12 or 20 (second series) questions with Su Cho

Su Cho is a poet and essayist born in South Korea and raised in Indiana. She has an MFA in Poetry from Indiana University and a PhD from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has served as the editor-in-chief of Indiana Review, Cream City Review and has served as guest editor for Poetry magazine. Her work has been featured in Poetry, New England Review, Gulf Coast, and Orion; the 2021 Best American Poetry and Best New Poets anthologies; and elsewhere. A finalist for the 2020 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Poetry Fellowship, recipient of a National Society of Arts and Letters Award, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is currently an assistant professor at Clemson University.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

In a way, the first book changed my life in the sense that it helped me come to terms with everything that I was processing. So now, I feel like my life can change, even though objectively, it has been changing this whole time.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Like a lot of people, I wanted to write songs, raps, and little love poems when I was younger. What I was really drawn to, I think, was the distillation of complex feelings and poetry could do that so quickly and intensely. Such a dramatic genre!

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?

It really depends. Some of the formal/narrative arcs in the book came together very quickly, in a matter of weeks or a few months. Some others took years. But they were all building toward one another and so I would characterize it as a very slow process, building these small poems into something larger.

4 - Where does a poem 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 definitely lean more toward having a bundle of short pieces that build into something larger and more coherent. I find that I like to write poems along a feeling or journey. They’re like rest stops on an endless highway, and sometimes, it does feel like I don’t know when the next stop is coming.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I absolutely love readings (even though I still manage to get incredibly nervous beforehand). I find that it’s a very privileged space where I can talk out my ideas or see my poems in a different way, especially with the fortune of having different audience members. Sometimes during a reading, I’ll realize that I really hate one of my poems now but later I’ll rediscover my fondness for a poem. Readings are essential for that.

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 always say that community building is worldbuilding, and the question I always ask is who is in this world of my poems and who do I want to invite?

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?

I think writers exist to model a sense of curiosity and openness to anyone who will listen. Anyone who picks up a book wants to discover something, and writers are the ones waving people over.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I think it’s a blessing when poets can work with outside editors! Working with mine (Allie) was absolutely essential and I enjoyed every moment! I felt like I was too close to my book at that point so to have a different perspective was welcome and needed.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

To get comfortable writing in your head.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?

I think the appeal for me is the ease in which I can move between poetry and essays. It’s the matter of breadth each genre offers. If I find myself writing the same kind of poem again and again, I’ll switch to an essay trying to discover what it is that keeps pulling me to that subject matter.

11 - 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 actually don’t have a writing routine. The one thing I’ve learned about myself is that I need lots of sleep and that I have seasons of writing energy. I used to feel a lot of shame and guilt around that, but I’ve come to terms with it.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I always go back to writers like Galway Kinnell, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and Gabrielle Calvocoressi. I like to turn toward writers I wish I could write like but can’t.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Su Cho, The Symmetry of Fish

 

AFTER THE BURIAL, THE DEAD TAKE EVERYTHING
THAT BURNS

My grandmother picks up
the bottom of her white hemp
mourning dress and hurls
a fluorescent green bottle of soju
into the fire. The great bier
with magenta and neon yellow
streamers cracks inside the smoke.
Facing the marble headstone
are pastel rice cakes
and apples stacked five high.
Pouring soju into ceramic glasses,
she toasts to the harvest,
tosses wedding portraits,
fine linens, cabbages, and his
work pants into the pyre,
and sits in front of the marble table
with a bowl of rice and drink, waiting
for him to pick up his chopsticks and eat.

Born in South Korea and raised in Indiana, poet and essayist Su Cho’s full-length poetry debut is The Symmetry of Fish (Penguin, 2022), published as part of the National Poetry Series, as selected by Paige Lewis. Rich with a lyric detail and precision, Cho’s narratives explore memory, family and uncertainty, writing out delicate and careful turns around holding back, crafting lines in her hands. “If you can’t peel the skin // of a pear in a thin spiral with a fruit knife // you can’t get married.” she writes, as part of an early poem in the collection. I’m curious about her use of form, including repeated abecedarians, allowing the constraint of particular forms the possibility of directions that perhaps she otherwise may not have worked. Cho’s poems explore narrative with an eye toward lyric detail, offering a perspective of being caught between cultures, including as the child of immigrant parents who don’t speak English very well; or at least, well enough for their own comfort, leaning on their daughter for support. As the abecedarian “HELLO, MY PARENTS DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH WELL, / HOW CAN I HELP YOU?” reads: “The expensive sticky rice, stones in my stomach. / X-rays of what I eat at home scattered for the school to see. / Yet twenty years later, I am on the phone in a different time / Zone, speaking for my mother, how we just want some accountability.” What is fascinating, in part, about her use of the abecedarian is through her use of an alphabet of a language set as a distance from her parents, even as Cho wraps and works Korean myth through the sacred relics and references of western culture. And through this distance, these distances, she draws her distinctive lyric narratives around some of the shapes of these silences, outlining those silences with such strength that they finally begin to speak.