Barahm Press is a new micropress committed to uplifting BIPOC diasporic voices. They seek to amplify stories that speak to the complexities of displacement, cultural memory, and the ongoing struggle for liberation. They publish handcrafted letterpressed books and broadsides as well as online folios. They are currently accepting submissions of protection spells for their first online folio and are also in the early planning stages of their first letterpress chapbook. 

HOPKINSON: How/why was Barahm Press originally started? 

KOOK: The press is run by three Korean American women: the founding editor and owner Cristiana Baik, art director Julie Kim, and myself (Hyejung Kook), co-editor of the creative arm. Cristiana helms the commercial arm, which does commissioned work, and she does all printing herself on a Vandercook-SP20. That’s how I got tapped as a co-editor–I commissioned a poetry broadside from Cristiana, and we had such a great time collaborating on it, she invited me to join Barahm.

Before starting up Barahm Press, Cristiana ran The Press Gang, a subversive letterpress micro-press named after a line from Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, during her graduate studies at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. For three years, she published works by poets like Karen Volkman and Juliana Spahr, until graduating and losing access to a press.

Years of searching led Cristiana to acquire a weathered Vandercook SP-20 in late 2020. Tucked away in a dilapidated Santa Cruz mountain shed, the press bore the marks of exposure to the elements. After months of repairs, just as she was ready to print, Cristiana discovered she was expecting her first child. It wasn’t until a year later, after her son’s birth, that she began intentionally focusing on establishing her workshop and printing practice.

Graduate school had shown Cristiana to the stark reality of the publishing world: a predominantly white space where ownership and decision-making resided. This mirrored her experience in letterpress printing. Yet, it was also in graduate school that she fell in love with the craft. These intertwined experiences sowed a dream: to establish a printing press that would amplify BIPOC voices and be owned by people of color.

HOPKINSON: Who is your target reader audience? 

KOOK: Our publications don’t target a specific audience. Instead, we welcome anyone who loves writing and wants to support BIPOC voices. We’d like to reach new readers of poetry and create engaging ways of reading poems. Holding a letterpress broadside and feeling the imprint of the text gives a poem a uniquely embodied experience. At the same time, we are imagining how we might include graphic effects and audio to make the most of the possibilities of a digital folio. 

HOPKINSON: What type of work are you looking for? 

KOOK: Barahm Press is currently open for submissions until 8/15 for our first online folio. In this inaugural submission call, we invite BIPOC diasporic writers to send us protection spells—poems that weave magic and reflect our interconnectedness and humanity. As genocide and war ravage Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere, we ask: What power does poetry wield? How can our words conjure a collective community, mend our broken spirits and transform despair into hope?

We are looking for work that is trying to be magical, by which I mean poems that are performative utterances, that seek not to simply describe something but to make something happen via language. I greatly admire the work in this mode in “Incantations: The SCOTUS Decision in Trump v. Hawaii,” a folio edited by Kenji C. Liu which appears in Unmargin.

We also believe that poetry should be accessible to all, challenging the idea that formal training is a prerequisite for writing as well as reading poetry. Writers have often pursued diverse paths and professions alongside their creative work. Barahm Press endeavors to foster a space where lived experiences and unique perspectives take center stage. We particularly welcome writing from those without an MFA and minimal publishing history. 

HOPKINSON: What are some of your favorite lit mags/journals?

KOOK: Denver Quarterly, New England Review, Pleiades, Waxwing, Diode Poetry Journal, The Massachusetts Review, Conjunctions, Poetry Northwest, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Lantern Review. 

HOPKINSON: What is your favorite part of being on staff with Barahm Press?

KOOK: I was surprised and delighted when Cristiana asked me to become co-editor last year because we actually hadn’t (and still haven’t) met in person, though we have known each other online for nearly nine years. But we found our energies really aligned and complemented each other while collaborating on my broadside, and I’m so lucky to continue feeling energized as we imagine what the press will be together.

Conversations with Julie Kim, our art director, have also been thought provoking. She has a background in user design, and while brainstorming how to design our first online folio, she’s been asking questions like, “How do people usually experience/consume poetry? What was the last digital folio you read that you loved and why?” She wants to explore and make the most of the digital possibilities, which makes me imagine new kinds of poetry I could write. Maybe text that fades in and out alongside audio, the words only appearing as you hear them. Maybe translations where the original first appears, and then the translation appears on top of the original, and then the original fades away. Do we know how to make this happen yet? No, but how exciting to consider what might be possible. 

Things aren’t all dreamy–right now we are organizing submissions, researching writer agreements and how to fundraise for the first chapbook, debating whether to have a newsletter, etc.–but it’s been truly inspiring to help chart the future of a new press with Cristiana and Julie from the ground up. I can’t wait to bring writers we publish into the mix so that they can dream new ways of creating and sharing work, too. 

HOPKINSON: Where can we send submissions? 

KOOK: We are accepting protection spells from BIPOC diasporic voices for our inaugural online folio until 8/15 via Google Form & e-mail. You can find the details on how to submit at https://www.barahmpress.com/submissions. This is a fee-free opportunity. 

HOPKINSON: If someone has a question, how can they contact you? 

KOOK: You can reach us via contact form or simply e-mail us at barahmpress@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you! And thank you, Trish, for your interest and support!

• • SUBMISSION DEADLINE: September 1, 2024 
  • THEME(S): Protection Spells
  • FORMAT: Online
  • SUBMISSION FEE: None 
  • PAYMENT: As we are a fledgling press, we are currently unable to pay contributors.  However, contributors to the protection spell folio will write a collaborative spell poem and receive a limited edition letterpress broadside of the poem. 
  • ISSUE FREQUENCY: We are still determining the frequency of chapbooks and online folios.
  • AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME: We plan to respond to all submitters by the end of September 2024. 
  • SUBMISSION METHOD: E-mail & Google Form
  • SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS: Yes
  • SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook, Instagram

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