Featured Readers
Jimin SeoJimin Seo was born in Seoul, Korea and immigrated to the US to join his family at the age of eight. He earned his MFA from Columbia University and BA from Florida State University. He is the author of OSSIA, a winner of The Changes Book Prize judged by Louise Glück. His poems can be found in Action Fokus, The Canary, LitHub, Pleiades, mercury firs, and The Bronx Museum. His most recent projects were Poems of Consumption with H. Sinno at the Barbican Centre in London, and a site activation for salazarsequeromedina’s Open Pavilion at the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.
Tarik DobbsTarik Dobbs is a writer, artist, and Poetry Foundation Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. Poems by Dobbs have been featured in the anthologies Best New Poets and Heaven Looks Like Us, as well as in AGNI, American Poetry Review, and Poetry Magazine, among others. Dobbs is the director of poetry.onl and has served as a guest editor at Mizna and Zoeglossia: A Community for Poets with Disabilities. Dobbs holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and an M.F.A. in art, theory, practice from Northwestern University. Dobbs is assistant professor of English in creative writing (poetry) at Southwest Minnesota State University. The debut poetry collections by Dobbs, Nazar Boy (2024) and Dearbornistan (forthcoming), are from Haymarket Books.
Event Details
When Wednesday, January 21, 2026
7:30 pm
Where Haymarket House
800 W. Buena
PriceReading is free (registration recommended). The workshop is sliding scale with a suggested donation of $10 and requires registration.
About the Reading
Each event includes a brief open mic followed by two featured poets. Pre-registration is free and recommended. The open mic includes five readers drawn lottery-style from a hat that goes out at 7:15. The reading starts promptly at 7:30. Each open mic poet reads one poem or for three minutes, whichever comes first.
About The Workshop
The Blue Hour generative writing workshop is suitable for writers and poetry fans of all levels. We will discuss a poem together, then Marty will guide the group through individual writing on an exploratory prompt that draws on themes from the poem.
Accessibility, Health, & Safety
- All restrooms at Haymarket House are gender-neutral, including single-user and stalled restrooms.
- Each event includes ASL interpretation. Haymarket House is ADA compliant and fully wheelchair-accessible; email curator@poetrycenter.org to ensure ramp access and with any other accessibility needs.
- Masks are currently strongly encouraged for all indoor events, and the space is equipped with a professional air filtration system.
About The Host
Marty McConnell is a poet, educator, and healer based in Chicago. She is the author of when they say you can’t go home again, what they mean is you were never there, winner of the 2017 Michael Waters Poetry Prize; her first full-length collection, wine for a shotgun, received the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Awards and was a finalist for both the Audre Lorde Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Her first nonfiction book, Gathering Voices: Creating a Community-Based Poetry Workshop, is available through YesYes Books. She is the co-creator and co-editor of underbelly, a web site focused on the art and magic of poetry revision. An MFA graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, Gulf Coast, and Indiana Review.
Learn more about the series and history >
