An Odyssey of Eggs, a New English-Language Collection by Korean Poet Choo-in Kim

Translated by Kooseul Kim, the 110-page paperback introduces English-language readers to one of Korea’s distinguished contemporary poetic voices

RICHARDSON, Texas — May 15, 2026 — Mundus Artium Press today announced the publication of An Odyssey of Eggs, a 110-page paperback collection of selected poems by the Korean poet Choo-in Kim, translated into English by Kooseul Kim. The book is published by Orpheus Texts, an imprint of Mundus Artium Press, housed at the University of Texas at Dallas.

The English-language edition brings to international readers a poet approaching the 40th anniversary of her literary debut. Known for her philosophical range, formal daring and sustained engagement with the mysteries of human existence, Choo-in Kim has built a body of work that examines love, estrangement, memory, the body and the unanswerable questions that shape human life.

Each poem in An Odyssey of Eggs carries a subtitle drawn from a scientific Latin term for a kind or condition of human being. These terms do not function as fixed definitions. Rather, they serve as poetic cues, philosophical markers and points of departure for a larger inquiry into what it means to be human.

In his introduction to the volume, Min-Seok Oh, a noted Korean literary scholar and professor emeritus at Dankook University, writes that Kim’s new selection “serves as poetic expressions and interpretations of the myriad features suggested by these taxonomic labels.” He describes the book as “a testament to a mature poet’s literary challenge and achievement,” one undertaken in the poet’s later career with both seriousness and grace.

Kim’s poems resist easy conclusions. Where scientific naming seeks order, her poetry finds instability, silence and possibility. Her work moves through landscapes of absence and transformation, tracing the human condition not as a single answer but as a field of longing, uncertainty and becoming. In the poem associated with homo esperans — “the hoping human,” according to the poet’s own footnote — the search for meaning leads not to certainty, but to the charged space where an answer might have been.

That openness gives the collection much of its power. An Odyssey of Eggs is at once intimate and expansive, rooted in the particularities of Korean poetic experience while speaking to universal questions: How does one endure uncertainty? What forms of love remain possible in a fractured world? How does the self move through bodies, memories, places and grief?

The book’s title suggests birth, fragility and potential. Across the collection, Kim imagines the human being as unfinished, vulnerable and continually in formation. Her poems move through images of trees, flowers, fog, doors, distant cries and unreachable walls, ultimately arriving at a vision of love that is painful, luminous and never entirely graspable. The result is an odyssey not toward certainty, but toward a deeper attention to the human condition.

Choo-in Kim was born in 1947 in Hamyang, Kyungsangnam-do, South Korea. She made her literary debut in the journal Modern Poetry in 1986 and has since published several poetry collections, including Every Day Is Strange, The Code of French Kiss, Children of the Planet, Loved Objects, A Tsunami and To Giacometti’s Long Legs. Her travel writing includes That’s Why It’s a Desert. Her honors include the Korean Arts Award, the Jilmaje Literary Award, the Proud Sookmyungin Award, the Korean Lyric Poetry Award, the Songgok Literary Award and the Book of the Year Award from Lyric Poetry and Poetics.

Kooseul Kim, the translator, is a poet and professor emerita of English literature at Hyupsung University in Korea. She earned her doctorate in English literature from Korea University and served at Hyupsung University as dean of the Graduate School and dean of the College of Humanities and Social Science. She has also been a visiting scholar at UCLA and conducted research at SOAS, University of London.

An Odyssey of Eggs is published in paperback by Orpheus Texts, an imprint of Mundus Artium Press. The cover was designed by David Green. The book’s ISBN is 978-0-939378-26-5.

Mundus Artium Press, housed at the University of Texas at Dallas, publishes world literature in translation and related scholarship to broaden access to global voices.

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