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캣콜링
제37회 김수영 문학상 수상 시집 <캣콜링>이 '민음의 시' 253번으로 출간되었다.(심사위원 김행숙, 정한아, 조재룡) 2014년 「현대시」로 등단한 이소호 시인은 첫 번째 시집 <캣콜링>을 통해 가장 새로운 '고백의 왕'을 선보인다. 2018년에 탄생한 '고백의 왕'은 성폭력의 유구한 전통과 끔찍한 일상성을 폭로한다. <캣콜링>을 통해 세상에 나온 시적 화자 "경진"은 지극히 사적인 영역까지 낱낱이 펼쳐 보이며 가부장제와 폭력적인 일상에 거친 조롱을 뱉어 낸다.
고발과 폭로를 통한 심리적 진실이 시집의 한 축이라면 다른 한 축에는 내면의 고통을 예술 작품으로 분출해 내는 '전시적' 진실이 있다. 마리나 아브라모비치, 니키 드 생팔 등 현대 여성 미술가들에게 영감을 받은 시편들을 미술 작품처럼 배치하고 사진과 그림, 타이포그래피 등 시각적 효과를 적극 활용한 이미지를 통해 독자들이 고통과 폭력의 현장을 다층적으로 마주하도록 한다. 거칠고 공격적이면서도 지적인 이소호의 시 세계는 격정적이고도 이지적인 시인들의 계보를 새롭게 이어간다.
고발과 폭로를 통한 심리적 진실이 시집의 한 축이라면 다른 한 축에는 내면의 고통을 예술 작품으로 분출해 내는 '전시적' 진실이 있다. 마리나 아브라모비치, 니키 드 생팔 등 현대 여성 미술가들에게 영감을 받은 시편들을 미술 작품처럼 배치하고 사진과 그림, 타이포그래피 등 시각적 효과를 적극 활용한 이미지를 통해 독자들이 고통과 폭력의 현장을 다층적으로 마주하도록 한다. 거칠고 공격적이면서도 지적인 이소호의 시 세계는 격정적이고도 이지적인 시인들의 계보를 새롭게 이어간다.
168 pages, Hardcover
First published December 19, 2018
5 people are currently reading
326 people want to read
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April 10, 2024
‘I opened some quote marks
And cried only in your sentences.’
There is an unsettling atmosphere to South Korean poet Lee Soho’s award winning collection, Catcalling, that shakes up the reader and society in order to spill out hard truths. Confronting the violence and abuses of misogyny and patriarchal structures, this is a dark and often disturbing collection of poetry and experimental prose that feels very intimate in its stream-of-consciousness style, often affecting the form of diary entries and letters to emphasize the tightrope walk between confessional and close-guarded secrets of her words. ‘We were most beautiful when we remained sentences,’ Soho writes as this collection shows how families and relationships can look good on paper but have a hidden barrage of gaslighting and abuse that silences women to uphold the facade until ‘ I love you were left and we were not.’
‘The chunk of us we couldn’t flush
rose
to the surface’
Catcalling takes a bold look at the many forms of catcalling in society and the dark undertones of them. Spousal abuse, rape, affairs and other misogynistic violence permeate the poems, with the speaker reacting to the assaults on women in real time. The responses come from many angles and forms, such as children’s sing-song like rambles and one short play about an 1887 case where a London industrialist was unjustly acquitted for raping his employee.
The five sections cover the speaker from childhood with sister through adulthood into a toxic marriage. This structure shows abuse and trauma as something that can resonate for generations, with an abusive grandfather, an unfaithful father and then the husband. It also demonstrates how women are expected to serve and become more an object in the family than a person with feelings:
The voice of the speaker is interesting, sometimes being Lee Soho herself, and sometimes addressed as Kyungin, destabilizing a sense of self that opens the opportunity to speak for oppressed women at large through various singular experiences.
