About this episode

This episode features a discussion on Kim Hyesoon's poetry and its shamanic dimensions with guest Jack Saebyok Jung.

In March 2014, the legendary avant-garde poet Kim Hyesoon embarked on her first foray into digital performance art. For a duration of eight months, she posted anonymously on the online blog of a major South Korean publisher under the moniker “Lady No.” Set in a fictional land called Aerok, or Korea spelled backward, the posts explore the anxieties and obsessions of modern Korean society, often using aspects of the occult to point at what is unspeakable or unsaid. In Lady No, poet Jack Saebyok Jung presents translations of these hybrid works into English for the first time.  In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Jung to talk about how Kim Hyesoon’s poetry resists and outmaneuvers censorship, Hyesoon’s aspiration to achieve transparent poetry, how poetry can respond to the pressures of everyday life, and the shamanic dimensions of Hyesoon’s work. Plus, Jung reads a few poems from Lady No.

People in this episode

Host: James Shaheen

Guest: Jack Saebyok Jung

Topics covered

• avant-garde poetry
• digital performance art
• censorship
• shamanism
• modern Korean society

Keywords

• Kim Hyesoon
• Jack Saebyok Jung
• Lady No
• poetry
• censorship
• shamanic
• Korean society

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

Books & works: Lady No

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