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Melanie Hyo-In Han on Building a Poetry Manuscript
by Writing Workshops Staff
An hour ago
Melanie Hyo-In Han is teaching From Poems to Poetry Collection: Building Your Manuscript, a one-on-one IndieMFA mentorship offered in a four-month Chapbook Track and a six-month Full-Length Track. Acceptance decisions are made on a rolling basis.
At a writing residency several years ago, Melanie Hyo-In Han spread her poems across the living-room floor until the manuscript took up most of the space. She read them, walked between them, moved them around, and asked which ones wanted to be near one another. That floor became My Dear Yeast, the full-length collection that grew out of her chapbook Sandpaper Tongue, Parchment Lips. It is also the kind of embodied, page-by-page architecture work she now does alongside the poets in her selective IndieMFA mentorship at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature.
From Poems to Poetry Collection: Building Your Manuscript runs in two tracks: a four-month Chapbook Track for poets shaping a focused 20 to 40 page collection, and a six-month Full-Length Track for poets building a 60 to 90 page manuscript. Both tracks share the same structure, scaled to fit the project. Across biweekly Zoom sessions and four or six rounds of detailed written feedback delivered through Wet Ink, poets work with Han, who is the author of four poetry collections, the Two Languages Prize Editor at Gasher Press, and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Surrey, on the three problems every poetry manuscript faces: cohering individual poems into a book, sequencing them into a movement, and preparing the finished collection for submission. Mentees leave with a revised manuscript draft and a clear, practical strategy for getting it out to presses and contests.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Melanie:
Melanie Hyo-In Han: Hi! My name is Melanie, and I'm a Korean-African poet and educator currently living in the U.K. I'm the author of four poetry collections, the Two Languages Prize Editor at Gasher Press, and the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Flora Fiction. My research at the University of Surrey focuses on multilingual poetics and the relationship between language and power, which means I spend a lot of my professional life thinking about what languages do (and don't do) on the page, and how a poem makes meaning across the borders it crosses.
Writing Workshops: We're so excited about your IndieMFA Program, Melanie! Okay, so a mentee sends you forty poems written over three years. Walk us through the first read. What are you actually looking for, and what are the first signals that tell you a body of work has a manuscript inside it, versus needs another twenty poems before it can become a book?
Melanie Hyo-In Han: When I first read through a collection of poems a mentee has sent me, I always look for patterns. I'm not necessarily asking whether they are "good" poems but rather, what it is that they keep returning to. I'm keeping track of recurring images and motifs, and one of the big signs that a manuscript is already inside the work is that the poems have a sense of coherence. On the other hand, the signal that more poems are needed is different (and it's not always about number) — if the collection doesn't have coherence or an emotional arc yet, it means that we have some more writing to do before we have a book.
Writing Workshops: You've said that during your MFA, you "had to learn how to place different poems together and make a manuscript that was practical and submittable." My Dear Yeast grew from your chapbook Sandpaper Tongue, Parchment Lips. What did that expansion process teach you about the difference between chapbook architecture and full-length architecture? And when you're working with a mentee who's torn between the two forms, what's your diagnostic question?
Melanie Hyo-In Han: Expanding Sandpaper Tongue, Parchment Lips to My Dear Yeast taught me that a chapbook is a sprint whereas a full-length collection is a marathon. As cliche as it may sound, chapbooks have a concentrated focus, one that has a central tension. With a full-length collection, I've found that it demands additional complexity, perhaps poems that contradict the chapbook's central argument or poems that wander and allow the speaker to be uncertain or even wrong.
When a mentee is trying to decide between a chapbook and a full-length, one question I'd ask them how many distinct emotional registers the speaker occupies. If the speaker has one, primary emotional relationship to the subject and the poems explore that with intensity and focus, I'd say that's chapbook material. If the speaker moves through change and contradiction, that could be more in the realm of a full-length collection.
Writing Workshops: Sequencing is one of the quiet crises of poetry manuscripts: poets often know the individual poems are strong and still can't figure out the order. Abecedarian: Banff, Canada has a formal scaffold baked in (A to Z). Passing Notes in Secret braids Korean colonial history, diaspora, and multilingual address across a less predetermined arc. You've cited Emily Jungmin Yoon, Ocean Vuong, and Cathy Park Hong as influences who "utilize visual elements to mirror the multifaceted aspects of identity," and you've described the "intentional designs" in your own poems. Can you walk us through how you physically approach sequencing, especially for mentees who know their individual poems are strong but can't figure out the order? How do you physically work through sequencing: printouts on the floor, spreadsheets, index cards, something else? And what's the first diagnostic question you ask a mentee whose manuscript order isn't landing?
Melanie Hyo-In Han: When I'm getting ready to order/sequence poems for a manuscript, I print everything out. I remember being at a writing residency several years ago, and my poems took up the majority of the living room floorspace. I spread poems out and read them, move them around, and ask which ones want to be near one another.
The first thing I look for is the poem that opens the collection. The opening poem establishes the speaker's world so it's obviously incredibly important. I then look for the poem that closes the collection. Not every collection has to end with resolution, but every collection needs a specific ending "note." Once I've determined the beginning and the end, I organize the other poems around them.
For collections that have formal scaffolding built in (like Abecedarian: Banff, Canada), it does make things "easier" in the sense that the sequencing is pre-determined. However, I still had to write and determine what each letter's poem is doing and how they add to the overall collection.
