Ward Toward

The poet will be joined in conversation by poet Sara Daniele Rivera.

Described as “a piercing debut: a startle, a fissioning” by Donika Kelly, Ward Toward moves assuredly between spaces—from the psych ward to a prison cell, from divided countries to hospice wards. Using visual play in invented forms, Ok counters familiar narratives about mental illness, abuse, and death, positing that it is not a person’s character or will that makes survival possible, but luck, and other people. How do pagodas, Seinfeld, ransoms, swans, and copays each make or refuse meaning? These resolute, energized poems shift language’s fissures to reassemble them into a new place of belonging.

Cindy Juyoung Ok is the translator of The Hell of That Star, by Kim Hyesoon. A former high school physics teacher, she is a poetry editor and assistant English professor at the University of California Davis.

Sara Daniele Rivera is a Cuban Peruvian American artist, writer, translator, and educator based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her debut book of poetry The Blue Mimes (Graywolf Press) won the 2023 Academy of American Poets First Book Award. She is the co-translator of The Blinding Star: Selected Poems by Blanca Varela (Tolsun Books).

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