I’m Doing This Work With People in Mind: Interview with Isabella Wang
Isabella Wang’s debut poetry chapbook is On Forgetting a Language (Baseline Press 2019). At 19, she’s been shortlisted twice for The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler Essay Contest, and she holds a Pushcart Prize nomination for poetry. Her poetry and prose have appeared in over twenty literary journals including CV2, The Puritan, Prairie Fire, and carte blanche. Her work is forthcoming in three anthologies, including What You Need to Know Anthology (The Hawkins Project, co-founded by Dave Eggers), and They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets (Blue Oak Press 2020). She’s working as an assistant editor at Room magazine, a Research Assistant for SpokenWeb, and pursuing a double major in English and World Literature at Simon Fraser University.
In this interview, Canthius editorial board member Manahil Bandukwala talks to poet Isabella Wang about her chapbook, On Forgetting a Language (Baseline Press, 2019), her community involvements and organizing, and her current project on writing and translating ghazals.
To learn more about Isabella, check out her website, or follow her on Twitter and Instagram @isabellawangbc.
Canthius: Isabella, your first chapbook, On Forgetting a Language, recently launched with Baseline Press—and has already gone into its second printing! How do you feel about the chapbook and the launch?
Isabella: Hi Manahil! First of all, I just wanted to say thank you, for these thoughtful questions.
It feels amazing—I was just talking to Jordan Abel a few days ago at the Vancouver Art Book fair, and he was saying how it is gratifying to go through the process of editing, seeing the cover for the first time, and then to be able to hold on to a material object that for so long has been represented by the vision in your head. So yes, I definitely feel that. It’s different though, to have a book out in the world than, say, individual poems as they are published. I send poems out by the batch, not knowing if they will land, and only when they get put back into order does a narrative arch emerge. In that sense, it does also feel vulnerable to have the chapbook out. I wrote it in my last year of high school, up until the point where I left on my own in order to pursue English, World Literature, and creative writing. The chapbook carries all of that with it, and sometimes when I go back, I realize that this is the only material record—however fragmented—I have of the time, because of writing.
I wasn’t expecting the reception that I was getting at all. The chapbook, once it is out there, has a life of its own. I couldn’t imagine what would happen to it once it’s out there, what will become of it, and how people will relate or connect to it. All I could hope is that they do. That was all I could ask for. You know, I grew up with English as my second language, being told that I couldn’t write. So much of me had internalized that. Even while I was publishing, getting to know everybody through literary events, I never referred to myself as a poet until a poet friend introduced me as one. I was still afraid that by calling myself a poet, I would be offending other poets. Even now, it’s still odd for me whenever someone tells me that they like my poetry, my writing—odd in the sense that I never thought that I would be able to find a purpose with my voice. Seeing everyone at my launch, getting the generous comments and feedback from people, changed how I felt. When people started sending me pictures of my book, pictures of their dogs holding my book, or telling me how they enjoyed reading it, those comments meant a lot. I think every author deserves that. No matter where we are, at what stage of writing, we give everything we have to developing and caring for this craft. It helps to be reminded at times, that words travel, and that we are getting somewhere.
Canthius: Baseline Press makes really beautiful, artistic books. What was the process of working with them like?
Isabella: I think about it often, that evening when Karen and I met up for the first time at a café in Waterloo, and we got the editing done for the chapbook in that one evening. That was in May. I was staying in the area for a few days, but of course, I had known Karen beforehand.
I met Karen at the 2018 Wild Writers Festival in Waterloo, hosted by the New Quarterly Magazine. When I say, “met,” she didn’t know me yet. I caught glimpses of her as she was getting ready to leave, and afterward, I went on to Baseline’s website and got to know the poets. It just so happened that when I arrived, there was a submissions call. I had just enough poems for a chapbook manuscript, so I sent it in with my heart crossed.
The day I got a message back from Karen was one of the most exciting days. You know, it’s funny. Ever since I was young, I would keep journals of letters I would write to myself, thinking I was doing myself a favour for when I turned twenty, and became a published author. I thought that would be my “thing,” though in hindsight, I never expected it to happen. It came true long before I even realized it, and it’s a wonder that things worked out the way they did. At the time, however, I had no idea how lucky I was.
