hyejungkook

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Still catching up on last year’s publications! I’m deeply grateful to Traci Brimhall for inviting me to write a poem for the Skies and Space Edition of Kansas Magazine, and to everyone at Sunflower Publishing, especially Nathan Pettengill for handling my proof. This is my first general magazine publication, and I’m really happy with the poem inspired by the theme. I hope that everyone enjoys reading it and perhaps is moved to visit Powell Observatory or go apple picking in Louisburg and elsewhere in Kansas 🔭🌔🍎 (On a side note, despite what the poem’s speaker says, I do continue to blame things on mercury retrograde 😂)

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Catching up on publication news: I’m so grateful to Megan Kaminski for inviting me to write and submit a poem to Written in the Stars, a celestial-based chapbook published by Humanities Kansas and illustrated by Matthew Willie Garcia.

Here is my poem “The Perseids,” a concrete poem that includes the constellation Perseus with meteors of poem lines radiating outward.

The chapbook also includes poetry by Traci, Megan Kaminski, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Jesse Nathan, Elise Paschen, Naomi Shihab Nye, William Stafford, and Kevin Young, plus essays by Megan Kaminski and Christopher Auner.

Hard copies are no longer available, but if you’d like a PDF version, please reach out to me directly.

Humanities Kansas has lost its general operating grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities due to federal spending cuts. “Humanities Kansas is the only statewide provider of humanities resources in Kansas. Last year, HK supported 488 events in 126 communities. More than 607,000 Kansans engaged with thoughtful and important programming exploring Kansas stories.”

Learn more about how to support them here.

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Last Wednesday, October 16, 2024 wasn’t just a red letter day, it was a fully-colored-and illustrated-initial-with-flowers-and-animals-and-shining-gold-leaf day! I’m so incredibly lucky and honored to share “Dead Reckoning” was featured on Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets!

My most heartfelt gratitude to Sarah Gambito for inviting me to send work. It’s a grief poem, which feels right with everything happening now, the horrors in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine, the escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, the hurricanes that devastated communities here in the US. So much loss in the world. So much suffering. But also joy, and beauty, and light.

Deepest thanks to the staff at Poem-a-Day, especially Thea Matthews, who was a dream to work with, and thank you, everyone, for reading and listening 💓💓💓

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I’m delighted to have two poetry readings coming up this fall! First one will be on Friday, October 25th at 7:30 PM at United Colors Gallery (611 N 6th St, Kansas City, KS 66101) in celebration of SK Reed’s solo exhibition The Unreal. Thanks to New Material Books for inviting me read with Megan Kaminski, Jordan Stempleman, and Bob Sykora!

“The Unreal by SK Reed is an exercise in being unrecognizable and a practice of possibility. Reed’s ceramic wall pieces are reflections on species encountered during walks in the shrinking Kansas Prairie, a space which provides great relief and inspiration from their everyday anxieties. For the artists, the difficulty and strength of their Queerness is the struggle to be easily named. Not at home in the gender binary, they often feel they are living between dueling realities. When familiarizing themselves with the wildly diverse prairie landscapes, dreams and fantasy take over, opening a place of possibility which expands their understanding of reality.” (Source: United Colors Gallery)

I hope you will come out and enjoy some poetry, some art, and maybe buy something from the book-store popup—I’m planning to snag a New Materials Book x Space Dust Editions poem-object of the first book of Paradise Lost ❤️‍🔥 And if you can’t make this one, I’ll be reading with Marianne Kunkel, hosted by Bear Review at 21c Museum Hotel on Nov. 7th—more details soon!

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Another belated publication update: my poem "At The Light" was the feature on SWWIM Every Day on April 19, 2024. I’m deeply grateful to the ever luminous Kai Coggin for inviting me to send work to SWWIM, an organization I’ve long admired, ever since seeing Naoko Fujimoto do a Zoom reading during the early part of the pandemic. Thanks to everyone at SWWIM for the beautiful work that you do!

“At the Light” emerged from a prompt at a panel on creating and nurturing virtual spaces last fall at the 2023 C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference. What I recall from the prompt: a prose poem, written in present tense, with the first and last phrase being the same, and the poem being comprised of a list of excuses. Nicole Callihan, Kai Coggin, Caitlin McDonnell, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, and Sara Wallace were the generous and inspiring panelists.

Thank you for reading and also listening—there’s also a link to my reading the poem!

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Continuing to catch up on recent publications—this time it’s my poem “Ah, My Dear” which appears in the latest issue of Poetry Northwest. So grateful to Keetje Kuipers for including this poem (excerpted above) alongside work by dear poets like Leila Chatti, Michael Wasson, Nicole Callihan, Anna Maria Hong, Eloisa Amezcua, Molly Sutton Kiefer, and Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick! I hope you’ll check out this issue, which includes Kateri Menominee and Kara Briggs, winners of the 2024 James Welch Prize.

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Trying to catchup on sharing this year's publications. First up is "Charm Against Blighted Ovum" in NELLE, Issue 7. So grateful to Lauren Goodwin Slaughter and the staff for including my work! You can read excerpts from the issue and subscribe here. NELLE also did a spotlight on IG, and you can learn about the influence of Anglo-Saxon charms on the poem here.

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I’ve been quite remiss in updating here, but I’m so happy to share I am co-editing the creative arm of Barahm Press, a new micropress founded by Cristiana Baik and dedicated to uplifting BIPOC diasporic voices! We are in the middle of our first call for subs for an online folio, and we would love to see your unpublished protection spell poems. Submissions are open until 8/15, and you can find how to submit (fee-free!) at this link:

I also want to add that we recognize the idea of a spell may not be something intended to be shared with outsiders of a culture. We are not asking for sacred wisdom meant to stay private to be made public, but if you are moved to offer language toward protection that does not cross spiritual boundaries, we would gratefully receive it.

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MY MANUSCRIPT MADE FINALIST FOR THE CARDINAL POETRY PRIZE!!! I cried when I received this news. My most heartfelt thanks to editors Suzanne Tamminen, John Murillo, and Oliver Egger of Wesleyan University Press for including me in this amazing group of fifteen finalists. Such a thrill to know that Robert Pinsky will be reading my manuscript! I’ve been sending out ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH for about a year and half now and have prepared myself for a long haul, and I am just so grateful to have my work seen and affirmed in this way. I’m going to hold onto this feeling of joy and gratitude while waiting for the winner’s announcement on June 1st 💗

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It’s been a while, but I’ll be at AWP this year since it’s in my town! I’ll be reading at three off-sites and am on a panel on community building with Anna V. Q. Ross, Molly Sutton Kiefer, Nadia Colburn, Julie Choffel. Would love to see you 💗

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Wednesday Night Poetry

Wednesday, February 7th

6:30-10:30 (I read at the end)

Charlotte Street Foundation

In a very special off-site gathering, Wednesday Night Poetry—the longest-running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—convenes at one of Kansas City’s most iconic art spaces, the Stern Theater at Charlotte Street! This is a SAFE SPACE. Open mic style, open to all WNP poets. One poem per poet, three to four minutes, any theme. Poets will read from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. Sign up with the Google Form. Come share a poem, stay for community and togetherness. Wine and refreshments provided. Charlotte Street is located 2.9 miles away from the conference hotel, a ten-minute drive. Uber/Lyft encouraged.

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Wild Patience: A Poet-Mom Reading

Wednesday, Feb. 7th

5:30-8:00 PM

21c Museum Hotel

219 W 9th St, KCMO 64105

Eighteen poet moms, drawing from a variety of poetic practices and traditions, will share work that occupies the overlapping spaces of our lives—war zone and garden, city and body, climate and house, populace and child. Readers include Tess Taylor, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Keetje Kuipers, Nicole Callihan, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, among others. Cash bar opens at 5:30 p.m. in Gallery One, reading starts at 6:00 p.m. in Main Gallery.

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Write Through It, Write To It: Finding Community in Adversity

Thursday, Feb. 8th

3:20-3:45 PM

Room 2211, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

The past years have upended how and who we think of as community. Locked down in our homes and tethered to Zoom, suddenly writers several continents and time zones away were as close as those next door. As poets, essayist, teachers, and editors we’ll explore the creation of community through difficulty. How do the exigencies of today’s convergent crises and new technologies put pressure on and also invigorate communities? We’ll discuss ways to persevere and find restorative and lasting exchange. Panel with Panel with Anna V. Q. Ross, Molly Sutton Kiefer, Nadia Colburn, Hyejung Kook, Julie Choffel.

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As if Conjured: A Poetry Reading Celebrating Publication of THE FAMILIAR by Sarah Kain Gutowski

Thursday, Feb. 8th

6-8 PM

Bliss Books

3502 Gillham Rd, KCMO 64111

Readings by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Jessica Cuello, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, Vincent James, Hyejung Kook, Ananda Lima, Eugenia Leigh, and Marcus Myers. Free drink tickets for the first twenty attendees!

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This Sunday, October 29th, 3 PM at Cider Gallery, 810 Pennsylvania St., Lawrence, KS 66044!

Lost in the Wheatfields

Come join us for a relaxed Sunday afternoon filled with music and poetry! This is a premiere performance of new art songs for voice and piano, created by student composers and KU alumni featuring poetry by Hyejung Kook, Huascar Medina & Megan Kaminski.

It takes place at the beautiful Cider Gallery in Lawrence, Kansas. The event starts at 3 PM. There is no entrance fee!

I would love if you can join us, but if not, there will be a livestream:

https://youtube.com/live/ufqqsZlMpL0?feature=share

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Tomorrow I read with the fabulous Jenny Molberg and Anna V.Q. Ross for A Common Sense Reading Series! Thank you, Jordan Stempleman, for hosting us.

Details:

Saturday, October 14th at 7 PM at KCAI Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice, 4415 Warwick Boulevard, Kansas City, MO 64111

Link to register: https://www.jordanstempleman.com/events/hyejung-kook-jenny-molberg-anna-vq-ross

Hyejung Kook’s poetry has appeared in POETRY Magazine, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Other works include essays in Poetry as Spellcasting and The Critical Flame and a chamber opera libretto. Born in Seoul, Hyejung now lives in Kansas with her husband and their two children. She is a Fulbright grantee and Kundiman Fellow. Find her online at hyejungkook.tumblr.com.

Jenny Molberg is the author of Marvels of the Invisible (winner of the Berkshire Prize, Tupelo Press, 2017), Refusal(LSU Press, 2020), and The Court of No Record (LSU Press, 2023). Her poems and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Cincinnati Review, VIDA, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, The Adroit Journal, Oprah Quarterly, and other publications. She has received fellowships and scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sewanee Writers Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the Longleaf Writers Conference. She is Associate Professor and Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Central Missouri, where she edits Pleiades: Literature in Context. Find her online at jennymolberg.com.

Anna V. Q. Ross’s most recent book, Flutter, Kick, won the 2020 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press and the 2023 Julia Ward Howe Award in Poetry. Her other books include If a Storm (winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize) and the chapbooks Figuring and Hawk Weather. A Fulbright Scholar, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, and poetry editor for Salamander, her work appears in The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. Anna teaches at Tufts University and through the Emerson Prison Initiative and lives with her family in Dorchester, MA, where she raises chickens. Find her at annaVQross.com.

Jordan Stempleman (host) is the author of nine collections of poetry including Cover Songs (the Blue Turn), Wallop, and No, Not Today (Magic Helicopter Press). Stempleman is the co-editor of The Continental Review, editor for Windfall Room, faculty advisor for the literary arts magazine Sprung Formal, and curator of A Common Sense Reading Series.

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I had a wonderful time at the reading with Aisha Sharif and Melody S. Gee at the Writers Place, co-hosted by Kundiman Midwest. Special thanks to Maryfrances Wagner of TWP and Helene Achanzar of Kundiman Midwest for helping make this reading possible! I also enjoyed a quick but lovely dinner at Chingu with the readers and a couple friends beforehand. So much gratitude for my co-readers and everyone who came out!

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Save the date! I’m delighted to be reading alongside Aisha Sharif and Melody S. Gee for an event in partnership with Kundiman Midwest at the Writers Place (31 W. 31st St, KCMO), 7 PM on September 15th! I would love to see you!

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I’m absolutely delighted to have Poetry as Spellcasting in my hands! I’m so grateful to editors Tamiko Beyer, Lisbeth White, and Destiny Hemphill for including me in this gorgeous anthology, and for helping my essay become more fully realized, more deeply itself.

And while I haven’t finished the book yet, I think the power of the writing is enabling precisely that sort of transformation, helping us perceive potential and cast off constraints so that we can all be more gloriously ourselves and make the world a more beautiful and just place to exist. Just take a look at the opening of the first poem of the collection, “Awakening of Stones: Hypothesis/Central Argument” by Lisbeth White:

In the new mythology, you are always whole.

If and when you fracture, it is not apart.

Apart does not exist here.

You will know that upon entry.

You will know each fissure as it breaks open your life.

You will know the cracked edges of your splendor.

I hope you will consider buying (or borrowing!) a copy and also joining us for the virtual launch on Wednesday, May 24th, 8 PM ET, featuring Destiny Hemphill, Lisbeth White, Tamiko Beyer, Amir Rabiyah, Ching-In Chen, Lou Flores, yours truly, Sun Yung Shin, and Tatiana Figueroa Ramirez.

We will also be casting a collective poem/spell for the protection and fortification of forest defenders and organizers of Stop Cop City. Bring a candle, a cup of tea, and your tarot deck if you can!

Link to free eventbrite tickets.

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Writing Roundup

In the months since I last updated here: 

Two poems, "Path" and "Holding" were published at The Coop: A Poetry Collective. 

The Ilanot Review published a poem, “Aubade with Bread and Water” and a prose account of my missed miscarriage in their roundtable, “In the Wake of the Overturning of Roe v. Wade” along with Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Pichchenda Bao, and Marcela Sulak. 

A poem, "Charm Against Blighted Ovum," was accepted for publication in NELLE.

"Lamplighters: An Exhibition," an ekphrastic poem inspired by the Lamplighters Exhibit at Vulpes Bastille was published in Sprung Formal, Issue 18. 

 An essay, "Poetry as Prayer" and a poem, "prayer for healing" was published in Poetry As Spellcasting: POEMS, ESSAYS, AND PROMPTS FOR MANIFESTING LIBERATION AND RECLAIMING POWER, edited by Tamiko Beyer, Destiny Hemphill, and Lisbeth White -- virtual launch party is this Wednesday, May 24th! I’d love for you to join me!

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It feels right to share a poem about a guide of souls today. I’m so grateful to José Faus for selecting “Quicksilver” for the October issue of The Coop: A Poetry Collective. This poem was written for Kundiman’s Migration Postcard Poem Project. Link in comments. Thank you for reading, and may you receive whatever guidance you need today and every day 🤍

#psychopomp #mercury #writingcommunity #halloween #poem