‘Listen, being a poet means going crazy,’ the poet is told at a holiday party at the start of the speakers long rant on her supposed inability to ever be a good poet. Gaslighting and suppression is central to the book, with men always find ways to criticize and abuse women (heads up, lots of slurs and insults at women are written in the book) while justifying their actions and projecting the blame. ‘Dumbass don’t you know there’s barely a difference between the striker and the struck,’ is said to justify a beating at one point, unfairly making the victim feel their abuse was deserved. It is also shown how society uses religion harmfully, justifying the sins of men while demanding impossible standards for women. Soho dives right into the psychology of all this, and while it is uncomfortable it is important to examine.
A difficult but nonetheless impactful collection, Lee Soho has an impressive style that is able to shape shift before our very eyes in Soje’s masterful translation. The dark imagery, with frequent recurrence of images on the Virgin Mary and castrations, really resonates through the collection, and the poems frequently have footnotes that help explain allusions or cultural context. Dark, disturbing yet brilliant.
4/5
And cried only in your sentences.’
There is an unsettling atmosphere to South Korean poet Lee Soho’s award winning collection, Catcalling, that shakes up the reader and society in order to spill out hard truths. Confronting the violence and abuses of misogyny and patriarchal structures, this is a dark and often disturbing collection of poetry and experimental prose that feels very intimate in its stream-of-consciousness style, often affecting the form of diary entries and letters to emphasize the tightrope walk between confessional and close-guarded secrets of her words. ‘We were most beautiful when we remained sentences,’ Soho writes as this collection shows how families and relationships can look good on paper but have a hidden barrage of gaslighting and abuse that silences women to uphold the facade until ‘ I love you were left and we were not.’
‘The chunk of us we couldn’t flush
rose
to the surface’
Catcalling takes a bold look at the many forms of catcalling in society and the dark undertones of them. Spousal abuse, rape, affairs and other misogynistic violence permeate the poems, with the speaker reacting to the assaults on women in real time. The responses come from many angles and forms, such as children’s sing-song like rambles and one short play about an 1887 case where a London industrialist was unjustly acquitted for raping his employee.
The five sections cover the speaker from childhood with sister through adulthood into a toxic marriage. This structure shows abuse and trauma as something that can resonate for generations, with an abusive grandfather, an unfaithful father and then the husband. It also demonstrates how women are expected to serve and become more an object in the family than a person with feelings:
‘Like laundry stiffened and sprawled on the floor
I am tossed and wrinkled whichever way to be worn at random.’
The voice of the speaker is interesting, sometimes being Lee Soho herself, and sometimes addressed as Kyungin, destabilizing a sense of self that opens the opportunity to speak for oppressed women at large through various singular experiences.
‘Listen, being a poet means going crazy,’ the poet is told at a holiday party at the start of the speakers long rant on her supposed inability to ever be a good poet. Gaslighting and suppression is central to the book, with men always find ways to criticize and abuse women (heads up, lots of slurs and insults at women are written in the book) while justifying their actions and projecting the blame. ‘Dumbass don’t you know there’s barely a difference between the striker and the struck,’ is said to justify a beating at one point, unfairly making the victim feel their abuse was deserved. It is also shown how society uses religion harmfully, justifying the sins of men while demanding impossible standards for women. Soho dives right into the psychology of all this, and while it is uncomfortable it is important to examine.
A difficult but nonetheless impactful collection, Lee Soho has an impressive style that is able to shape shift before our very eyes in Soje’s masterful translation. The dark imagery, with frequent recurrence of images on the Virgin Mary and castrations, really resonates through the collection, and the poems frequently have footnotes that help explain allusions or cultural context. Dark, disturbing yet brilliant.
4/5
April 17, 2021
I don’t think rating poetry is fair it’s too close to the internal monologue.
I’d love to hear this poetry in Korean though.
I’d also love to see how it was printed in Korean given some of the choices in English.
Things I liked
- this poetry is very dark
- a lot of it feels like a blurt or a stream of consciousness
- it’s less an artifact alone and more a response to the world it resides in.
I’d love to hear this poetry in Korean though.
I’d also love to see how it was printed in Korean given some of the choices in English.
Things I liked
- this poetry is very dark
- a lot of it feels like a blurt or a stream of consciousness
- it’s less an artifact alone and more a response to the world it resides in.
December 8, 2024
didn't understand most of it but good
March 13, 2021
"Kyungjin, Kyungjin, Kyungjin
Kyungjin I don’t want to eat anymore
Not your sagging tits, not even your protruding nipples
I don’t want to eat you dirty bitch"
—Song of Greatest Turbulence
Kyungjin I don’t want to eat anymore
Not your sagging tits, not even your protruding nipples
I don’t want to eat you dirty bitch"
—Song of Greatest Turbulence
April 1, 2021
A collection of very edgy and unsettling poems from Korean writer Soho.
August 8, 2022
This collection of poems by Lee Soho is suffocating and unsettling. Throughout the whole book, you feel like you are trapped. You have no room to gasp for air, drowning under an invisible body of water. And this is what makes the whole collection a masterpiece: it accurately describes how women feel living in a patriarchal society.
Catcalling tries to emulate the experiences of the narrator and a woman named Kyungjin. It is hard to say whether the narrator and Kyungjin is the same person or not, but it is clear that they both are in extreme psychological pain.
They are being mind-numbingly tortured by the pressures of being a woman in this patriarchal world. Sexual harassment, sexual abuse, physical abuse, abusive and manipulative boyfriends, overbearing parents...the list goes on.
There's a focus on the various misogynistic treatments that women suffer from home, and we as readers are being put through the observation of all their suffering. The poems here felt personal, as if they came from Lee Soho's own day-to-day experiences (and I believe they do take inspiration from her personal life; there are several interviews I've read where she's commented on this.). The personal nature of her poems made readers greatly empathise for the narrator and the character in the poems.
The language used in here are both crude and raw, and I believe this is a stylistic choice used to make a point that women face this kind of verbal violence everyday, whether from strangers or their loved ones. Soje's translation is top-notch: smooth, lyrical, and accurate. It didn't feel clunky nor awkward, and I had such a fun time reading this book.
This is a great feminist collection of poems, although it is far more than just a feminist read; it is a graphic and unflinchingly honest portrayal of what it's like to live as a woman in a world that revolves around men.
Definitely a great addition to my #witmonth read.
5 ⭐️
Catcalling tries to emulate the experiences of the narrator and a woman named Kyungjin. It is hard to say whether the narrator and Kyungjin is the same person or not, but it is clear that they both are in extreme psychological pain.
They are being mind-numbingly tortured by the pressures of being a woman in this patriarchal world. Sexual harassment, sexual abuse, physical abuse, abusive and manipulative boyfriends, overbearing parents...the list goes on.
There's a focus on the various misogynistic treatments that women suffer from home, and we as readers are being put through the observation of all their suffering. The poems here felt personal, as if they came from Lee Soho's own day-to-day experiences (and I believe they do take inspiration from her personal life; there are several interviews I've read where she's commented on this.). The personal nature of her poems made readers greatly empathise for the narrator and the character in the poems.
The language used in here are both crude and raw, and I believe this is a stylistic choice used to make a point that women face this kind of verbal violence everyday, whether from strangers or their loved ones. Soje's translation is top-notch: smooth, lyrical, and accurate. It didn't feel clunky nor awkward, and I had such a fun time reading this book.
This is a great feminist collection of poems, although it is far more than just a feminist read; it is a graphic and unflinchingly honest portrayal of what it's like to live as a woman in a world that revolves around men.
Definitely a great addition to my #witmonth read.
5 ⭐️
March 16, 2022
Intelligent,dérangeant et puissant. J’ai aimé les formes expérimentales et créatives des poèmes, séparés distinctement en 5 phases.
Beaucoup peuvent se retrouver dans les thèmes de violence, abus et masculinité toxique abordés dans ce recueil (trigger warning). Il était cependant parfois difficile de comprendre les références majoritairement coréenne en tant que canadienne, god bless les notes de bas de page.
Beaucoup peuvent se retrouver dans les thèmes de violence, abus et masculinité toxique abordés dans ce recueil (trigger warning). Il était cependant parfois difficile de comprendre les références majoritairement coréenne en tant que canadienne, god bless les notes de bas de page.
March 23, 2024
This collection completely went over my head. I had zero cultural or artistic references that were key to the construction of these poems and I don't think I can rate this appropriately. 3 because I appreciate what I read, the form is unique and I liked the disturbing content, but I don't know what I just read.
May 15, 2021
TW/CW: incest, suicide, purging/EDs
April 27, 2021
Intense and upsetting
April 11, 2021
A combination of powerful imagery, some dark humor, many references that I probably missed, and a number that the translator helpfully explained.
July 8, 2021
wow! all poetry collections should be as adventurous as this one!
there was many parts i didn't fully understand but i actually see that as an asset rather than a fault
there was many parts i didn't fully understand but i actually see that as an asset rather than a fault
October 12, 2025
A collection of poetry from Lee Soho. This collection, translated from Korean, tells a woman's perspective in a patriarchal world, aimed at tackling domestic abuse, sexism and general misogyny.
This is one of my first experiences with poetry, and I think that had a big impact on my reading enjoyment. Poetry is something I want to get into more, but I probably should have done a little more research into where to start.
There were parts of this collection that I really liked. I struggled with the first section, but when I got to Part 2: The Birth of the Most Personal and Universal Kyungjin, I really liked that part. They seemed like the most approachable poems to me and I found them easier to follow. I was kind of hit or miss on a lot of the poems after that section.
Overall I think my issues with this poetry collection are more with my lack of experience and knowledge with the format, rather than the writing itself. It almost reminded me of walking through an art museum, thinking "I don't really get the point the artist is making with this piece", but still being able to appreciate the art as a work of art. I would like to revisit this collection are getting a little more experience with the art form of poetry.
This is one of my first experiences with poetry, and I think that had a big impact on my reading enjoyment. Poetry is something I want to get into more, but I probably should have done a little more research into where to start.
There were parts of this collection that I really liked. I struggled with the first section, but when I got to Part 2: The Birth of the Most Personal and Universal Kyungjin, I really liked that part. They seemed like the most approachable poems to me and I found them easier to follow. I was kind of hit or miss on a lot of the poems after that section.
Overall I think my issues with this poetry collection are more with my lack of experience and knowledge with the format, rather than the writing itself. It almost reminded me of walking through an art museum, thinking "I don't really get the point the artist is making with this piece", but still being able to appreciate the art as a work of art. I would like to revisit this collection are getting a little more experience with the art form of poetry.
June 17, 2022
Check out the full episode here!
In this books episode, we spoke with award-winning literary translator Soje. They have translated Lee Soho’s Catcalling (2021), Choi Jin-young’s To the Warm Horizon (2021) and Lee Hyemi’s Unexpected Vanilla (2020). They also make chogwa, a quarterly e-zine featuring one Korean poem and multiple English translations. More about Soje can be found at: http://smokingtigers.com/soje.
Hosts Beth Eunhee Hong and Naomi Ng ask Soje about their translation process from selecting the work to the final publish, their journey to literary translation, the Korean-English literary translation community, and what they are working on next.
We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, or suggestions for other Korean books you’d like us to review or discuss. Tweet us (Beth @_paperfetishist / Naomi @ngnaomi) or leave a message on The Korea Herald’s Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram page. You can also email us at bethhong@heraldcorp.com or ngnaomi@heraldcorp.com.
*Click here for our Linktree 👉 https://linktr.ee/khbookspodcast
In this books episode, we spoke with award-winning literary translator Soje. They have translated Lee Soho’s Catcalling (2021), Choi Jin-young’s To the Warm Horizon (2021) and Lee Hyemi’s Unexpected Vanilla (2020). They also make chogwa, a quarterly e-zine featuring one Korean poem and multiple English translations. More about Soje can be found at: http://smokingtigers.com/soje.
