Jane Shi [photo credit: Joy Gyamfi] is a
poet, writer, and organizer living on the occupied, stolen, and unceded
territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and
səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Her debut
poetry collection is echolalia echolalia (Brick Books, 2024). She wants to live
in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are
not filched, and bodies are not violated.
1 - How did
your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work
compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I wrote and
published my chapbook Leaving Chang’e on Read (Rahila’s Ghost Press,
2022) and then my full-length collection echolalia echolalia (Brick
Books, 2024) during the pandemic, so the idea of poetry ‘changing my life’
makes me laugh. I’m mostly stunned that people want to read my work. And I’m
also surprised that no one is voraciously tearing it apart the way I sometimes imagine
people doing in my head. Which is to say I think seeing people’s kindness and
appreciation for poetry and creativity is heartening in an otherwise
disillusioning world.
For me, from a
young age, poetry was a source of escape, coded wordplay to dissociate into and
hide behind. I’m learning to lean into poetry’s relationality, sociality, and
sense of responsibility more as I write more seriously and expansively.
I would say echolalia
echolalia sprouted from Leaving Chang’e on Read in an organic way.
Many poems from the latter are in the former. I had a really great experience working
with Mallory Tater and Brandi Bird at Rahila’s Ghost Press; their insights into
my poems helped me prepare for my full-length for sure.
I enjoyed the
space a full-length collection offers. The other month at my book launch, one
of my first readers, poet Beni Xiao, reminded me that my first drafts of echolalia
echolalia was significantly longer. My editor at Brick Books, Phoebe Wang,
helped me cut things down. She said that she’s more of a minimalist compared to
me, and that was intriguing. I have a hoarding issue that I didn’t know about
until a loved one pointed it out. So, I think that shows up in my poetry. I
learned a lot about myself through writing both the chapbook and full-length: I
guess that’s probably what changed my life the most, the internal change. In
general, I feel relieved that my work is out in the world, less fearful, and
more excited to be in conversation with other poets I admire.
echolalia
echolalia goes deeper
into things, perhaps, and talks more explicitly about the exploitation of marginalized
artists, filicide of disabled children, wanting to leave this world but staying
because you haven’t watched that episode of Arthur yet. I enjoyed being
able to play with multitudinous forms.
I’m especially
thankful that my book was able to help raise funds for different Gazan mutual
aid projects via Workshops4Gaza’s bookstore at Open Books: A Poem Emporium in
Seattle. Billie of Open Books—a bookstore that is poetry-only—invited me down
to sign copies and it was a wonderful experience. Every person who entered the
space was a poet, which was the coolest.
2 - How did
you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I have been
writing poetry for most of my life, since I was eight, so it made sense to work
on poetry more seriously as a first full-length book project. When I graduated
from university in 2018 the first thing, I said to myself was, “I get to write
poetry!! I get to write poetry!!” I remember the exact location in my former
place living situation where I said this, too.
I write essays
and non-fiction outside of poetry, but I felt like the things I most wanted to
write about over the last few years only poetry can handle. For example, I have
written about the abandonment of autistic children and reshaping language in my
essay “Rewriting the Autistic Mother Tongue.” But you can use line breaks and
metre and white space on the page to convey what experiencing violence from a
young age feels like, and what that does to the imagination. For me, poetry is
about learning to be itself, so the subject matter and the form naturally
gravitate towards each other.
3 - How long
does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing
initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking
close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I write all the
time but the act of deciding that something is a project takes a bit more
intentional effort. What I learned most out of writing a first full-length
collection is that you don’t realize what you’re doing until you’re almost
finished, but taking a stab at things as if you do helps you along that
process.
I don’t take
notes unless I’m writing longer-form essays, but I copy-paste earlier drafts
somewhere else, maybe the bottom of the page or in my notes app, possibly to be
lost forever. Sometimes reading poems in front of an audience helps me figure
out what I need to work on, and I follow what I feel in my body as well. There
are a lot of things I edit out because I didn’t enjoy how reading it made me
feel. Or I notice an audience member takes to a particular line, so I highlight
that in another draft. It feels very collaborative that way. And of course, if
you’re not completely forgetful like I am sometimes, you acknowledge their
insights and influence in your work. That’s probably why my acknowledgement
section is a bajillion pages long. And I’m almost afraid to look at it for fear
that I’ve forgotten to mention someone…
My
not-note-taking tendencies is a bit frustrating because it makes it hard to
return to drafts to figure out what I was thinking. But then it’s like, I’m
creating a palimpsest with another draft, and you can see faint outlines of the
earlier one. Because between the moment you wrote the first draft and the next,
your perspective has changed.
4 - Where does
a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short
pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a
"book" from the very beginning?
I’m only more
recently thinking about things in terms books. But at heart I think in terms of
a collection of images and feelings, of dreams. I want those things shaped and
made concrete and alive and sometimes that’s a poem and other times it’s a
book. Other times it’s an essay or a meme or a doodle.
5 - Are public
readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of
writer who enjoys doing readings?
I really enjoy
them! A few months ago I took the time to work with spoken word poet Kay Kassirer to practice performing more. I appreciated that a lot as, in part, the
pandemic has limited opportunities to read in public, and I felt out of
practice. I like telling jokes between my poems and making people laugh. Readings
can be public spiritual acts and acts calling for rebellion and change.
6 - Do you
have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are
you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current
questions are?
I’ve talked a lot
about this with my friend shō yamagushiku. I noticed, when I was reading his
book shima, that a lot of the collection takes place outside, whereas a
lot of my book takes place inside. It feels like the questions my poems are
concerned with are related to what happens behind closed doors, what gets
hidden in plain sight. I tend to write about the bigger, external things in
essays. The mundane, household things that appear in my work make me think that
my poems are listening for the secrets of everyday objects and what they
eavesdrop and collect along the way. So maybe, on some psychic level, my poems
are concerned with what everyday things can teach us about ourselves.
Intimacy with
interior spaces is also a gendered, disabled experience. So, animating disabled
queer interiority feels like a huge concern in my work, one that hopefully
reminds us that the revolution starts at home (as the book about intimate
violence within activist communities suggests) and that we sometimes need to
teach ourselves (or reparent ourselves) how to do it.
7 – What do
you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even
have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
A few words that
come to mind are noticing, tending, interjecting, remembering, and dreaming.
Writers are assassinated for telling the truth about the state of the world.
They often play the role of ringing an alarm and dousing cold water on us when
it’s needed. Writers can be dangerous to empire, or they can choose to serve
it.
A few months ago,
I learned from WAWOG Toronto that of all the arrests for protesting genocide in
this country, literary events have had the most proportionately speaking. So, I
think writers around me, those I want to align myself with, are doing the work
of redefining what writing ought to do. That’s seen as dangerous by the powers
that be.
If nothing else I
think writers ought to write to free themselves or imagine a way to do so, and
to consider who else they’re freeing in their work. June Jordan says it
beautifully: “Good poems can interdict a suicide, rescue a love affair, and
build a revolution in which speaking and listening to somebody becomes the
first and last purpose to every social encounter.”
8 - Do you
find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or
both)?
I really enjoy
working with an editor. I enjoy disagreeing with someone and knowing why and
knowing why something lands in a different way than I intended. Editors also
help you recognize the things you’re doing and how they are or aren’t aligned
with your vision.
The thing I enjoy
the most (while also finding it terrifying) is to be read intimately. For
example, earlier on in the editorial process, Phoebe pointed out the speaker in
my poems have had a hard life. I was very confused when I heard her say it: Don’t
most people have a hard life? Why would I write poetry if I had an easy one? But
that comment prompted me to put a line about having a hard life in my poem
“Catalogues of Tearing.” Others reflecting what you’re doing is crucial to the
writing process.
9 - What is
the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Wayde Compton
says that your writing is often wiser than yourself. I think that helps me let
go of control and needing to understand what I’m doing all the time.
10 - What kind
of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a
typical day (for you) begin?
I start my day by
topping up eSims. They’re electronic sim cards we’ve been sending to people in
Gaza since December through the Crips for eSims for Gaza project that I began
with Alice Wong and Leah Lakshmi-Piepzna Samarasinha. I feel uneasy having a
writing routine when there are multiple ongoing genocides and crises impacting
people around the world, including locally. But I write all the time anyway.
It’s just that right now, my routine looks a little different, and I pour more
of my time into these organizing projects and write towards them.
For example, in
my essay, “When the Poem is a Spreadsheet: Joining Us in #ConnectingGaza,” I
weave doing this organizing work with thinking through the role of poetry and
the role of writers in the world. Weaving disparate parts together is a poet’s
work, and it’s also the work of engineers, and I found it moving to think about
the role of engineers and poets in tandem. I had intended to complete this
essay months earlier. But for better or for worse, I hadn’t really processed
what we were doing fully and needed time to prepare logistics. I felt the
responsibility and inadequacy of weaving my experiences into urgent mutual aid
work of thousands of people and their families. I also, in the process, taught
myself how to write an instruction manual and likely have way more to learn.
That’s a totally different genre than poetry!
I often write
later in the day, usually at night, when things are quieter, when my brain is
overactive. I also write down my dreams first thing in the morning.
11 - When your
writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better
word) inspiration?
I wouldn’t say my
writing is ever stalled but would say there are times when my heart, body,
mind, and spirit aren’t aligned or speaking to one another. Or because of life,
trauma, hardships, they don’t feel settled or still enough to focus on writing.
Sometimes when I
read earlier drafts, I see that I was processing lots of anger and resentment
and shame that I didn’t know I was feeling. Those drafts are still important
because they teach me something about what I was feeling at the time. On the
contrary to ‘writer’s block,’ I struggle with wanting to share every thought I
have with the world; I think that’s partly because I grew up with the Internet.
In a lot of ways, a writing practice is more about creating a filter for my
blabbermouth-brain, scaffolding my voice with intention.
When I struggle
to read, I often turn to film or music. I write Letterboxed reviews of nearly
every film I see.
12 - What
fragrance reminds you of home?
Sesame oil.
13 - David W.
McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms
that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
In echolalia
echolalia, I bring in Jia Zhangke films, the film Arrival, the bands
I used to listen to as a teenager (that, apparently, teenagers still listen
to!), Twitter polls, Matthew Wong paintings, cartoons, video games, and TikTok
videos. As Rebecca Salazar suggests in their blurb of echolalia echolalia,
the poems are chronically online. The Internet is a place that my work inhabits
intimately. Existing on the Internet as a preteen in the early 2000s is a
specific experience that feels important to document.
14 - What
other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life
outside of your work?
I was deeply
influenced by reading José Saramago growing up and likely wouldn’t have become
a more experimental poet with an eye for satire were not for reading Vladimir Nabokov and Chuck Palahniuk in those years as well. In the last few years: Theresa
Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee; Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries; the
writings of Kai Cheng Thom, Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, Jody Chan, Beni Xiao, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Alice Wong, Lucia Lorenzi, bell hooks, Rita Wong,
Mercedes Eng, Christina Sharpe, and Dionne Brand, etc. These days I’m also
reading Octavia E. Butler, Wendy Trevino, June Jordan, and Rasha Abdulhadi.
15 - What
would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
So many things! I
want to try writing short stories and speculative fiction. One day I’ll try my
hand at a film.
16 - If you
could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately,
what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I wanted to be a
therapist as a younger person but realized, after working briefly in social
services, that I couldn’t stomach the exploitative landscape of psychological
and psychiatric institutions.
I suspect I could
have gone into film-editing or visual arts.
17 - What made
you write, as opposed to doing something else?
As silly as it sounds,
I’m not a painter because it’s expensive to get your own studio and I’m not
great at cleaning up a physical mess. I’m also a touch sensitive to scent. The
tech aspect of filmmaking also feels daunting in a way that opening a Word doc
isn’t. Writing, on its own, feels like I can do anywhere and anytime. Writing
is painting with words, cinematography with language.
18 - What was
the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I recently
finished reading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Reading about Le
Guin talk about her opposition to the Vietnam War… this novel feels like it
could have been written today.
Tokyo
Godfathers is a gorgeous
portrait of family and the interconnectedness of neighbours. One of the best
Christmas films.
19 - What are
you currently working on?
I’ve been
thinking about what it takes to not just observe and witness injustice but
confront power and end systems of domination. What makes it possible for people
to fight back collectively? What problems do we inherit from our ancestors in
that work and what problems do we replicate in our attempts at liberatory
action? How can we build towards liberatory futures? I’m working on different
ways to write about that and think through those questions.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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