The poems by Hwang Yuwon (born 1982 in Ulsan, South Korea) are hyper-realistic journeys into discourse and the grotesque. Hwang calls them “real time poems:” live entanglements of what’s on the inside and on the outside. Rhythm and repetition create a thread upon which poetic images hang, drift, and collide. Hwang has published four books of poetry, most recently 하얀 사슴 연못 (White Deer Lake, Changbi Publishers 2023). An English selection was published by Vagabond Press in 2019. He himself translates Anne Carson, Bob Dylan, and William Carlos Williams, among others, into Korean.

Kim Hyun (born 1980 in the Cheorwon region of South Korea) made his debut in 2014 with Glory Hole, which was the first openly queer poetry collection in South Korea. Since then, he has published three more poetry collections as well as numerous collections of essays. He is co-author of a feminist and queer series of novels and editor of a queer anthology for young adults. On the blog of the magazine Asymptote, Areeb Ahmad writes that Kim Hyun’s poems are “paeans to a lived and visceral queerness that fluidly transcends hollow aesthetics of sterile craft and attempts to embody life in all of its glory.”

Hwang Yuwon and Kim Hyun in conversation with Sool Park and Sung Un Gang

The event will be interpreted into Korean and German.

Project management: Alexander Gumz