hyejungkook

[hyejungkook]

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!

#awp #AWP24 #poem #reading #the familiar #wnp #Wednesdaynightpoetry

[hyejungkook]

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

[hyejungkook]

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.

#poem #reading #KCAI #ACommonSenseReadingSeries #KC

[hyejungkook]

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!

#poem #reading #poetryreading #thewritersplacekc #kundiman #kundimanmidwest #asian american #writers #writingcommunity

[hyejungkook]

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!

#poetry #thewritersplacekc #kundiman #kundimanmidwest #writingcommunity #reading

[hyejungkook]

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.

#poetry #publication #essay #PoetryAsSpellcasting #writerslife #pubday #poetsofinstagram #booklaunch

[hyejungkook]

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!

[hyejungkook]

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

#poem #poetry #writing #writingcommunity #publication #psychopomp

[hyejungkook]

It was truly an honor to take part in the 100th Radical Poetry Reading this August. Deepest thanks to Sahar Muradi for inviting me to take part and to The Brooklyn Rail for creating space and others in support of art, culture, and political discourse. I hope you'll take a look and listen.

#thebrooklynrail #zeina hashem beck #jasmin eli-washington #mina zohal #sahar muradi #hyejung kook #poet #poetry #poetry reading #writingcommunity

[hyejungkook]

It’s been an age since I’ve updated here, but today I wanted to thank Kundiman for sharing my poem “To One I Knew” which appears in Tulips, Issue 3 of Lotus Magazine.

Deep gratitude also to editor Carrie Chang who has been an advocate of my poetry since she included me in the very first issue of Lotus when it existed solely as a hardcopy zine. Last year, the journal went online, so you can now browse the entire archive as well as submit to Issue 6, Willow Tree until July 10, 2022.

Here is the full text of “To One I Know,” with links to the other five of my poems published in Lotus Magazine.

And more writerly news to be shared, coming soon!

#Instagram #poem #poetry #calltosubmit

[hyejungkook]

I was thinking to revise “pissed off” but after encountering this weirdly puritanical comment from Microsoft Word, I decided to leave it as is.

I’m glad I did, as “Self-Portrait as Ghost” is now up in the latest issue of Bear Review! It’s always exciting to have a poem accepted, but the true wonder for me happens when I see the constellation of work in the issue. I’m so delighted to be appearing with Forrest Gander, my dear first poetry professor, my friend Sarah Kain Gutowski, and Tomaž Šalamun translated by Brian Henry. And I look forward to getting to know new-to-me poets and work, new friends who may become old friends, too.

Deeply grateful to everyone on staff for including me in and creating this beauty, especially Ruth Williams and Marcus Myers!

[hyejungkook]

It’s here, it’s here! So incredibly thrilled to share my poem “Spring Coronal” is in the July/August issue of POETRY Magazine! Endless gratitude to Ashley M. Jones for including me alongside so many poets I admire and to all the staff for the care they’ve shown my work.

I would have to transcribe the entire table of contents to include everyone I’m honored to share space with, but it’s a particular joy to be published with Monica Ong Reed, with whom I attended my first Kundiman retreat. I urge you to get a copy of the issue for the sheer pleasure of seeing her beautiful work unfolding and unfolding out, celestially. 

At bedtime tonight, my five-year-old daughter asked to read my poem--I hadn’t realized she meant she would try reading it aloud! It brought tears to my eyes to hear her. She currently won’t permit me to share the video, but she did say I could share this image of her reading.

I hope you will join her in exploring this stunning issue!

#poem #poetry #poetrymagazine #dreampub #writerslife #writingcommunity #gratitude

[hyejungkook]

Poem 72 - Linked Verses - Restringing the Mala - “From the Desire Field” by Natalie Diaz, originally appearing in Poem-a-Day (Source: https://poets.org/poem/desire-field) #poem #poetry #nataliediaz #happypride #happypridemonth #lgbtqia #indigenous #latinx

#poem #poetry #natalie diaz #happypridemonth #happy pride 🌈 #lgbtqia #indigenous #latinx

[hyejungkook]

Poem 71 - Linked Verses - Restringing the Mala - “A Woman Speaks” by Audre Lorde, from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (Norton, 1997), source poetryfoundation.org

#poem #poetry #happy pride 🌈 #happypridemonth #lgbtqia #audre lorde

[hyejungkook]

Poem 70 - Linked Verses - Restringing the Mala - “dek pom daeng” by Jai Arun Ravine, from “Selected Poems” (Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1, Article 7, 2010)

#poem #poetry #asian american #asianamericanlit #lgbtqia #happy pride 🌈 #happypridemonth

[hyejungkook]

Poem 69 - Linked Verses - Restringing the Mala - “Hottie Sizzles” by Joseph O. Legaspi, from Threshold (CavanKerry Press, 2017)

#poem #poetry #asian american #asianamericanlit #lgbtqia #happy pride 🌈 #happypridemonth

[hyejungkook]

Poem 68 - Linked Verses - Restringing the Mala - “island where these things (origin)” by Ching-In Chen, from recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017)

#poem #poetry #lgbtqia #asian american #happy pride 🌈 #happypridemonth