Join poet Kim Hyesoon and her translator of long standing, Don Mee Choi, for a reading at Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room.

The Woodberry Poetry Room's 2023 Eliot Memorial Reading will honor one of the pre-eminent voices in South Korean poetry and the trailblazing author of fourteen inimitable books of poetry: Kim Hyesoon. Kim will read with her long-time translator—the award-winning poet Don Mee Choi. Introductory remarks will be delivered by acclaimed poet, translator, and Harvard graduate Jack Jung.

Kim Hyesoon, born in 1955, is one of the most prominent and influential contemporary poets of South Korea. She was the first woman poet to receive the prestigious Kim Su-yong and Midang awards. Kim recently received the 2019 International Griffin Poetry Prize for Autobiography of Death and the Samsung Ho-Am Prize in 2022. Her poetry has been translated into Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, and Swedish.

Don Mee Choi, born in Seoul, South Korea, is the author of the National Book Award winning collection DMZ Colony (Wave Books, 2020), Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016), The Morning News Is Exciting (Action Books, 2010), and several chapbooks and pamphlets of poems and essays. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship, Whiting Award, Lannan Literary Fellowship, Lucien Stryk Translation Prize, and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellowship. She has translated several collections of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry, including Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), which received the 2019 International Griffin Poetry Prize.