Bent Quote by Kim Hyesoon

Mother is a synonym for abandonment and death. Comparing this synonym to water, it is like poured-out water. I call it mother, the identity…

— Kim Hyesoon

Alienation between the content and form happens frequently in my poems because I obstinately carry on dismantling my body, an act you can also…

— Kim Hyesoon

Once, I compared poetry to mothers in my book called To Write as a Woman, because my mother is someone who captures me in…

— Kim Hyesoon

Korean feminism is on the brink of death. Korea has a less clear boundary between popular literature and serious literature than in other countries.…

— Kim Hyesoon

We have certain rules for traditional lyric poetry in Korea. I twist my body, confused by what to say and how to act, facing…

— Kim Hyesoon

Men think women should do trivial things on the margins. They think women should be merely a seasoning for a dish. I feel anger…

— Kim Hyesoon

In Korea, a woman must first obey her father, then her husband when she becomes an ajuma, and finally obey her son as a…

— Kim Hyesoon

Women are foils to men in South Korea. It is hard for women to take a lead role even in NGOs for political resistance.…

— Kim Hyesoon

When I became a poet, the Korean literary world expected women poets to sing passively of love. Naturally, this was not written anywhere, but…

— Kim Hyesoon

When anger and sorrow overflow, sometimes it becomes poetry.

— Kim Hyesoon

South Korea is one of the worst countries when it comes to opportunity for women in social activities and employment. To my disgust, in…

— Kim Hyesoon

The grotesque in my poems is the motion I use to put myself and the grotesque world together. So the miserable images I use…

— Kim Hyesoon