Dawn Sueoka is a poet, hypertext writer, and archivist in Hawaiʻi whose work moves between the printed page, digital literature, archival practice, and interactive writing. She is the author of the chapbook Little Uglies, published by Bloof Books, and has also created literary works in Twine and other hypertext forms.
Sueoka belongs among contemporary poets whose practice extends beyond a single medium. Her writing brings together compression, image, sound, digital structure, and reader interaction, while her professional work as an archivist gives her literary career an additional relationship to documents, memory, and historical preservation.
Little Uglies
Bloof Books published Sueoka’s chapbook Little Uglies in 2014 as part of its chapbook series. The book places her within a small-press poetry community known for formally adventurous contemporary writing. Bloof later made the chapbook available as a free digital edition after the handmade print edition sold out.
The chapbook is an important anchor in Sueoka’s bibliography because it connects her magazine poetry with the longer sequence and concentrated architecture of a book-length project.
Hypertext and interactive writing
Sueoka’s later work expands into interactive literature. Her Twine project REALLY, IF / REALLY, ALWAYS appeared in the 2018 Spring Thing Festival of Interactive Fiction. In 2022 she released Phenomena, a group of short hypertext poems in which readers can alter lines and move through multiple textual possibilities. Another Twine work, I am inventing all this and it is about to disappear, but it does not, followed in 2023.
These projects treat sequence and variation as poetic materials. A reader encounters language through choices, substitutions, and changing routes, extending familiar concerns of experimental poetry into interactive form.
Archives and Hawaiʻi
Alongside her literary work, Sueoka is a librarian and archivist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Hamilton Library lists her as a Congressional Papers Archivist in University Archives and Manuscript Collections. Her archival work is concerned with preserving and organizing records that document the political, cultural, and institutional history of Hawaiʻi.
Sueoka has also spoken publicly about the relationship between poetry and historical understanding. In testimony supporting the creation of a Hawaiʻi state poet laureate program, she described poetry as a form capable of deepening connections to the past and opening alternate ways of imagining the future.
Further reading
For a wider view of poets working across contemporary and experimental traditions, browse the poets directory.