We carve on our body what society teaches us and continue this task, not knowing the identity they force us to have. This identity is carved on our faces and our skins. Not knowing our bodies have become "the paper made of human meat," we stuff our bodies and make them a theater where cultural symbols or suppressed symbols play.
Kim HyesoonAlienation between the content and form happens frequently in my poems because I obstinately carry on dismantling my body, an act you can also call "dismantling delusion." I think that after I dismantle my female body, I can finally dismantle established lyric poems.
Kim HyesoonLiving in South Korea as a girl meant living under a lot of discrimination and limitation. It was the same in my university and in the Korean literary world I am involved in.
Kim HyesoonThere is a specific kind of day when I feel like writing poems. My senses become really sharp. This day is when I feel as if I am drowning into the abandonment of death.
Kim HyesoonI came to grotesque language in the patriarchal culture under the dictatorship. The body that was broken into pieces is a sick body. I put the disease of this world and my sick body together.
Kim HyesoonAs a sick kid, I always looked out the window. The objects of my observation were the sun, the seasons, the wind, crazy people, and my grandfather's death. During my long period of observation, I felt that something like poems were filling up my body. They were in some kind of state and condition that made them difficult to render into words. As a university student, I tried hard to write them in Korean. It was at that time that I foresaw my death and the world's death. I think my poems started at that time.
Kim Hyesoon