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- [00:01]
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- [00:24]
Jennifer Wong
Ugh.
- [00:25]
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Interviewer
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- [01:25]
Interviewer
the New Books Network. And in the room, we could hear the ocean waves breaking against the history of ourselves. Those are the final lines of the first poem in Jennifer Wong's most recent volume of poetry, Lightyear. And I'm really glad to be sitting here with Jennifer today talking about this collection. Welcome, Jennifer.
- [01:48]
Jennifer Wong
Thank you very much for inviting me.
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Interviewer
I thought we might begin with these lines with which you end this first poem. This image of the ocean waves breaking against the history of ourselves occurred to me throughout the experience of reading the poems. Sometimes the poems wash up and sometimes they crash against the history of ourselves. Is that also how you relate to them as the poet?
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Jennifer Wong
Yes. I remember, like, when I was writing this book, I thought a lot about the sea and the ocean and water, qualities of water and so on. And I think, like, especially you might also have noticed that this is like a very Gatsby like imagery that I used to, you know, read about the Great Gatsby when I was a student in Hong Kong. And so that sort of brings back the memories of what it means to me to be, you know, a Lie into. To kind of fall in love with the world or to embrace worlds.
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Interviewer
Can you say a bit more about the Gatsby image and how you relate to it through the poems?
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Jennifer Wong
I think I have always been very fascinated with that story, as in. And how a person can reach for success or it's worse, or shape his own life by, you know, just working, working hard or, you know, taking risks and making. Making some opportunities available. And. And I also like the way Nick talks about, you know, like that far, far light on the other side of the. Of the ocean and that like, people keep running towards hope and. And what sort of things that motivate people or what gives hope to people is quite different across, you know, different contexts. But I just always thought about that and also how that sense of history, you know, Gatsby has this old history, personal history that is sometimes a bit dubious to others. And so, like, you know, how do you see yourself like your past self and how do you continuously remake your own. Your own identity?
- [04:05]
Interviewer
You just talked about Hook and I. And there's another line from this book in which you talk about being in love with hope itself. What is it that poetry as a form does to hope? I mean, does it contain hope? Does it express hope for you? Does it do something else to hope?
- [04:26]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I think I certainly see it as a very malleable form. And I think, um, it's very, you know, free as a form to. To express what's inside you. Be it like different types of emotions, be grief or joy. And. And I think like, when I was writing this book, it was during a period of my life that I. I don't particularly feel very, you know, hopeful, to be honest. I was going through a lot of personal challenges, either like career wise, financial wise, or it would just in terms of my emotions and relationships. And I think, like. But, you know, actually poetry was my hope when I was writing this. And I think like, it was just because of, you know, the promise to my publisher as well to deliver these poems, to continuously make this book of poems that, like, in the process of reading, I think it's a very, you know, it gives me a lot of joy and hope. And I feel that, you know, like, there are so many poems that I've read through by other leading poets and either Limon or, you know, Philip Larkin and all these. And I just think, like, through reading other people's work, it gives me a lot of hope that, you know, things that we. The circumstances that come across to us, whether they're related to society, or related to your own personal history. It's very like they are all there, you know, it's quite universal. Like, poetry is very universal.
- [06:08]
Interviewer
Something I wanted to ask you, actually, maybe towards the end, but it's now coming to my mind is what would it be like to live without poetry in terms of hope? Is it necessary for you to hope?
- [06:23]
Jennifer Wong
Oh, definitely, yes. I think we all need that, isn't it? We all need to clutch onto or cling onto what we think gives us joy or gives us hope or promises something better. And I think poetry is a form or, like, it's a resource where people go to, like, because of that spiritual element and it's so condensed. Like, even when you use language in a poem, everything is packed inside it. It's kind of like a riddle or like a person. It's like a person that is wrapped up with ribbons. And you just untie the ribbon and you've got something beautiful inside. And I think during war times or in times of precarity, I think a lot of. A lot of people, you know, across different cultures, they rely on poetry as a way of giving them hope. And I was thinking about all these First World War poems and so on. Even now when you read them, or like modernist, for example. I love a lot of modernist poems and I think Tess Elliot, for example. But he still gave me a lot of hope when I read them. He said, how fat? Too far? Translucent.
- [07:40]
Interviewer
This is very interesting in terms of what you're saying about. Something about the compression in poetry might be particularly powerful for giving readers hope. Could you say a bit more about what that is for you as someone who reads poetry, and then how that shapes you? You as someone who writes poetry?
