UC Davis poet discusses writing her new book “Ward Toward”
There is a tension in Ward Toward, the debut poetry collection of Cindy Juyoung Ok. The tension is a sort of unending internal conflict between wanting to be known and also unknown, visible and invisible, recognized and inconspicuous, a blurry face representing not anything and also everything — a world of intense feeling, or intense feelings of numbness.
"I've always been drawn to poetry. It's a medium in which alienation is very normal and fragmentation is very generative, so it's an estranging form in many ways," Ok said. "I think what I find most curious about it — and always have — is the sense that the confusions and frustrations within poetry only create more confusions and frustrations.”
Throughout Ward Toward, Ok explores themes of depression, hospitalization, the physical body, memory and intergenerational trauma, childhood, longing and loss, violence, dreams, grief, identity, occupation and belonging. She plays with shape, form and unconventional line breaks while also pulling language from text messages and emails from her Korean parents, therapy notes, and wisdom from grandparents, governments and bartenders.
That experimentation with form and source material is making waves in the poetry world.
Ward Toward was published by Yale University Press after Ok was named winner of the 2023 Yale Younger Poets Prize, America’s longest-running poetry award. This year, Ward Toward won the Balcones Prize for Poetry and silver for poetry in the Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California’s California Book Awards. It has also been a finalist for the Ohio Book Awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (poetry category) and The National Book Critics Circle Awards’ John Leonard Prize.
Instead of describing the work herself, Ok is more interested in other people’s impressions and descriptions. There’s no shortage of that as Ward Toward continues to be considered for book awards throughout the country.
Ok, assistant professor of English in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, sat down with Letters and Science Magazine earlier this year to discuss the book and her transition out of teaching high school science.
The physics teacher takes a year off
Before she was teaching poetry and creative writing, Ok was a high school science teacher and debate coach.
"Those roles were really hilarious times of my life because teenagers are very funny and when they love you and you love them, they're even funnier,” Ok said.
She was in her 20s and it was a time in her life when staying late after school and working on the weekends wasn’t a big deal.
“It was such a wonderful job because the students are at such a formative moment and you're spending a lot of time with them,” Ok said. “I witnessed so much life happening, and I knew so many students closely and followed them for years.”
Despite enjoying the work, she eventually was ready to take a break. She felt she had little time to read for pleasure or do any writing herself.
“I couldn't hear my own voice and I certainly couldn't think in paragraphs and that really concerned me,” Ok said.
Having saved for most of her career, Ok took a makeshift sabbatical from her full-time job, turning to a freelance year with a plan to return to teaching the following fall. Instead, she ended up in writing residencies, getting fellowships and teaching opportunities, not in science but creative writing.
Eventually, she decided to get an M.F.A. and, along the way, her individual poems started to form the basis of a larger work. The praise for that work, as well as the job opportunities continued, leading to the publication of her first collection in April 2024 and starting at UC Davis that same fall.
Ok has also worked in translation from Korean to English, and is the translator of The Hell of That Star by Kim Hyesoon, forthcoming with Wesleyan University Press.
Poems find a life of their own
Ok writes poem by poem when the feeling strikes her, when she’s inspired, but she admires those who have a diligent writing routine. Despite this, she knew she had a book inside her longing to be free.
With a cheap, 55-cent yellow legal pad and writing utensil, Ok got to work, trying to figure out how to take seemingly unconnected poetic lines and find the thread between them.
“Writers are often asked what our work is ‘about’ and I’m maybe more interested in what it makes possible, what it does," Ok said. “The space on the page is not just a metaphor and language is more than a vehicle."
For Ok, this interplay between figures of speech, language and more reflects the often confusing, unfair, mundane and bittersweet aspects of life itself. How the poem manifests — its composition style — highlights this theme of confusion.
With the book being out for just over a year now and generating discussion, Ok feels like a fly-on-the-wall when listening to others discuss her poems.
"It’s a little bit like eavesdropping,” she said. “I feel like it's really between them and the book and really not about me, but I get to kind of hear bits and pieces.”
Ward Toward has brought Ok to bookstores and universities across the U.S. for readings — a mostly self-organized and scrappy book tour. And, though she was reading her own poetry, the purpose of the tour felt more like a celebration of poetry itself and a place where poets and poetry fans could come together in community.
To feel like a poem has been read or a book of poems has been read always gives me a sense of confidence about the form and excitement. It's new for it to be me, for it to be my poems that maybe someone will write about, or someone will teach.
— Cindy Ok
When writing can be such a solitary practice, Ok said, the connections that arose from the tour felt additive and fulfilling.
“I think what has been most interesting to me is when people teach the book and then I get to learn what students say, whether because they write about it or because I visit and talk to students, and I appreciate everything that that students say,” Ok added. “I think that there's really no way to get it wrong, and it only adds to my understanding of something that now is separate for me and is belonging to these other readers.”
Looking for more? Find a faculty interview with Cindy Ok on the Department of English's website and her book listing, Ward Toward, on the L&S Magazine Bookshelf.
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