Hyejung Kook

I’ve been so busy I’m behind on updating here. Hopefully I’ll be able to do a catchup post soon, but first I wanted to share this exciting event coming up next Saturday, April 11th at 1 PM at the Nelson-Atkins Museum!

Where Mountains Meet Water

Saturday, April 11 | 1-2:15 pm

Gallery 205 & 222

Members: $8 | Public: $10 | Students: $5

How mountain and water connect art, poetry, and wellbeing.

Even when separated by miles and centuries, water remains a powerful source of inspiration in Japanese and Chinese belief systems, connecting land, conceptions of the universe, and traditions of art and poetry. Curator of Chinese Art, Ling-en Lu, and Associate Curator of Japanese Art, Yayoi Shinoda, will explore our relationships with land and water across two exhibitions, Legendary Landscapes: Sublime Visions from China’s Song Dynasty and Water Embodied: Flow and Meaning of Water in Japanese Art. In honor of National Poetry Month, readings by Hyejung Kook and Jimmy Cheng further invite you to consider how the natural world guide our experiences of self-reflection, spirituality, and belonging.

Link for tickets 🩵

Friends, I have been remiss in sharing that I will be in Topeka this Saturday, September 20th for the Kansas Book Festival! I’m excited to moderate a conversation with Canese Jarboe (@back_talk), author of Sissy (Garden-Door Press, 2024) and Matt Porubsky, author of Stand in Old Light (Spartan Press, 2024) about how breaking poetic forms can reveal a wider view of Kansas. I’ll be sharing a couple of my own poems as well! We’ll be at Washburn University in Plass Library 120 at 9 AM. Here’s info about parking and a campus map.

I’m so honored to have my poem “The End of October” included in Denison Museum’s current exhibition M(otherhood)s—open and free to the public until December 5th!

The exhibition "brings together more than a millennia of art, poetry, and film to explore the many ways mothering—by birth, by choice, by circumstance, and by community—takes form across cultures and generations. From the ancient Indian sculpture The Goddess Lajja Gauri and the Renaissance vision of the Holy Family to bold contemporary works by LaToya Ruby Frazier, Judy Chicago, Tracey Emin, and Titus Kaphar, the exhibition invites reflection on care, identity, resilience, and the complicated realities that live alongside love. The works span painting, photography, print, sculpture, video, and the written word, creating a conversation between the intimate and the political, the historical and the now."

Deepest thanks to Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach for including me alongside so many gorgeous artists, including stellar poets like Joy Harjo, Kai Coggin, Keetje Kuipers, Ada Limón, Maggie Smith, Kendra DeColo, Erika Meitner, Victoria Chang, Ajanaé Dawkins, Luisa Muradyan, Traci Brimhall, Ellen Bass, Danusha Laméris, Kelly Grace Thomas, and her own dear self 💗

Do check out the exhibition website which includes a guide with all the poems.

I'm also so grateful to wildness for originally publishing "The End of October" in Issue 10 (October 2017)!

Dear ones, I am so, so thrilled to share that my debut full-length poetry collection Once Is Not Enough is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in Fall 2027!!! When I received the offer to publish from managing editor Gabriel Cleveland, I wept listening to him share notes from three rounds of readers that really understood what I was trying to accomplish in the manuscript, no, the book! It’s going to be a book!

Once Is Not Enough is a collection that is haunted by loss—death, miscarriage, and language most prominently—but also by the tender details of the world, the emergence of peonies in the spring, the taste of salt licked from your own palm. Formally diverse, the work includes brief lyrics and longer sequences, poems in two voices, and poems written in Korean and translated into English. There is a preoccupation with the multiplicity of meaning and voices inherent in language as well as the cyclical nature of grief and life. Music and sound are essential to the shaping of individual poems and the overall structure of the manuscript, which is divided into four numbered sections which I think of as movements.

I’m absolutely delighted to share that my poem “Orange You Glad” appears in the gorgeous 75th anniversary issue of Shenandoah! When I asked Forrest Gander, my first poetry teacher, where I should submit my poems back in 2001, Shenandoah was on his short list, so this is truly a dream-of-a-lifetime publication 💗 Deep gratitude to all the staff for their hard work, and special thanks to Lesley Wheeler and Beth Staples for being, well, a dream to work with and including me alongside writers like Rosebud Ben-Oni, Molly Peacock, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Mónica Gomery, Eric Tran, and Nome Emeka Patrick. I can’t wait to read Eunmi Choi‘s story “Unnae,” translated by Ha-yun Jung as well as the Indigenous Phillipines Bikol translation folio in tribute to Marne Kilates and Danielle Shandíín Emerson’s essay about learning Navajo (Diné). I hope you will check out this amazing double issue on the newly-redesigned website!

And shoutout to Second Best Coffee, one of my favorite coffee shops in the world, not just Kansas City. Orange You Glad was an exquisite seasonal drink a couple years ago—I need to go digging in my digital archive and find the video I took, but here’s a more recent photo of a delicious pour-over and pastry.

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.”

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 💓💓💓

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)

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.

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:

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

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: