By:\nSavannah Trent<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I sat down, well more accurately sat down\nand logged into google chat, to talk to poet Hoa Nguyen to ask her about\nidentity, belonging, and the diasporic experience. Nguyen, whose 2016 book length collection of\npoems Violet Energy Ingots<\/em> was\nshortlisted for the 2017 Griffin prize in poetry, is a poet whose work is known\nfor its melodic quality, weaving rhyme, non sequiturs, syllabic play, and\nreferences to Sappho and Shakespeare among others. Born in the Mekong Delta,\nshe was raised in the Washington DC area during the time of punk, post-punk and\nthe Reagan presidency though she now resides in Toronto where she teaches\ncreative writing and serves as a mentor to Miami University\u2019s low residency\nprogram in creative writing. She is also the author of Dark (Skanky Possum 1998), Your ancient see through <\/em>(AA Arts 2001), Hecate Lochia <\/em>(Hot Whiskey 2009), As long as trees last (Wave 2012) <\/em>and Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008 <\/em>(Wave 2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/strong>Savannah Trent:<\/strong> Ok, I think this should work. Where\nwould you like to start? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hoa Nguyen:<\/strong> Did you want to talk about selvage?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ST: <\/strong>I would actually. I was interested in the\nconcept because 1) I’d never come across the word before 2) it seemed like a\nclever way to describe your work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n HN:<\/strong> I’ve been thinking about selvage from an\ninterview I gave for 666 with Brenna Lee on Gesture Literary Journal<\/em><\/a>.<\/a> Then later I wrote about it for an\nintroduction to The Best of The Best\nCanadian Poetry in English: Tenth Anniversary Edition <\/em>(Tightrope Books\n2017)that I curated. It means,\netymologically, self + edge. The part of the material that is different from\nthe rest. Essential but not meant to be used or seen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ST:<\/strong> So like seams? <\/p>\n\n\n\n HN:<\/strong> By “seen” I don’t mean totally\nabsent, but not structurally intended to be part of the object you make out of\nthe fabric. No. The selvage is the end of a piece of woven cloth. It holds it\ntogether. When I introduced the anthology at an event, I said this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nmy introduction to the anthology, I share a childhood fascination with the\nselvage edge of the bolt of material my mother later used for bedroom curtains.\nThe selvage is far edge of material, a densely woven band often folded over\nitself, produced to prevent the fabric from unraveling. It\u2019s part of the making\n(stamped by the maker) and, typically, kept out of sight. It preserves the\npattern. The word selvage, etymologically: self + edge. Isn\u2019t a poem like\nselvage, then? Not made to be \u201cused\u201d\u2014and yet essential. Preserving a woven\npattern, language as dynamic object, a made thing of a made thing. My hope is\nthat the poems in this anthology act as such: structural cohesions that encode\nexperience, perception, reflection, knowledge, facts, and events. That the\npoems gather polyphonic threads of potency, challenge, play, understanding, and\nawareness. My hope is that\u2014like the poems here\u2014poetry gives shape to what can\nbe imagined and reimagined, engaging us as they occasion shifts in perspective.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n ST:<\/strong> Ah. I’m trying to look for a better way\nto put into words how that might apply to writing. I feel as if my work has\nlittle to do with this concept as it\u2019s \u201cconsciously anxious.\u201d. I\u2019m also\nreminded of the sarai I wore to a friend’s wedding and how I thought my blouse was cut from the\nend of the cloth since there was a name stamped into the fabric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n HN: <\/strong>The selvage was showing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ST: <\/strong>It was indeed. Are certain poems more\ninclined towards selvage? <\/p>\n\n\n\n HN:<\/strong> Language is hard\u2014I mean, it’s a system\nused to describe our perceptions and experience of the world. All it can do is\npoint. My saying that poems act like a selvage is metaphoric. It approaches the\nthing I’m trying to describe but isn’t the thing so it falls short. How would\nyou describe a poem?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ST: <\/strong>I would think it depends on how you\ngather the threads of a poem. A colleague of mine is writing about millefleur\ntapestries and is very much interested in the ordinary. Her poems focus on\nsound play, repetition mimicking sewing, natural and domestic scenes. I’m\ncurrently teaching English 226: intro to creative writing. When I talk about\npoems in class, I mention patterns, syllabic play, rhythm, image. But I don’t\nthink of these things consciously when I write. I’m also thinking about a\nSeamus Heaney quote where he says poetry creates space. So poems create space\nand allow us to name\/describe things we don’t have the right words for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n HN: <\/strong>Yes, it is all those things. And it is a\nmade thing. I guess that’s why I landed on the word selvage, because of its\nrelationship to materiality. Poems gather the threads into a structural\ncohesion encoding experience, perception, reflection, knowledge, facts, and\nevents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ST: <\/strong>I’m also curious about the energy of a\npoem and how, perhaps, the energy of the moment imbues the poem. Poems seem to\nharness and thrive off a nervous energy\u2014babble. Yours, on the other hand, seem\nto speak to collected potential. So perhaps the question is how do you prepare\nto write a poem? <\/p>\n\n\n\n HN:<\/strong> I love the notion of poems as collected\npotential. My process varies\u2014mostly it comes through deep engagement with\nencountering sources of knowledge which are are many: reference books,\nexperiences, memory, pop culture etc\u2014but importantly other poetry. The shortest\nway of describing the process is that I collect materials. I sing into them and\narrange. I retrieve messages from elsewhere<\/em>.\nI allow for synchronicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ST:<\/strong> I like the idea of messages from\nelsewhere as the work that I’ve encountered speaks to muses, history, astrology,\netc. How does elsewhere<\/em> inform your\nwriting? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n HN:<\/strong> Allowing the wildest or weirdest parts\nof my creative self to speak on the page\u2014it includes managing resources of\nsound\u2014which is literally elsewhere: vibrations that enter my perceptive field\nfrom ‘out there’. But then out there becomes inner. Also, ghosts. Ghost languages, literally ghosts, the\nwhat-has-come-before (history). I think that the diasporic experience means\nbeing haunted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ST:<\/strong> In my workshop, we’ve been talking a lot\nabout the local and what that means, where that means, who that means so I\nsuppose this type of thinking naturally finds it\u2019s way into my work. So I want\nto ask: where is your local? <\/p>\n\n\n\n HN:<\/strong> The hearth I make is my local. Where my\nhearth is. Right now, in Toronto. Dish with One Spoon Territory. Don River\nValley watershed that drains into Lake Ontario. Major bird migration corridor.\nGreektown, named after the most recent European arrivals. Our power is sourced\nfrom a nuclear plant north and west of us (near Kingston, I think). I build my\ncreative life around my lived life. But that can include my dreams at night. It\nseems to me an issue of attention. Giving attention and practicing perception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ST: <\/strong>I hardly ever write about dreams. Do you\ninterpret\/record yours? Also, I would agree that the diasporic experience is\nhaunted. Perhaps we can talk about that a little? I’ve also been thinking quite\na bit about what it means to be Asian American especially when those two\nidentities don’t want to meet.Sometimes\nI think of dual identity as something that is neatly split, but, of course,\nthat isn’t true. On most days I feel 90% American. <\/p>\n\n\n\n HN: <\/strong>I pay attention to my dreams when they\nfeel especially potent or instructive. I had a dream recently that was one of\nthose and had to do with recognition around my experience with being racially\nmarked in a world organized by white supremacy. Dreams, to parse Alice Notley,\ndo more than recombine language (the way a poem can), they recombine reality\n(the way the best poems do). I love using dream materials in my poems, but I\ndon’t keep a dream journal. I am altogether rather undisciplined to do\nsomething that regular. Yes, let’s talk about the diaspora experience. Can I\nask you about your sun sign and lunar sign? I’m a Fire Horse and a first decan\nAquarius. <\/p>\n\n\n\n