Poet Kim Hyesoon is the nation's first recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award of the U.S. for her collection "Phantom Pain Wings." Shown is Kim (center) on June 25, 2019, attending a news conference for her receipt of the Griffin Poetry Prize at Conference House Dalgaebi in Seoul's Jung-gu District. (Yonhap News)

By Choi Jin-woo

Poet Kim Hyesoon is the country's first recipient of a National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award of the U.S. for "Phantom Pain Wings."

The NBCC on March 21 said Kim's collection won the poetry category of this year's honors, whose ceremony was held at the New School in New York.

As her 13th poetry collection and published in 2019, "Phantom Pain Wings" marked the 40th anniversary of Kim's debut. Its translation was by Don Mee Choi, a renowned Korean American poet and translator.

The work beat out for the honor "All Souls" by Saskia Hamilton, "The Gathering of Bastards" by Romeo Oriogun, "Information Desk" by Robyn Schiff and "Trace Evidence" by Charif Shanahan. Kim's was the only translated work among the category's five finalists this year.

"Phantom Pain Wings" was also one of the six finalists for the NBCC's Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, but lost to "Cold Nights of Childhood" by the late Tezer Ozlu.

Kim's collection drew attention in December last year as one of five nominated by The New York Times in the article "The Best Poetry of 2023."

Launched in April 1974 in New York, the nonprofit NBCC was founded by book critics working in American media and publishing. Since 1975, the group has honored the best books written in English in the U.S. from the previous year in six categories: fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, poetry and criticism.

paramt@korea.kr