When a mentee's sequence isn't quite working, I usually try to figure out where the reader is being asked to do too much at once. Usually, a failing sequence is overloaded at one specific point, exhausting the reader without building momentum. So I look for where that might be and space things out as needed.
"I spread poems out and read them, move them around, and ask which ones want to be near one another."
Writing Workshops: As the Two Languages Prize Editor at Gasher Press, you read manuscript submissions from the other side of the desk. Without breaking confidentiality, what are the recurring craft or structural issues that cause strong individual poems to fail as a manuscript at the submission stage? And what would you tell mentees about being "more selective" in their submission choices, which was a lesson you learned between your first and second book?
Melanie Hyo-In Han: The most common issue I see in manuscripts is "thematic overload without direction." The poems may be strong individually (the language is alive and the imagery is working well, etc.) but the manuscript reads as a collection of poems about a subject without a sense of development or direction.
I want to remind mentees that cutting good poems because they might not be the right fit for a specific collection is a hard thing to learn. The poems that are cut aren't lost, though — they just belong in another project.
For submission strategies, I think it's really important to know what the press actually publishes before submitting! Being more selective is genuinely more helpful for both the writer and the publisher in the long run.
Want this kind of editorial reading on your own manuscript? Apply now for the Chapbook or Full-Length Track of Melanie's IndieMFA mentorship.
Apply for the Mentorship →Writing Workshops: You've described how "the first few drafts of My Dear Yeast included a glossary" for the Korean and Swahili words, but you ultimately "made the decision to remove it." This speaks to a larger question about revision for the book versus revision for individual poems. What's your methodology for revising a poem the poet thinks is done, particularly when you're revising it in service of the manuscript's larger argument rather than the poem itself?
Melanie Hyo-In Han: Removing the glossary was one of the hardest decisions I made regarding My Dear Yeast and it was fundamentally a manuscript-level decision, not a poem-level one. At the individual poem level, a glossary can feel necessary but at the manuscript level, the glossary was making an argument that I didn't want to make: that non-English words needed to be explained.
When revising a manuscript, a poem can technically be finished but could be doing the wrong thing for the book. It's essential to figure out whether the message(s) of the poems are consistent with the larger claim the manuscript is making.
So I ask by having the poet articulate the manuscript's central theme in one sentence. Then I read the poem and question whether it is confirming, complicating, or contradicting that theme / argument. Complications are good, as can contradictions. Sometimes, though, when a poem pulls against the manuscript in a way that goes against the whole manuscript... that's when I ask the poet to (re)consider and revise parts of it to see where it might want to go.
"When revising a manuscript, a poem can technically be finished but could be doing the wrong thing for the book."
Writing Workshops: Your practice is rooted in multilingual poetics and the relationship between language and power, and your PhD research focuses on Japanese colonialism's effect on Korean literature. For a mentee who writes only in English and whose work isn't explicitly multilingual, what does that lens give them? Put differently: what do you see in a manuscript that an editor without your background might miss, even in work that looks formally and culturally "monolingual"?
Melanie Hyo-In Han: I suppose the lens I bring isn't just "multilingualism" as a stylistic or formal strategy. It's more an attention to the political life of language itself. What I notice that other readers might not flag are the moments when there might be gaps in any manuscript. Because my research into colonialism has made me attuned to what happens when language is under pressure, I think I can pick out what is (or isn't) being said and why. I believe that's what I offer mentees whose work might look more "mainstream" and/or monolingual: a close reader who's asking the question of where language is doing work beneath the surface.
Writing Workshops: Month 6 (or Month 4 for chapbook-track mentees) is Preparing for Publication: chapbook contests, small presses, submission strategies. The poetry publishing landscape in 2026 is genuinely confusing. Presses are folding, reading fees keep climbing, AI is unsettling contests, and there's a real split opening between contest-driven paths and open-reading-period paths. What does an honest, current submission strategy actually look like for a debut chapbook poet versus a debut full-length poet right now? And where in the landscape do you see poets wasting time or money, the pitfalls you'd steer a mentee around?
Melanie Hyo-In Han: This is such a tricky one because, you're right, it's really is rough out there and I won't pretend otherwise. For mentees, I think I'd encourage them to focus on a relatively small and curated list of presses rather than scattering widely. Research each press (read recent winners, look at the editorial team, think about what the press does for its authors during and after publication, etc.). For chapbooks in particular, contests still work. The prize model seems to be more stable at the chapbook level than full-length, but open reading periods at small presses are worth prioritizing.
For poets trying to publish a full-length collection, I'd say "don't submit until you're sure the manuscript is ready." Fees are high and waiting periods are long, so I'd recommend knowing what your manuscript is and finding the presses whose existing catalog might be a genuinely good fit.
As a whole, submitting too early and submitting to the same twenty prestigious contests year after year without making significant (and I mean SIGNIFICANT) changes would be a waste of time and money. So let's avoid doing that!
Build the Book Your Poems Are Asking For
Han is direct about the publishing landscape in 2026: don't submit until you're sure the manuscript is ready. This mentorship is built so that, by the end of four months or six, you'll know that. You'll leave with a revised manuscript, a clear sense of how your poems function as a book, and a curated, research-backed list of presses and contests that genuinely fit your work. If you have a body of poems waiting to become something more, this is your invitation to build it with one of poetry's most thoughtful editor-mentors.
Six months for a full-length collection. Four months for a chapbook. Both with biweekly Zoom sessions and detailed written feedback from Melanie. Acceptance is rolling, and space is limited.
Apply for Melanie's Mentorship Now →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
