Poet honored for her works' spiritual depth

In her written acknowledgment for the poetry award, Kim introduced a talented female poet, Heo Nan-seol-heon, who, although trapped in the patriarchal society in 16th-century Korea, lived freely in the world of poetry and fought the system through her poetic voice. Heo wrote in classical Chinese rather than in Korean written in Hangul, the modern writing system for the Korean language.

"I believe that for her, the native language used by women, paradoxically imposed on them, might actually be a rigid system that oppresses her and imposes moral standards on her. Faced with the superego of her motherland and the norms of her mother tongue, she reaches toward the lunar realm of a fellow woman (the moon goddess in her poems) and the pleasures found there. It is this voice in combat with the superego that is discovered in the poetry of Heo Nan-seol-heon," she writes.

Similarly, Kim says that her own poetry repeatedly drowns in the traps of the Korean language, yet simultaneously strives to break free from the confines of its original meanings, exploring another form of linguistic and poetic expression.

"I believe that poetry gives form to the experience of a moment: like a desert of absence, empty as death, once approached me. I am willing to believe that through continuous writing, one can weaken the dominating power of the mother tongue. Through this process of being afflicted by language as if afflicted by death, poetry guides human existence elsewhere, to a better place."

Her poetry gazes through the lens of her experiences with illness and death, observing death across the world, contemplating the profound grief hidden behind each death, fostering solidarity among those who bear this grief, and questioning where this planet is headed: "How our lives, time and each day shatter like grains of sand, and what they undergo in the desert of forgetting," she writes.

"I hope that through such contemplation, I can perceive the death hidden within language and explore the world beyond language," she says.

Contact the writer at yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn