This bilingual workshop aims to foster sustained exchange between the Korean and German literary fields and to create a space for cultural and historical dialogue through poetry and translation. Bringing together poets and professional translators from both countries, the workshop explores translation not merely as a technical practice, but as a mode of deep literary inquiry and intercultural understanding.

Three Korean poets and three German poets will exchange three to four poems each. In close collaboration with four professional translators, the participants will translate these works into their respective languages. The translated poems will be presented and discussed in a public reading and colloquium with students and faculty at the University of Hildesheim. The results of the workshop are intended for publication with a German or Korean publishing house, thereby extending the dialogue to broader readerships and contributing to the literary discourse in both countries.

The international recognition of contemporary Korean poetry—most recently underscored by Kim Hyesoon’s receipt of the Internationaler Literaturpreis—may be seen as a decisive moment of acknowledgment within the German literary sphere. Building on this momentum, Park Sool and Uljana Wolf, translator of Autobiography of Death, have initiated this workshop as a next step in strengthening Korean–German literary exchange through translation.

The project also draws inspiration from established German translation initiatives such as Verschmuggel and Vice Verse, long hosted by the Haus für Poesie in Berlin. These formats are grounded in the conviction that poetry is best translated by poets themselves.