THE CHOSUN daily: Kim Hye-soon calls poetry's humor 'spicy smoke' rising from despair

On the 19th, poet Kim Hye-soon recites poetry at the closing event of 'Literature Week 2025' held at the Small Theater of Daehakro Arts Theater in Jongno-gu, Seoul. /Arts Council Korea

A poet in a blue jacket stepped onto the pitch-black stage. The spotlight illuminated poet Kim Hye-soon, 70 years old. She sat at the far end of six chairs arranged side by side on the stage and began to speak.

“Weather and I, just the two of us/ We were affectionate, we were harsh, the mood of the weather// I live alone with the weather/ Changing clothes according to the weather, of course/ Should I dance? Should I do a handstand? It asks// The weather was angry today and cried/ I love its whimsicality…”

This is the opening poem, “Longing Weather,” from her new poetry collection *Synchronized Sea Anemone* (Nanda), published earlier this month.

On the evening of the 19th at 7 p.m., the event “Kim Hye-soon, To Poet – New Poetry Collection Reading” was held at the Small Theater of the Daehakro Art Theater in Jongno-gu, Seoul. It coincided with the closing ceremony of “Literature Week 2025,” hosted by Arts Council Korea from the 13th to the 19th. Over 100 audience members filled the small theater. After the event, a long line formed for autographs.

From left: Kim Sang-hyuk, Hwang Yu-won, Shin Hae-uk, Ahn Tae-un, Yoo Sun-hye, and poet Kim Hye-soon. /Arts Council Korea

The remaining five chairs on stage were occupied by poets Kim Sang-hyeok, Shin Hae-uk, Ahn Tae-woon, Yoo Sun-hye, and Hwang Yu-won. These poets, who appeared on stage one after another, alternated with Kim Hye-soon in reading her new poems for an hour and a half.

It was a reading stage where the poets remained still while their voices moved. One poet would read an entire poem, or they would split the lines. Voices gathered and scattered across the space.

Before the readings, a text written by the poet for the event appeared on the screen behind the stage:

“These poems in the collection I will read today were written very recently. (...) When writing them, I tried to erase the boundaries between myself and others, between myself and animals, plants, objects, and minerals. I also crossed the boundaries of time, life, and death.”

Poet Kim Hye-soon's signing session held after the reading event on the 19th. /Arts Council Korea

This is her first collection in three years since *Autobiography of Death* (2016), *Phantom Pain of Wings* (2019), and *If the Earth Dies, Who Will the Moon Orbit?* (2022). It is more cheerful than the previous three collections, often grouped as a “Death Trilogy.” The poet explained:

“The humor in these poems is not an escape from truth, nor a severance from the death that poetry performs. When our community falls into despair, I thought of it as a spicy smoke that blooms. It felt like an act of decorating a flag while laughing. However, I constantly wondered how to ensure that the language I use does not become a cold coffin that kills its subjects, and how to liberate them. I believed that this is the role of the poetic genre.”

Her poetics were also revealed: “Poetry is neither a grand discourse nor a concrete direction, but the will to attempt such things and the artistic uprising against them. While writing these poems, I reflected on the images and rhythms that poetry, as a genre, can confront and embody.”