Korea Haiku Poets & Guest Poets

Profile Kim Miye retired in 2020 as a professor in the Department of English at Dongduk Women’s University after completing her term as Dean of the Graduate School. She is currently Professor Emerita of English at Dongduk Women’s University and has served as President of the Shakespeare Association of Korea.

Kim Miye has also maintained a deep interest in theatrical directing and has personally directed more than ten Shakespearean plays. She has enjoyed reading and writing haiku since childhood and currently serves as editor and chair of the judging committee for the haiku section of the literary journal Hwangya Munhak (The Wild).

Kim Miye also co-edits and publishes the online haiku magazine Brief Candle with Dr. John J. Han. Dr. Han is currently Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Theology at Missouri Baptist University, where he also serves as Professor of English and Creative Writing.

Kim Miye’s haiku writing is closely connected to her academic specialization in Shakespearean drama. She has drawn important inspiration for her haiku from Shakespeare’s way of observing human life and presenting its moments as they are, rather than explaining or defining human behavior and emotion.

Kim Miye believes that if haiku is poetry that captures a fleeting moment in nature, human beings themselves are also part of nature, and that capturing a moment of human action exactly as it unfolds can likewise approach the essence of haiku. Guided by this idea, she has developed a deep attachment to haiku and has continued to write steadily.

Shakespearean drama unfolds as a vast world of language composed of countless words and lines, whereas haiku belongs to a world of extremely restrained and concise expression. Yet Kim Miye believes that these two seemingly contrasting literary forms can meet at their deepest roots.

In Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we encounter the paradoxical phrase “hot ice”, followed by the question “How shall we find the concord of this discord?”—in other words, “How can we find harmony within this discord?” For Kim Miye, the process of discovering a momentary harmony within things that appear contradictory and capturing it in a few words may be understood as both the practice of haiku and a form of literary play.