- [08:04]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I guess, like, as a poet, I myself, like, you know, you might notice in my poems, my poems usually don't go across one page, most of them. And I think, like, maybe that's why, like, I feel like it's just my natural way of, like, condensing things so that they can't be, you know, further condensed. And that, to me, it's like the power of poetry. It's like you say so many things in as few lines as possible or as few words as possible, which is sort of part of my own personality anyway. It's like, I don't. I don't. I find it a struggle to expand, like, things. I just feel like, you know, I like kind of putting messages inside a very small container. And I think, like, a lot of poets have the same, you know, in reading or appreciating poetry. I see that in a lot of different poets, and even, for example, Sylvia Plath. I've been rereading Sylvia Plath's poetry, and I think, like, a lot of her work are still very valid and very powerful today to read. For women especially, they are so condensed. There's so many things inside each image that she say. Like she pretty much says so many things about her grace or her. Challenges her. Her imagination without spending it for you, like what it is that she went through or what is this that she was talking about. It's not a complete story, but the poem itself reveals a lot.
- [09:39]
Interviewer
Yeah, I mean, that's something that struck me when I was reading the poems, is that there is a very intimate register at which you write, I've only met you today. But almost like by reading the. The poetry, it felt very much like at least a part of you was shown on the page. And yet, one thing that's very different about the poems, as you mentioned, most of them are quite short, is that they're not like a normal conversation because they're highly, kind of finely hewn, kind of messages in a bottle kind of. You know, it's not like a normal conversation that goes in and out of tangents. Hopefully I'm not too tangential today with you. So it's really special because it kind of has both this power of the intimacy, but power of the concision and the compression. And I'm looking forward to getting into some of the poems today. I wonder if we might now go to a poem. I wonder whether you might be willing to read a poem for us.
- [10:49]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, sure. I was thinking, like, should I read the poem, which has a very long title, you stop speaking to me for a year. Because for me, I was very grateful also for Apology London for first publishing this poem a while ago. And to me it really means a lot. And actually this poem was written after, you know, a considerable time has elapsed since that experience when my mom stopped talking to me during pandemic. When you stop talking to me, when you stop speaking to me for a whole year it's like the world has gone quiet, become atheists. There's snow falling, falling ever so quietly over our small talks in the kitchen. When you cut up the ginger scaled a fish the careful way you peel the grapes for me when I was tiny. Every week I bring Charlotte to dance lessons, often arriving late because we'll go by bus. I keep dreaming of what my lessons would be like had you decided to bring me secretly in our photo albums. Why Were there no pictures with me blowing out a candle on a D and the snow just kept falling? I feel sorry for you, who grew up without a father to spoil a sculpture or give you picky rides. And your mother, who couldn't read because that's how women were supposed to be. Then the snow that fell like icing on an English phone box, reminded me of all the years you never called because you're Chinese and Chinese parents never condescend, never call their children. Or maybe you felt I was in this new planet without you. In Oxford's sandstone streets, forgetting all those weekends, how we used to go, just you and me to Granville Row, trying out perfumes, choosing eyeshadows in the famous Longsheng Pharmacy, always jet packed with tourists and queening girls. And after our shopping, you would buy me one of those criteous Indonesian cakes from the Tiger Cafe Nearby there's soft rainbow layers and coconut memories. But the snow kept falling, falling and this weather of silence between us draining all faith, all love. A phone call away from forgiveness.
- [13:12]
Interviewer
Thank you so much. One of the parts of this poem that really struck me is how multiple times in your life are interlaced in very quick succession. For example, there are the memories of having grapes peeled for you when you were tiny. And then every week in the present, I bring Charlotte to dance lessons. And then this kind of hypothetical space where I keep dreaming of what my lessons would be like had you decided to bring me. I wonder whether these different timelines, whether they were there altogether simultaneously from when you conceived this poem, or whether they came one by one.
- [14:02]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah. Thanks for talking about this poem, which is. Certainly means a lot to me, but I think when I was composing this poem, it was quite a fragmentary process, and I felt like I was just scribbling here and there, like, some phrases or some memories from different episodes, as you say. And so I. I didn't actually have a clear idea of what they mean or, you know, like. Or whether they join up. It was just like, things that I was kind of thinking about, and especially about the pharmacy, because that's something that really connect me and my mother. It's like a memory that I keep going back, and especially when, you know, our relationship, like when there was this silence between us. I go back to that experience where. Or history, when we did things together, when we enjoyed ourselves together. But, yeah, it's not linear, not linear at all. And I think it was like quite a very recent reflection, actually, in this poem that I started thinking, oh, wait, I really couldn't remember Ever seeing any photos of my birthday parties, because I was very busy always preparing birthday parties for my own daughter. So it kind of triggered me to think, wait, when I was a kid, I never had any birthday parties. So it was also a cultural thing. And I also kind of felt, during the process of writing a poem or during the process of that experience of silence, I sort of try to understand my mother from her own point of view or from her own, you know, life as a daughter or as a mother. Like, whether there were things that bothered her or caused her to behave, like, the way that she was. And I thought, like, oh, maybe it's related to how she grew up without too many model examples of how a parent will be like, or what's a parent supposed to do? And, yeah, like, so all these things that I felt was also missing from her own childhood.
- [16:16]
Interviewer
The word silence came up a few times just now, and it's very powerful to think about how the silence between you and your mother was so generative. I mean, it generated all these memories and thoughts in you. Is that something you found to be more broadly true, that silence is often a starting point for. For something interior happening that ends up being a poem?
- [16:45]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I think so. I think definitely. I don't think it was a silence that I welcome or create. Like, I just. As a person, I really love communication in some ways, and I felt that, you know, the world is a core place for not having any communication between people. But I. I think, yes, you're right, that silence does kind of does become generative in some sense for Archdeacon, because you start thinking about what does silence mean? Or what is that space between the words or what are the missing words and things? And I think it's also not just about the silence. With my mother, I think there were lots of different silences. There was also the general cultural silence that I feel. It's quite inherent in any Chinese family or ancient family where lots of things were unspoken. Like, for example, when I was growing up, we were really. There were lots of taboo that I'm not supposed to talk about at the dinner table. Like, we never talk about anything about dying or death or anything unlucky. And we also. Yeah, we don't talk about sad things as well. In general, those things about my grandparents that we also don't talk about. And then, like, when I was writing this book, it was also, like, I felt good friend, and you stopped talking to me. And that kind of makes me keep thinking about, like, how do you break a silence? Like, you know, even if Sometimes maybe silence is necessary. Like, how do you kind of overcome that? Or how do you. How do you continue. How do you continue to experience life or kind of be joyful in life in the midst of that silence? And then funny enough actually, that a little bit earlier, when I was either the time of this writing this poem or other poems, I think my other fellow poet in Hong Kong, Editae Ghetto, he also was suggesting to me, oh, like, do you want to together do an editing or an anthology about silence? I think that was quite a funny situation.
- [19:06]
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- [19:31]
Interviewer
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- [20:02]
Interviewer
I mean, it sounds like something paradoxical. I wonder if it's almost painful to be someone who wants to communicate so much, but then there is a recognition that silence can be necessary for the poetry that you write. Is there something painful there or something paradoxical?
- [20:24]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, yeah, I guess there is. Yeah. You mean like, as in the writing process?
- [20:32]
Interviewer
Yeah, I guess what I'm thinking of, maybe in some alternative universe, the poetry you write might come just flow very seamlessly from this desire to communicate, but it's not quite that straightforward. Right. Because maybe some of it does, but some of it comes more from how the world doesn't necessarily fit into our desire to communicate. And those silences, those silences are starting points for the poetry. Maybe more than the desire to communicate Sometimes.
- [21:09]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah. I think, like at the beginning, when I was like. Or in the early stage when I was writing this book, I had a breakfast. Like, it was with a poet who came from the States. Like, she's just visiting and she was doing some events, I think, and I was talking about what I'm writing, and I was saying that I wanted to write. And then she was also saying to me, like, oh, like then in that case, maybe, you know, letters. You know, we were talking about letters as well, which is connected to silence. And I think one thing is, like, I know that Victoria Chan, for example, like, has this a book called Dear Memory, which has a lot of letters to many different people, including people who have dark, like, dear ones who have passed away and so on. And then that was also connected to this book, as in, you know, I first started thinking about these columns as almost letters like that you write to people because, you know, you might not be able to send them, but you can try to write. That's what. And try to put down in your thoughts.
