit Night(Achimdal Books, 2020), prose
What Was Briefly a God to Us (Moonji Books, 2018), poetry
Your Place—How to Grow into a Tree(Achimdal Books, 2017), poetry
Cloud, Clouds (Ahn Graphics, 2014), collaboration with graphic designer Shin Donghyeok
Today&s Morning Vocabulary(Moonji Books, 2011), poetry
②Anthologies
Pandemic Play: Plays by Theater Company 독 [dock] (Rightseason Publishing House, 2022)
What You Lost: Plays by Theater Company 독 [dock] (Rightseason Publishing House, 2016)
③Works in Translation
Today‘s Morning Vocabulary, trans. Stine An (Zephyr Press, 2025)
Profile information provided by the Arts Council Korea (ARKO)
LTI Korea 
DLKL 
SIWF 