Canthius: It is amazing that it worked out like that. Karen is incredible.
Isabella: Working with Karen has been such a great, first learning experience, and looking back, I couldn’t have found myself in better hands. All her edits were detailed, intuitive, and made with a listening eye. She always listened, to the edits, to my artistic decisions, and cover stock photo—that’s what I love so much about her. We made lots of rounds of edits, and she would send me selections of paper to choose from. I would get messages from her in the mail—just a thank you or something, but she would write them on these fancy pieces of paper, and seeing them always made me happy. Small acts such as these, show the level of love and care that she gives to her authors, supporting them at every stage along the way. Even now, whenever my work is published, she sends me notes about how she liked my recent work, and how my writing is developing.
*
Canthius: You’re involved with a lot of community-based projects, including with Room magazine, Dead Poets Reading Series, Books on the Radio, and the Federation of BC Writers. Can you talk about your involvements in some of these things?
Isabella: With the Federation of BC Writers, I volunteer as the Youth Advocate and meet with a board of directors to help develop sustainable and accessible mentorship programs for youth. Sometimes, parents reach out to me, and that is how I found the youngest reader for the Growing Room Youth Reading event I helped to program last year. Maya was only twelve at the time, and already writing a novel!
Dead Poets Reading was the very first literary event I ever attended when I started writing. I didn’t know very many people back then—any people, for that matter. I went because my poetry mentor, Rob Taylor, was reading. From there, I got to know Kevin Spenst, who invited me to another reading he was doing in New West, and from there, I got to know a community of poets. It’s incredible how these connections form. So yes, when Dead Poets Reading asked me to join the team, of course I was delighted!
Canthius: How does being involved in the literary community influence your own writing?
Isabella: As I’ve illustrated above, teaching and going to workshops is certainly one way. I know lots of people who say that writing is a lonely thing, but I don’t always agree. The thing is, community like that is hard to come by, but then you find a group of people who believe in you, and who are willing to support you, that’s not something you let go of easily.
The community here is the only reason I even made it through in the past year. Things haven’t always been stable, so much so that I’ve been told to put the writing and school aside and just get a day-time job for a while so I can keep up with paying for housing, and food, and tuition. But the thing is, when I don’t have the family support to lean on, when finances aren’t stable, I’ve always had the writing and the community to come back to. I’m doing this work with people in mind, writers whom I admire and care about, and this is what makes me want to work hard and try to make things better for myself. I don’t know where I’d be without my friends, my found families. Without them, I wouldn’t have anything to go on, to want to make things better.
*
Canthius: I loved your interview “Young Writers: On Navigating the Publishing Industry” in PRISM. How is the community of young writers flourishing across the country?
Isabella: I was so glad that Prism offered us the platform for those interviews. It was something that I had wanted to do with these writers for a long time. I met them in various ways over the past year, at poetry slams, literary events across the country, and through each other. Many had featured at the Growing Room Youth Reading, so this was a chance for us to check back in and reflect. For me, it was a great chance to get to know them better, ask them to talk about their writing, how they came to write, and the questions that I’ve been wanting to ask. For those of them who are new to writing, and who have only been writing or publishing for a year or two, it was also a great chance to look back and see just how far they’ve all come.
It has been such a gift to get to know each of them, read their works as they are published, and hear what they’ve been up to with graduation from high school into university, and with graduation from university. They inspire me.
Canthius: You’ve also conducted chapbook-making workshops for teen writers. Why are workshops important?
Isabella: Who thought it would be a good decision to ask teens to teach teens? But teaching has been one of the biggest learning curves for me—both in terms of the responsibility, which came much sooner than I expected, and also the opportunity to connect and open my eyes to the amount of talent harboured with a small, but diverse range of young poets.
I start my workshops by displaying a bagful of objects—some crystals, a postcard of a sunset, tea bags, sheet music, paint brush, teddy bear, and all the miscellaneous, ‘everyday’ objects you would find. It is a different spin on an exercise, ‘Writing to Inanimate Objects,” that my mentor, Fiona Tinwei Lam, introduced in her poetry class. Afterward, we take apart what we’ve written over a series of writing exercises, edit them, recombine them, and make them into tiny chapbooks as a memento to take home.