- [22:27]
Interviewer
Well, one theme about bridging silence. And also this. I thought of this also when you brought up this concept of the letter is forgiveness. I mean, sometimes we think of forgiveness as a way to bridge the silence, but it might not be as straightforward as that. The poem you just read, and the final line is a phone call away from forgiveness. And I also think of the line from Jane Hirschfeld that you. That you. That you quote as the epigraph. It does this not in forgiveness between you, there is nothing to forgive. What do you think these poems might be getting at in terms of the possibility or the limits of forgiveness?
- [23:23]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, that's a very absurd detail about the link with forgiveness. I think, in a way, I was really kind of thinking maybe the silence, the pain of silence in that instance is like, you know, that you are not forgiven in some ways because you felt like, if only I can, you know, break that silence. If only I can kind of say something or say sorry or something, or get some sort, you know, get a response from people. You kind of feel that. That that's forgiveness. That's like, oh, okay, like, we can kind of move past that. That phase. But, you know, but when you don't communicate or when you're in that middle of that silence or absence, then this. There's nothing to forgive, but there's also no way to forgive anyone. And I think also this was one other poem that I was thinking about. It's this letter to Jennifer who passed away, actually. And I think, again, I was writing it in a way other than as an elegy. I was trying to think about the fact that. So she was a colleague who worked in the same place as I did, and she was a very nice friend of mine. And we were actually. We did some outing and to see some exciting museums and sites and the beach in Southampton, I think. But then she passed away by. Because of an accident, you know, and there was no way that I could go back to that point in time and tell her, like, you know, I'm sorry about, like, not inviting you to have mid Autumn festival or like. I was sorry. I was quite sorry, actually, because we also quarreled during the day of the outing because I was like, just very, you know, it's nothing to do with, you know, what she did. It was just a way that she doesn't have children and I have children. And it's like the kind of pressures that a mother face in terms of allocating different moments to do things and trying to do everything with your life. I felt that she doesn't understand, and I felt that also maybe I'm in part quite jealous about that. Some people don't have children and they have lots of quality time to. To plan their lives. And I think that was kind of a poem that I wrote in order to ask for some forgiveness.
- [26:01]
Interviewer
You just spoke about the pressures of motherhood. And I wonder whether I might now read a poem, Weight, which speaks to this theme. Wait. Day after day you put on weight and it's harder to type with one hand, nurse with the other. How do we dream back the body we used to have, the waist, the supple breasts, a sensuous ratio of parts. I have forgotten the joy of gaze, forgotten how beautiful the sea is. In this hinterland of giving. I have given too much of myself. Your drowsy eyes close, the minutes on the clock glide as if you no longer matter. I can return to my desk like a longtime friend and words arrive on the page slowly. Or I can simply acknowledge that I have been tired for a long time for this poem. I wonder whether we might bring back this comment you made about poems being like letters that are never sent. If this was a letter, who would it be addressed to? Is it be to the you in the poem? Is it to a younger self? Is it to your child or someone else? Or is it not addressed to anyone? Just this poem?
- [27:31]
Jennifer Wong
Oh, thanks for reading it. It's lovely to hear with that from me. And I guess, like, it is episodal for me, it's like a letter to myself, more or less, or my younger self, should I say, and also at the same time to my daughter. I felt that, like, I was intrigued by the. Or fascinated by the fact that like the mother and the daughter, sometimes they have such different perspectives towards the same experience. Like, for her, it's very like, you know, it's a very. Maybe more relaxing or reassuring time to be with me. But for me, I felt like, to me, that sense of time is very precious. And I felt that while I do enjoy or did enjoy having her very present in my life, and I was Also sort of almost resentful, actually, like, of the time that it took. Took it away from. From my writing or from what I presumed to be like a more quality time as a writer. And I felt that these things are actually should be addressed because a lot of women writers actually feel the same way, or a lot of mothers who write feel the same way, but they don't. Well, they try to find that way to navigate those territories, but not always very successfully, I think.
- [28:53]
Interviewer
Yeah. And it's not only your body changing that you describe in this poem, I think underline that is also. I mean, your thinking is changing, your feeling is changing. And I'm really struck by this image of the sea that comes back at the end of the first stanza. Forgotten how beautiful this sea is in this hinterland of giving. So my first thought was that something about the sea, it almost evokes that kind of change. You know, like, somehow we think we are the same person, but in fact, you know, one wave is not the same as the next wave. And the kind of. We're using the word sea and wave to describe an ever changing reality. But then, you know, there's. It doesn't necessarily feel like this relaxed kind of change when you're going through it. In fact, the. The beauty of the sea is contrasted with this hinterland of giving. And I wonder if you could say a bit more about that image. You know, this kind of the beauty of the sea and this inland maybe kind of landlocked sense of self away from this more liberatory image of the sea.
- [30:15]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I guess for me, I feel like the sea is an image that kind of keeps coming back to me, whether, like, you know, so many painters have kind of engaged with the imagery and writers as well, like Iris Murdoch. Still remember one of her book is called the Sea. The Sea is really such a lovely title. And I felt like there's a lot to admire about that imagery. And so much is hidden underneath the surface of the sea as well. And so I think, for me, I do. Yeah. I particularly feel that it's an imagery where we can go back to think about the fluidity of ourselves as well. Like, you're not just one thing. Like, the mother is not just one thing. It's not just the caregiver. The mother can be herself as well. Mother can be so many different things, and. But then to the baby, maybe it feels like maybe the mother is much more of just a caregiver, nothing else.
- [31:22]
Interviewer
Well, I guess one possible implication also is that the fluidity we experience in Ourselves might be premised on having some external reference point that's stable and for a child that may be their parent, whereas when you're the parent, it's unclear who that should be. Yeah, there. This. This. This poetry collection is. Is written primarily in English, although there are some Chinese words in there, which is something that. That I would love to discuss with you more at some point. But one of the most interesting words that came up to me in this whole book is neither English nor Chinese, but a Japanese word, komorebi. I wonder if you might read that poem because it's such an interesting word to explore.
- [32:27]
Jennifer Wong
Thank you. I'm afraid my pronunciation. Is a language of shadows, as in, it all lies in how it was meant and translated, not said. And the color of a fired pot and the shine of tiger leaves, the slowness of your voice, each word gaining weight in the komorebi. As we talked, walking in circles as if the afternoon or the quad of ourselves were never rent. The wind breathing down our shoulders ever so lightly as it worried what the paper cups might hold. Should I go back to the simpler questions, as in try to understand who you were before we met? Is there anything waiting for me by the time we reach the next fountain or tree or bench? I think freedom is the best gift you can give to anyone. But then I'm still listening for the faintest hint. Thank you.
- [33:24]
Interviewer
Thank you so much. I wonder whether we might start just by asking you about the word itself and also why you were drawn to it.
- [33:36]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I think, like, I was just trying to think about translation when I was at the time of writing, and I googled about, like, words that can't be easily translated into a more unique English language. And I came across this word and I thought, oh, I learned something new. I think it's sort of like the light filtered through the three panel piece. And I thought, oh, that's very beautiful. And especially since there are some Chinese characters that I can understand. And also it's sort of. I have to say, it's not just like. About what, like this whole book as well. It's not just about one person or, you know, it's also. Not necessarily. It's definitely not purely autobiographical. But, you know, there are, of course, some facts that you draw from life, but. But it's also about the encounters with different people that kind of come together. And I think, you know, one of them involved maybe like walking in Oxford actually, like, and trying to think about, you know, like, there are many different walks that I was thinking about. And then I Was thinking about conversations that I have with friends and the things that we talked about. And also how it's like. It's almost impossible to understand anyone completely because you don't know them. You know, you don't know their past selves you. And unless you literally have known each other forever. But like you, you don't have their past. And so you can only appropriate or you can only translate how each other is. Like
- [35:16]
Interviewer
this image of the light coming through the canopy. I mean, it's just beautiful in itself. But I was also wondering if. Thinking about the two poems that we read just before this one, I was also wondering whether this image of the light filtering through. It's almost a space in which your poems exist. It's in the space between, in these silences that, you know different sets of mothers and daughters in the two poems. Sometimes you're the mother, sometimes you're the daughter, and there's a silence there. Or, you know, the way that, you know, if people were leaves. The way that we kind of create a shape for that, you know, we might not touch each other in the canopy, but somehow the shape that it creates allows a poem to come through. Yeah. I wonder whether you. If this image or another image most powerfully evokes the kind of space between people and in your own mind, where these poems exist.
- [36:33]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I guess I sort of. Yeah, I was really grateful for this reading, like, Europe, kind of understanding about these poems. And I think it's really lovely to think about space which has, like, one of these things that I really kind of continuously feel fascinated about. And there was, like, the domestic space, which is, like, very everyday, but it's sort of. Also, there's the weight to them. Like, you know, there are lots of things that, as you said, like, maybe unsettled or unlabeled in those domestic spaces and. And then there's the star, you know, the kind of cosmic space, I guess, like galaxies and like, more broader spaces that we can see, but we don't necessarily touch or we don't, you know, we don't know all of it, but we try to speculate. I suppose there's a. Gardening spaces and. Yeah. And I also think, like, part of the book has to do with the. The space of, like, diasporic space where you. I try to bridge, like, who I am or where I am now with, like, what I actually like or what I feel more anchored to. Like, one of them being, like, the. The songs I try to. You know, it's not a deliberate process, but it was just like during that silence or during that sort of period of grief, I go back to some songs and and that is very soothing to listen to Kanto Pope or mentor pop and trying to engage with that and to fill up that space or emptiness in oneself.
- [38:16]
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Jennifer Wong
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- [39:16]
Interviewer
New to TikTok, you might be surprised. TikTok shop is packed with a wide variety of products and unexpected discounts. Easy to browse, easy to find good value. Download TikTok now. When you write a poem, do you have in mind what space it will occupy on all those different scales or do you. Does it kind of evolve on its own and it might take you to a very different space than the one you thought you began with?
- [39:47]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I think it sort of evolved actually because I suppose it started off having a few poems where I have. I didn't notice that. Oh, there's lots of. There are lots of domestic spaces and everyday spaces and which I kind of really enjoy writing about. I feel like there's a lot of the everyday that can be kind of have lots of complex implications to people, especially for parents where or parents of young children where you sometimes spend a lot of time in those spaces. And then it sort of evolved as in like I was thinking also about stars and kind of things that you can't reach for and there's also this sheer space between you and the stars and that sort of cosmic space and that's why the Title also kind of sort of come from that.
- [40:44]
Interviewer
Well, I think there's a. Yeah, there's a very beautiful symmetry between the space between leaves in Komorebi and the space between galaxies in the title poem, Light Year. And this sense that space isn't just empty, but if we look closely, perhaps through poetry, that we can have a different kind of observation of what occupies that space. You mentioned diasporic space. I mean, you're born and raised in Hong Kong and have now lived in the UK for many years. One poem that comes to mind is the poem because. And yeah, I wonder whether you would be willing to read that for us.
- [41:41]
Jennifer Wong
The member to page number. Yeah, really? Thank you for asking me to read this because now, yeah, I kind of really enjoy this, writing this part because. Because I wasn't born here My hair comes out in the wrong color Because I wasn't born here I've grown up loving Satsuki's magic tortoro instead Because I wasn't born here. Every morning I am an imposter who doesn't deserve my coffee and croissant Because I wasn't born here. Every time I pick up my daughter from school I think how lucky she is to know as much as they do. From the Beano to the great Friar of London Because I wasn't born here I was moved to tears When I finished my life in the UK Test Knowing and loving England's flowers and songs Because I was born here there's nothing I could do about Brexit and Boris but to challenge them whenever I can Because I wasn't born here the postman would knock on my door any minute With a letter sent by special delivery from the local community asking me to go back to where I was.
- [42:47]
Interviewer
Thanks so much. You said just now that you especially enjoyed writing this poem. Could you say a bit more about that?
- [42:54]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I think I had quite a lot of fun writing it because
- [43:00]
Interviewer
I
- [43:00]
Jennifer Wong
think like, in the process I realized how angry I was as a person, like as a. Or as a migrant. Because, you know, it's all these things that, like maybe what you call microaggression that you sometimes experience and they all accumulate. And I remember very distinctly someone told me, like, long time ago, saying, oh, I don't think. I don't see any racism. I don't. I never experienced any racism in England and. And I used to think, like, how can that be? It's not that. I do think that there are lots of people who are not racist at all and that they are very inclusive, but I Think racism. It is a very important subject matter to everyone, which I'm sure. Also, it's not just linked to any specific nationality. It's a very universal experience. And I had a lot of fun because I sort of try to connect, reconnect myself with all these thinking or process and also attitudes that I've experienced over time. People assuming who you were or who you are. And also, in particular, like, how often and how many times I've heard of people asking me to, like, when am I going home? I feel a very interesting question, because why would they even ask me that?
- [44:29]
Interviewer
You know, one of the things I found fun, if that's the right word about this poem, is the structural contrast between certainty and ambiguity. I mean, this refrain, because I wasn't born here, because I wasn't born here, it gives this clear causal pattern. I mean, it's a. It's a. It repeats every line. It's also, you know, because X, then Y. And of course, you know, it's. It's. When we make observations of what's happening in our lives, in society, sometimes it's hard to know why exactly someone is behaving the way they are. And also kind of one of the hallmarks of a lot of poetry is ambiguity. But this poem kind of subverts that in the sense of it's saying because of this, then that. And. Yeah, I wonder whether you could speak about what I'm calling, I guess, a subversion of a typical poetic ambiguity. You're actually using the form here to provoke us to kind of think of. Think of these causal patterns in the lives around us.
- [45:46]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I think so. I was just also thinking, like, what you said reminded me that when I was doing my Ph.D. i study a lot of Marilyn Chen's poems, and I think I was quite grateful also of poets like her who address race or who addressed racial identities in such powerful ways. And that sort of give it permission. Give me permission to write, like, express my anger or frustration at things and that it is part of it. Like, poetry should not be just beautiful. It should not be just praises. It's definitely a powerful tool for honesty or truthful justice. And I think we need to kind of be aware that subversion is a part of the process as well. That, you know, you need to kind of make the language suit your own identity as a writer.
- [46:47]
Interviewer
Making language, identity as a writer. I mean, that brings back into mind this image of the waves breaking against the history of ourselves that we began this conversation with. You brought up this Gatsby image, but I mean, most of us, including Gatsby, we can't just decide who we are. I mean, kind of the world catches up to us in one way or another, or it resists our attempts to author our own lives. So as an author yourself, I mean, do you want to resist the way that the world writes your history for yourself, or do you want, or is your task to recognize how it's doing that and I guess maybe even accept it, or is it something else?
- [47:42]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I guess, like, I think resistance. Yeah, it's part of it. Like, I wouldn't say, like I write poems in order to. I don't see poetry essentially as just about resistance, but I think a lot of it has to be about resistance in a way. And it's like one example being like, for example. I also feel very resistant against labeling people in many different ways. I think people, individuals are very specific people with their circumstances and sometimes it's hard to stereotype them and we shouldn't stereotype them. And so when I was writing some of these poems, for example, I was kind of struggling with my own identity as a friend or as a lover or partner. And I think in a way I also resist writing certain poems that kind of touch on, for example, my queer identity. I don't even want to put that word in anyway or describe it in any way, I think, but it's just. But sometimes I just trust that those poems can deliver whatever complexity that I want to kind of put in. And I think sometimes you can translate very, you know, like your own difficult memories or difficult experiences into words that mean to the reader, but not necessarily put a strict label on things.
- [49:25]
Interviewer
I'm thinking of a few very thought provoking lines from another poem that go, how do you measure pain? Do the needles of an acupuncturist give pain or does it bring healing? How do your poems measure pain?
- [49:47]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, that takes from that line. Yeah, I cannot thank you for those lines. I actually, that poem was quite a recent. It's one of the most recent poems and that was included in the collection. It was written like a few months before publication. And I don't know, I think I'm very. I find it very hard to write about painful things or painful ideas or thoughts, but in a way, like even, for example, as diasporic communities, people coming from diasporic communities, they can experience. They definitely experience a lot of painful situations where your families are apart or maybe where you feel like you're alienated from. From your own people or alienated by their circumstances. And then there's also the pain that for example, some of my co hosts talk about the pain of breakup. Like whether it's breakup with a long term partner or whether breakup with friends or families. Yeah. So but I guess like poetry has a power to heal. Like by just being able to capture those feelings, they channel them into something else, something that is beyond yourself, that you can kind of give it to someone to or share it with someone on a certain level. Yeah.
- [51:23]
Interviewer
I'm really struck by what you just said about beyond ourselves. I mean, as someone who's also from Hong Kong, living in the uk, when you say the kind of, when you speak about the diasporic experience, I mean everyone's different. But I feel like one common thread that I've experienced too is this feeling that the history of yourself is bottled inside of you. And it may be subject to all kinds of distortions by the outside world, but that it's almost the subjectivity of it is intensified because there's no easy way to communicate on a shared basis. And I guess that creates all kinds of challenges and struggles in life, even with one's own children or one's partner or one's friends in the place you now call home. And that links up to me with maybe what seems like one of the most difficult things about writing is how to articulate this specificity of what each person is going through, but still work towards something that's beyond ourselves. You know, we don't want to all be locked into our little kind of vacuum sealed selves and not have anything to do with each other. So when you're working through, when you're writing and editing the poems, how do you work through that problem of maintaining the specificity of your own experience, but also I guess sifting through it to reach at what is shareable and what is communicable?
