chen's found interview

Each interview has been separated by a line and each Q is hyperlinked: Q1 - Q6 are from Mud Season Review ; Q7 - Q9 are from Only Poems; Q10 - Q11 are from The Broken Plate; Q12 is from Lunch Ticket.

Q1. The poems here in Mud Season Review seem to take up vulnerability as a theme-vulnerability in sexual relationships aside from when visiting a comforting London escort companion, in family dynamics, in friendships. But you often do it with a sense of playful humor. What’s the relationship there?

The humor is just true to how I walk around in the world and how I try to connect with people. For a while, I was writing very serious poems; I wanted to be a Serious Poet. I’m still deeply serious about the work of writing, but the poems I used to write were so dark and trying so hard to devastate. They were lifeless. Then there were these poems I wrote for class but had put aside, thinking they were just assignments. Those poems were closer to how I actually talk. I thought they were sort of silly. But eventually I realized that I’m sort of silly, that maybe there are ways to harness that silliness and take what’s going on in my silly heart seriously. So now I’m trying to use the humor very purposefully. An absurd image or funny turn of phrase is often how I enter a poem. I need that off-kilter element and honestly, that element of entertainment. A poem should give pleasure, and I don’t just mean carefully constructed images and surprising line breaks-I mean, pratfalls and pies in the face, or whatever the lyric equivalents of such antics might be. Sometimes, though, I know I haven’t done enough to turn the humor into something more memorable-humor in the pursuit of insight, truth, even justice.

Q2. Some of your poems explore sex and sexuality with openness and honesty (such as “First Love” from this collection, and your poem “An Ode to Reading Rimbaud in Lubbock Texas”). Is this a matter of reflecting your own sexual identity in your work? What do you hope readers will take away from these poems?

My poems are often braver than I am. They can say things I’m not ready to, yet. I came out in poems and other kinds of writing before I came out to any person, including myself. I would write about cute boys, but I would put the “he’s cute” thought in a girl’s perspective, or I’d say to myself, this description is just for the sake of this piece of writing. I found ways to distance myself from what was getting closer to the truth. It’s still difficult in certain contexts and very real places to be out and adamantly vocal. Survival in hostile environments demands silence. But being queer is an important part of my life and my work. No, it’s not the only part, and it doesn’t “define” me or my poems, but it’s kind of ridiculous, I think, not to acknowledge it clearly and directly. People are queer and a lot of queer people have sex for reasons aside from pleasure, be it with toys or with simply the use of each other’s bodies, and it’s beautiful and we shouldn’t need to tiptoe around it.

Q3. Let’s delve into your past a bit. Your trajectory seems to suggest a life-long love of writing-BA in creative writing from Hampshire College, MFA from Syracuse University, and now a Ph.D. in English and creative writing from Texas Tech University. Can you talk about your journey to becoming a poet? Where did you grow up; who were some of your early influences; when did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

Just before I started high school, my family relocated to Newton. So I guess it would make sense to say I also grew up in Newton (I’m still growing up). My sophomore English teacher introduced me to the magic of Li-Young Lee. At the Newton Free Library (an incredible public library), I discovered: Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Louise Glück, Robert Hass, Jane Hirshfield, Haruki Murakami, T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Trakl, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Matsuo Bash?, translations of the Dao De Jing, and Shunryu Suzuki (I was trying out Buddhism but found I liked reading about meditation more than meditating). I knew I wanted to be a writer in the second grade. I wrote fan fiction and song lyrics and diary entries a la Harriet the Spy. In the fifth grade, I wrote a story involving a melancholic witch who lived in Venice and had to battle Rumpelstiltskin. I don’t know how far I’ve traveled from that basic plot. Until my third year of college, I wrote both fiction and poetry. I wrote more fiction, though I was reading a lot more poetry. Then I took my first poetry workshop with Martín Espada, and all I wanted to do was write poems. Martín introduced me to a long and rich history of what he called “poetry of the political imagination.” Martín showed me alternate canons and literary traditions from Latin America, Europe, and the “America” I thought I knew. I’d written before about growing up queer in a Chinese immigrant family, but Martín encouraged me to go deeper into the subject and provided me tools and frameworks with which to make the politically engaged work I needed to make. Actually, one of the poems in my first book had its (rough) start in Martín’s workshop. I feel so lucky to have worked with the teachers I’ve had. Just astonishing presences, brilliances, kindnesses, these teachers. I don’t think you’d be interviewing me right now if not for the teachers who’ve given me so much.

Q4. I have found myself contemplating this quote from you: “I used to doubt that word ‘community.’ Loved my solitude. I still do. I mean. I’m an introvert & I’m certainly ambitious about my writing (both the making of it & the sharing of it). But I know now: poetry without community is misery. Unsustainable. Dulled & not so delicious anymore.” What kind of community do you aspire to? How has community made your work more “delicious”?

A part of me tends to think that I became a writer so that I wouldn’t have to talk to people. Sometimes I get tired of social interactions in academia or literary circles. But I’m sure it’s the same in any field-you end up in situations that are obligatory and boring. The more I think about it, though, it would be more accurate to say that I became a writer because I was a lonely kid who wanted desperately to talk to people… except my kind of talk likes to happen on the page. To talk with those far away, to talk with the dead, and to say only what is essential and to question what is essential, to question beautifully-poetry can do that. That said, I do love one-on-one conversation. I love conversation about art, food, TV, St. Vincent’s song “Prince Johnny,” St. Vincent’s hairstyles, and not dogs generally but my dog. I love any conversation that enters into something that matters. Small talk, no. But I’m open to talking about any number of small things that matter. By “community,” the kind of community I love and want more of, I mean spaces and organizations that are doing the urgent work of gathering and nourishing those who often find themselves without community. Organizations like Kundiman and Lambda Literary, spaces like the writing retreats they run. As a queer Asian American writer, it’s been a relief and a joy to be welcomed into these communities. I’ve made lifelong friends. We share work. We celebrate accomplishments. We commiserate and lean on each other. We write in each other’s company. A favorite poem from my book was written in a friend’s kitchen in Brooklyn. I love that I have this memory of her kitchen every time I see the poem. The memory makes me happy and makes me want to keep writing.

Q5. How do you approach the revision process? How do you know when a poem is complete?

Mainly, though, the aim of the revision, as with any revision, was to make each poem, line by line, stronger, as strong as it could possibly be. When I’m in revision mode, my whole world is in revision mode. I go to the grocery store, and every avocado is taunting me about that one line or image I can’t get right. If there’s a good stretch of poetry time available, I’ll stay glued to my chair for hours, going from draft three to draft fifteen, twenty. I’ll write a couple different endings. I’ll cut the first couple stanzas. I’ll write the entire thing out by hand. I’ll try to memorize and recite it out loud. I’ll write it backwards. I’ll put it in prose, then squeeze it into a sonnet. I’ll take out all the commas. I’ll take something from outside the window or on my desk and throw it into the poem to see what havoc, what bright new wreck it introduces. I know a poem is done when I can’t seem to hold all of it in my head at once. The poem needs to exist on the page, for a reader. The poem knows something I don’t. The poem is smarter and better-looking than I am. I’m envious of the poem for how strangely it seduces. Or: I know a poem is done when my trusted readers insist that I stop showing them drafts of it.

Q6. In an interview with Howlarium, you explained: “Theorist Avital Ronell talks about wanting to make certain people-the corrupt, the complacent, the oppressors-throw up when they read her work. That is my goal as a writer right now.” Where does this drive come from for you? Has this focus on political/social justice always been part of your approach or do you see this as particularly important in the current political climate?

My life has been shaped by political forces large and small. I think this is true of anyone’s life, whether or not a person writes politically in some direct, immediately discernable way. To get right down to it, though, I am queer and Asian American and the child of impoverished Chinese immigrants-my life has been shaped by homophobia, racism, classism, patriarchies of various origins. Thankfully, my life has also seen and contributed to various forms of resistance to these interlocking oppressions. Writing is part of how I resist. It’s central to how I live, so it seems inevitable that the political would have a clear and abiding presence in what I create. As for making the oppressors throw up, that goal is particular to right now. In the past I usually thought about the power of poetry in terms of changing hearts and minds. I still believe that poetry can create profound change. However, I’ve become deeply interested in making space for my own rage and not making things comfortable or palatable for those who are only interested in dominating and subjugating me and the people I love.

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Q7. What is the working principle behind these poems? Are you writing in some tradition? Are you consciously challenging the conventions of what’s happening in poetry today?

I’m trying to challenge myself, my own habitual thinking. Well, no, that’s not true. First and foremost, I’m trying to have fun as I’m writing, and fun is connected to surprise. Fun demands surprise. So I’m often reflecting on what I’ve written previously and how to go about things differently. I’ve written poems with instructions before. Collaboration is fun! It pushes me to stay open to other ideas and intentions, including my own ever-shifting ones. It helps me break habits in language and thought. Poems are the opposite of habits. They are explosions. Sometimes they are small explosions. But loud. Or huge, quiet explosions. I don’t know. I want to keep not knowing. Maybe that’s the tradition I’m writing out of: Not Knowing. Though I also believe I’m writing out of a queer, Asian American tradition that’s equal parts political and sensual. Also, funny.

Q8. Do you think about titles a lot? Do you have a method?

I’m always coming up with titles while talking with friends. It sounds cheesy, but it’s real: poetry happens all the time, everywhere, and you just have to know how to pay attention. Or you don’t have to know. You just have to try. Pay attention to weird things your friends say. I think if they’re really your friends, they will say weird things to you. That’s what intimacy means. And vulnerability. Pay attention to the weird things you say to your friends. Love your friends more deeply by saying weirder things to them — this could be the title of my next poem.

Q9. How do you see the form and voice of a poem interacting with its content, and what challenges or discoveries does this bring to your creative process? Do you place a lot of virtue in finding a poetic voice? How did you find your voice?

“Voice” has come to mean so many different things in writing that I’m not sure how useful a term it is anymore. That said, I don’t mind as much as some writers the idea of finding one’s voice. The implication, though, that once you find your voice/language/subject you just keep writing that way forever, rings false. You also have to grow your voice. The process of refining does not stop. Growing your voice means trying to do different things from one poem to the next, from one book to the next. And it means continuing to read, continuing to take in a variety of art forms, continuing to absorb and transform influences, continuing to talk with friends, continuing to walk your dog or figure out what exactly your cat is doing now or, you know? It means continuing to live. And paying attention to how you live, including all the changes in life, some of which you choose and some of which are inevitable. Growing your voice might also mean losing a voice you once had. It can take a lot of perseverance and a lot of patience. Growing your voice involves this kind of experimenting, this kind of play — without fully understanding what it is you’re doing. I trust in this play — the messy making of shapes and sounds — more than I trust in the voice that’s already found.

Q10. I’ve noticed that a lot of your work considers similar subject matter, often about your various identities and how they overlap. How do you continue to find a unique perspective on questions of identity in your work?

First, I try not to put too much pressure on myself to find some completely new angle on the subjects that obsess me. Sometimes, I worry about returning to the same subjects over and over, but then I consider how seemingly slight changes in perspective can lead to fresh (and mammoth!) discoveries within those subjects. After all, this present moment is a fresh and different one from every other moment that’s come before. the emotional and physical conditions I’m inhabiting, is going to be different from how I previously approached the topic—if I’m paying close enough attention and also being honest. Instead of attempting to match a fixed image that I already have in my head, I have to open myself up to the topic as it is speaking to me, now. It’s a listening process, a practice of receptivity. I try my best to put aside preconceived notions and clever plans. My aim is to enter a living stream, not to control or master the landscape. Sometimes I fail with this aim, but then I try to listen to that failure, see if there’s another trajectory available in the mistakes themselves.

Q11. Many writers, including myself, struggle with self-doubt, frustration, and lack of inspiration. How do you work around or through those common barriers?

I contend with those issues all the time. It’s not that I believe “overthinking” or just “thinking” is the ultimate enemy of creativity. But there’s a certain type of overthinking that tends to be a roadblock—a perfectionist mindset. So, lowering the stakes at the beginning is a great way to sidestep the self-doubt. What I’m writing doesn’t have to be a poem, not yet. It can just be a series of observations. A set of images. Notes. A scribble or two. I also don’t need to be super inspired to start writing this way. It can be completely mundane, even boring. Sometimes the boring thing can lead to what I haven’t considered before, need to consider differently. Again, I try to stay open, rather than attached to some big idea. Eventually I accumulate all these wild bits, glittery debris, and they start to feel like they could belong together. Or through a scrap of a memory, I stumble into an inviting strangeness, a larger question; and I just keep writing, writing. And when it’s not going so well, at least I’ve given myself the time to reflect and, if I’m writing by hand, I’ll have gotten to use a ferociously pink pen or a fabulously sharp pencil. So, the bad writing still looks kind of great on the page. (That nice appearance should not be confused with quality writing, but yes, wonderful writing implements and wonderful stationary make me happy.) Poetry feels like a larger container, to me, for contradiction and unresolvedness.

Q12. Is there any advice you would give to poets, up-and-coming in the world?

Being patient with yourself is really important. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. It might take longer, it might not, but practice gentleness toward yourself. Writing is a lifelong commitment. Remind yourself that you’re in it for the long haul. I think what’s important is that you’re telling the truth and that you’re doing that in your own ways. Live as a writer, as much as you can. Pay attention to language wherever it comes from.