Modern and Contemporary Korean Women Poets Featured at The Missing Slate
Over the weekend at The Missing Slate, Ae Hee Lee and Emily Jungmin Yoon published a sampler of poetry by modern and contemporary Korean women poets, featuring Kang Ŭn-gyo, Kim Hyesoon, Kim Yideum, and No Ch’ŏn-myŏng. Ae Hee Lee introduces the portfolio by weighing the decision to use "women" as a label:
I have often heard people ask, “Why not just call them ‘poets’ without emphasizing the ‘women’ part?” I confess that I have struggled with this question as well. Is ‘woman poet’ not often used as a reductive label — asking the reader to focus on the poet’s gender and not on their literary skills? Is it not putting female poets into a very cramped jar rather than functioning as an informative identifier? While reading more and more literature about Korean women poets, the historical context they breathed in and wrote in, and the works they penned, it became apparent to me that this was precisely the very reason we should refer to them as “women” poets and not just “poets.”
The introduction then looks at the history of Korean poetry written by women, stretching back to 2333 B.C. through the 20th century. We'll pick up at the modern period:
[...] The starting point for modern Korean poetry is considered to be around 1919, the year of the March 1st national independence movement against the Japanese colonial rule. It was a turning point for Korean women’s literature in general, as women passionately participated in the uprising and were recognized as valuable patriotic citizens of Korea. The high gates of the publication world opened, if ever so slightly, allowing a higher chance of publication for women. Also, by the 1920s, more women had received public and college education and came to publish their writings and voice their opinions publicly through print media, albeit with limitations imposed by Japanese censorship and the patriarchal society. Radical feminist women writers of the decade, such as Na Hye-sŏk, spoke for women’s independence and freedom in love and marriage, while women writers of the 1930s, such as Kang Kyŏng-ae, wrote more about class consciousness and labor. In general, women writers solidified their consciousness of class, marginalization, and female identity.
And then a new kind of literature emerged around the 1970s, what some scholars refer as the “post-yŏryu literature” (yŏryu referring to a certain kind of “gentle” and “beautiful” writing expected from women writers).
Contemporary Korean women’s poetry grew raw, sharp in its representation and expression of women’s reality, Korean neocolonialism, philosophy, education, and more.
Head over to The Missing Slate to read the introduction in full and read through the collection of poems.
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