Hosts Beth Eunhee Hong and Naomi Ng ask Soje about their translation process from selecting the work to the final publish, their journey to literary translation, the Korean-English literary translation community, and what they are working on next.
We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, or suggestions for other Korean books you’d like us to review or discuss. Tweet us (Beth @_paperfetishist / Naomi @ngnaomi) or leave a message on The Korea Herald’s Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram page. You can also email us at bethhong@heraldcorp.com or ngnaomi@heraldcorp.com.
*Click here for our Linktree 👉 https://linktr.ee/khbookspodcast
July 4, 2022
3.5: this collection was unsettling, uncomfortable, perplexing, stimulating. rounding up the rating because of the latter. having studied korean-english literary translation a TEENY bit in college, as i read without lee soho's original book to reference, i sensed my observations were only scratching the surface of a wealth of complex, smart, and strategic decisions soje made in translating. as quoted in an interview, soje is absolutely right: "The lines I love most in Korean are often the hardest to translate into English. Frankly, it’s a ridiculous language pairing." i don't think people in the age of sanitized, branded hallyu get how incompatible the grammars and makeups of the two languages are lol. i really appreciate the sense of irreverence and play in soje's language choices.
translations in any language should be read alongside the original text or at least (when you cannot speak the original language) with those layers of negotiation in mind always, imo. really curious about lee soho's original poems!
translations in any language should be read alongside the original text or at least (when you cannot speak the original language) with those layers of negotiation in mind always, imo. really curious about lee soho's original poems!
May 23, 2021
Häiritseviä runoja, joissa aiheena naisen asema patriarkaalisessa yhteiskunnassa. Runojen kertoja tuntuu olevan välillä kirjailija itse, välillä Kyungjin-niminen henkilö, välillä nimetön. Äidit kärsivät, siskot kärsivät, tytöt kärsivät. Tykkäsin paljon helpommista runoista, osassa oma vaillinainen taide- ja kulttuuritietämykseni rajoitti ymmärtämistä. Koreassa riittää kyllä perinteisistä sukupuolirooleista kumpuavaa sytykettä tällaisiin vihaisiin, rujoihin runoihin. Vielä nykyaikana vanhempi sukupolvi voi pettyä, jos avioliittoon ei synny poikaa (tänä vuonnakin olen kuullut tällaisesta tilanteesta).
Teos voitti Korean arvostetuimman runopalkinnon vuonna 2018. Toivottavasti rooleja murskataan jatkossa muuallakin kuin runouden piirissä.
Teos voitti Korean arvostetuimman runopalkinnon vuonna 2018. Toivottavasti rooleja murskataan jatkossa muuallakin kuin runouden piirissä.
December 25, 2021
Made of quotidian moments, experimental visual poems, and some truly adventurous play with language. It tips its hat to the veteran writers that gave voice to this style--Choi Seungja and Kim Hyesoon--but it is vital and contemporary in its focus on Korean women's lives today.
July 29, 2024
I don’t often read poetry collections but this one demands your attention from start to finish. The author plays with form in brilliant ways and describes feelings and experiences that seem too unsettling to describe. Really loved this.
June 6, 2021
Poorly translated.
March 15, 2022
Lost in translation. I’m sure Soho’s work is wonderful in Hangul, but it just didn’t translate well in English. It’s as if only a sliver of the meaning of the poems were felt or seen.
May 26, 2022
읽어본 시집 중 가장 충격적이다. 누구에게도 추천하고 같이 얘기해보자고 하긴 어렵겠지만.
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January 11, 2023dnf at 25%
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September 24, 2023Unsettling.
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December 2, 2023i genuinely dk wht to rate this cuz wht the actual fuck did I jus read??? i mean huhhh????
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews