SHS REVIEW NEWSLETTER | Issue 1 1

SHS Review

Newsletter

5 October 2015

IN THIS ISSUE…

Writers @ SHSU by Angela Shackelford

Interview with Dr. Chen Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009) and a genderqueer and multi-genre writer. Born of

Chinese immigrants, they are a Kundiman, Lambda and Callaloo Fellow and a member of

the Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundations writing communities. Dr. Chen is teaching their first semester at Sam Houston

State University.

What tends to be the subject of your

writing? Does it change often?

I tend to write about the intersections of

communal history, memory and identity.

For instance, as a Chinese American poet

who really had to dig hard to learn about

the history of Asians in the United

States, much of my writing in that vein

circles around that process of

uncovering stories and histories which

aren't readily available.

I've always written about these subjects,

but the more I've written about them,

the deeper I've been able to go in

exploring what I might think or want to

say about them.

I've heard other poets say that writing

your first book is like shedding your first

layer of skin – it's easier to come to what

you're writing about intuitively. In the

next project, however, you may still be

circling around similar obsessions, but

trying to approach it from a different

vantage point or perspective. I'd say that

my writing changes in that way – I may

be writing about a similar subject or

obsession, but I'm trying to place myself

in a different position, to see the

questions I'm asking from other

perspectives, to learn something new

from my writing. The way that I do this is

often to write against my own familiar

tendencies. I think about what strategies

I'm currently choosing in my writing and

perhaps too comfortable with (for

instance, relying on breaking the line

against grammar) and what I might be

avoiding and assign myself a writing

prompt which forces me to try what I'm

avoiding and avoid what I'm relying on.

2. What sparks your creativity and

inspires you to write? (Can be people,

places, or events)

When I was a younger spoken word

poet, I wrote whenever I felt like it, but

mostly when I was processing some

intense emotion. I often went months

without writing – and for a stretch of

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three years, when I was the Director of

Programs at a community-based non-

profit in Boston, I wrote once a year only

when I went on a writing retreat. I found

that the energy it took to run

community programs and create

programming like film festivals or

community discussions or work with

young people around a community

issue, took similar energy to writing and

I had nothing left at the end of the day

to give to a poem. In that time period, I

also felt stuffed with words and

emotions which I couldn't release – and

as I got more serious about my writing

as a practice, I realized that it was a form

of meditation for me, a way of making

sense of the world and how I belonged in

it. There's a moment which happens

when I really get into the writing flow,

when time seems to suspend and I am in

the process of just creating. I realized

that this process was a way of sitting

down with myself, of cultivating my

inner landscape – and it was as

necessary as eating breakfast or having

coffee, and I felt not quite right when I

wasn't in that practice. I also realized

that it is a practice – and if I wanted to be

serious about it, I had to be in

conversation with other poets and

artists by reading and experiencing their

work and responding to it. Now, that's

often how I get a spark if I'm stuck in my

practice – I will pick up a random book

and pick any line and respond to it.

3. Why do you choose poetry in order

to express yourself artistically? Do you

dabble in other creative areas?

If I look back on my past undergraduate

writer self (I graduated from Tufts

University in 1999), I was more

concerned with telling stories I hadn't

heard growing up and wanted to be in

the world. I actually hated poetry

because I didn't quite understand it (in

the way that I had been taught to read it

in high school). After I graduated from

college, I went to work for a few years at

a community non-profit organization in

San Francisco's Chinatown and

Visitacion Valley and I commuted a lot –

from where I lived in Oakland to San

Francisco and on the bus from

Chinatown to VV – and had short bursts

of time to write, but not the longer

attention span I felt necessary to write

prose.

I also went to community events and

started going to spoken word shows

with artists such as I Was Born with Two

Tongues, Eighth Wonder and Youth

Speaks, and marveled at how much

these performance poets could move

their audiences with such a short

amount of time, typically less than three

minutes. At the non-profit I worked at,

those who did legislative advocacy work

wrote pages and pages of background

information and press releases, but may

not have moved anyone to do anything.

At the time, I thought that performance

poetry was an inspiring way to have your

voice and ideas heard.

I slowly learned how poetry incorporates

many of the other art forms such as

storytelling, movement, music and

visual art. It was matter of other poets

showing me the landscape of what was

possible in contemporary poetry and the

roots of that work in the past as well.

Poetry has very rich traditions to pull

from – and I'm constantly learning more

about these traditions.

I'm very interested in blurry writing,

meaning writing which crosses genres. I

completed my Master of Fine Arts at the

University of California at Riverside

which required all of us to take classes

cross-genre. It was also a very special

program because half of the workshops

were in what you might typically find in

creative writing programs (fiction, non-

fiction, poetry), but half of the

workshops were focused around writing

for the Performing Arts (playwriting and

screenwriting). I actually took at least

one workshop in every genre the

program offered because I wanted to

see what strategies other genres could

bring to my primary genre, poetry.

Because of my performance

background, I had noticed how much

cross-over there was between poetry

and playwriting. I was able to explore it

at UCR because UCR had a special class

where plays written by MFA writers were

staged by undergraduate directors and

performed by undergraduate actors. I

was able to stage one of my poems from

my first book, The Heart's Traffic: a novel

in poems, as well as a collaborative play I

wrote with another writer. The staging,

especially seeing the visions the

directors had of my work and hearing

how the actors performed my words,

helped me re-vise that work.

4. Why did you choose to become a

creative writing professor?

I'm happy to be at Sam Houston, doing

one of the few jobs where I get to do

what I love – talk and think about writing

and poetry! For me, teaching is always a

conversation – and I learn from the

exchange in the classroom, which keeps

me fresh in the field of creative writing

and literature.

5. In your formative years, did you

picture yourself becoming a poet?

I was interested in being a writer from

the time I was young, but I never

thought I would be a poet. When I was

an undergraduate student, I was an

English major, but I also double-majored

in International Relations and thought I

would go abroad to do international

development work. But right after I

graduated from college, I did a year in

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AmeriCorps, through the National

Conservation Corps. I was placed in

Denver, Colorado and we were sent in

teams around the Midwest to complete

short-term projects. I was a first-grade

reading tutor in inner-city Detroit,

worked on constructing trails in the

Rockies in Colorado, worked at a school

for at-risk high-school girls near Denver,

maintained trails in Indiana (near John

Cougar Mellencamp's house), among

other things. Through this process, I

realized I most enjoyed working with

other people and that there was a lot of

work to improve communities within the

United States which I could be part of.

So I stayed in the United States and then

fell in love with poetry while doing that

community work.

6. What advice would you give to

aspiring writers?

This is pretty common advice – but it's important to read widely, especially

work you would not normally be drawn to or choose because it expands your sense of what's possible in your own

writing. In the early days of writing, it was easier to put myself in a class and get a reading list from the instructor. As I've developed my practice, I have a

sense now of how to read more widely

on my own and how to teach myself how to analyze a poem and how it's working.

Also, I would recommend being open to trying a wide variety of writing

strategies – so that you can develop your own internal editor and get to know who you are as a writer.

For a sample of Dr. Chen’s writing, visit:

http://thediagram.com/10_2/chen.html

5,000 Translations

last call at the money-saving bar story about a darter

in the Vegas night club so green tired I bit the Berlin beer Two lies

already see violet from night a martyr

sable and curls silver A goldeye mother did not die

Three fictions fifteen others shot in dahlia heat Jimmy Carter

to preside against the murderous time True I claimed the ones who cried

Who hit lonely lightning yellow stem fire pretending smarter

to unclaim Who easy to hold the tent large for public fry

When I see the fruits of this page please not not that abandoned monster

because as soon as they see others grow they count the clock chime clock ….

from Milwaukee I asked the wasted question does this tent really hold my

heat Who can write this poem and counting which of my skin absorb this father

and my crime