- [53:11]
Jennifer Wong
Oh wow. That's a challenging question to answer. But I think maybe sometimes we just have to trust that like the reader doesn't have to know your whole life to appreciate the poems that you write or the stories that you write, you need to trust the reader to understand. I think very often we see our problems as very unique, but actually they're not that unique. And I think like instead of m trying to kind of dwell on the same thing, it's really in poetry we can use a lot of different objects or different visual scenes. And that's why I sort of like to borrow the techniques from maybe films and so on to use for creative writing. It's like I think you can tell you can tell someone about things by being more cinematic or by kind of material, like materials that people can touch or almost grapple with.
- [54:24]
Interviewer
Can you say more specifically what that means to write cinematically?
- [54:29]
Jennifer Wong
Like, I guess it's just like, as in maybe translating what you feel into more like, visual form. I don't know if it's maybe, like, in a way, it's just. I envy the painters. And I think, like, sometimes you can, you know, people can understand a painting, like, and they don't have to know too much about the artist, and then they can feel something from the painting. So, for example, in, like, a few poems that I have, like, for example, I wrote a poem by my grandma, and it has quite a lot of imageries about visually that I was just trying to imagine of places that I could bring her. And then in late, I have a lot of feelings that I find quite difficult to kind of come to terms with even now. But I just try to think of them in terms of imageries and try to think back to maybe walks that I had. And, you know, and they're not even truly factual. Like, you know, it didn't really ring on that day or something. But, you know, I added the ring because I felt like it's appropriate. And I think I kind of also. Sometimes when you read other people, like, for example, I was reading Merwin at that time, like, the poem Ring Light kind of makes me think about certain feelings I experience, and it's easier. So sometimes engage with your own inner world.
- [56:09]
Interviewer
This idea of creating an image as the most powerful way of communicating the history of ourselves. Not needing to have this detailed chronology of everything that's happening in your life, but one powerful image. When you do that, do you have in mind what kind of feeling you want to elicit in the reader? Is it kind of immersion? Is it recognition from their own life is something else? Or do you not think about that? You leave that to the reader to explore for themselves?
- [56:46]
Jennifer Wong
Yeah, I guess I was really capable of late trying to think of. Yeah, I guess I have a more spontaneous type of memory that I just enjoy rendering some images in my mind from time to time. And I also kind of remember things more visually. So maybe that's how I kind of. That's the way that I find it easier to approach cultural way.
- [57:16]
Interviewer
I thought we might end by going back to that passage that we were discussing. How do you measure pain? Do the needles of an acupuncturist give pain, or does it bring healing of those two options, giving pain or bringing healing which one seems more befitting of the poems in this book for you in this moment?
- [57:41]
Jennifer Wong
I think maybe after all, I do agree that they bring healing at this moment. But it's funny because at the time of writing and before the publication day, I was almost, I think, in fact I actually emailed my publisher and said that can we take out the word healing? Because I was saying that I don't particularly feel like healing at the moment. But I think she ignored my suggestion. So that's why. But I think like, the pain comes first. The pain is always coming first. And then, you know, if it heals, it's good. But, you know, But I think it's not totally cathartic, if you see what I mean. I think it's kind of, you're just happy when you kind of captures that those feelings in their own way and doesn't necessarily. You don't write in order to heal.
- [58:36]
Interviewer
I think what's the difference between healing in this sense and catharsis?
- [58:41]
Jennifer Wong
I think a lot of people did suggest poetry as a way of like, oh, it's cathartic in the sense that by writing it out, like writing your grief, for example, your grief becomes lesser. But I don't think, like from my own experience anyway, I don't think that it works like that for me. I just, I'm just contented that you can put down those painful, painful moments. And for me, that works already very well, as in that there's a platform to share them and that to kind of put down some of the feelings and whether it brings healing or not, it doesn't really matter.
- [59:24]
Interviewer
Thank you so much for talking today about this book, which is marvelous and it's been an absolute pleasure to be with you today.
- [59:31]
Jennifer Wong
Thank you.
- [59:31]
Interviewer
Thank you so much.
- [59:45]
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- [60:12]
Jennifer Wong
Edu Sci.