Each of these objects have story behind them, as found objects, or objects given to me by very special people. I would lay them out and ask the teens to choose an object that speaks to them in some way, write about it, then introduce themselves through the object that they’ve chosen. So now, when I look at the objects, it’s not just my own story anymore. In this way, teaching has exposed me to different ways of seeing, the same way that meaning is made by a community of readers, and a book grows richer the more people read it. When I see these objects, I am reminded of my own story, but also the layers of meaning, added richness in these everyday objects that other people have been able to weave through their own different interpretations of them, their own stories.
*
Canthius: You’ve presented papers at a number of conferences as well. The academic realm can be quite different from the literary sphere. Can you talk about your experience at those conferences?
Isabella: We were in class when my World Literature professor mentioned Walter Benjamin’s name, and I gasped, and she paused for a little bit and was like, “yup. I would date him too.” The thing with academics, and all writing I suppose, is that you fall in love with the notion of someone else’s name, their minds—knowing them in person changes things.
I went into university thinking it was going to buy me time, help me figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t know if this ‘writer’ thing was really what I wanted, or if I just wanted to write. Now, it’s so much more than that. Even in my first ever semester of university, I was reading books on the syllabus that were by authors I had known in person, gotten to hold dialogue with and pat their puppies. The academic world offered me these lenses so that I can do more than just read a book and enjoy it, but really engage with it and approach it from the different ways that it might connect with our lives. Though there are times when late at night, all I’m doing is reading a book simply for the joy of it—not analyzing it, but just taking that in. I think that is important too.
As I started to get more involved in the academic sphere too, through the World Literature undergraduate conference and all sorts of graduate conferences, I got to know more scholars that I admire very much in the community as well. As for conferences, I simply went and listened. In May of 2019, I presented a creative paper at the SFU English Grad conference, and also a research creation as part of the SpokenWeb Symposium. In doing so, I got my first academic job as a research assistant.
I remember, three weeks into my undergraduate career, I showed up at a Gramsci conference where my professors were giving a talk. I remember them looking at me at first, not expecting me there. I did not understand a single word of what was said during that conference, but showing up was enough. Until eventually, I did understand, more and more. Many of these scholars, I’ve stayed in touch with. Some of them are profs teaching at SFU. I show up for office hours just to tell them how great they are, then we chat about Walter Benjamin some more.
*
Canthius: Writing and organizing also involves a lot of blocks and struggles. Do you have any advice to share on tackling those blocks?
Isabella: I don’t know if I have any advice on how to overcome writer’s block per se, as I feel like if there was some strategy, everyone would be doing it. The body and mind, like all other natural process on earth, are limited: they take time to regulate, renew. It’s just that over time, you learn to trust yourself more, that the writing will come eventually, and not worry about it as much when months have gone by with still no poems in sight. Still, I always find it helpful to read lots. When you feel blocked, that’s usually room for growth: you’ve reached the limits of your current capacity and are looking for more. It’s perfectly alright to go through long periods of time without writing anything, and just read.
Canthius: What are you currently reading?
Isabella: A few, it seems. I just finished Lindsey Freeman’s This Atom Bomb in Me, which interweaves sociology poetry with memoir to create this stunning nuclear frisson of what it was like, to grow up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee—a major Cold War nuclear production site, and the effects of that imprinted on all our pasts. Right now, as I am working on this new project, Rita Wong’s undercurrent is always there on my desk for when I frequent it almost daily. I’m also reading Juliane Okot Bitek’s latest chapbook, Gauntlet, which, in part, addresses one’s experience of marginalization, complex identities and occupying of hybrid spaces through the deliberateness of language. I’m halfway through Ayelet Tsabari’s memoir, The Art of Leaving, and sobbing as it unfolds.
*
Canthius: What are you working on in terms of projects?
Isabella: When she found out that I was working on this mass project involving writing and the translation of Urdu ghazals by women writers, Eve Joseph was very kind to send me her collection of ghazals, The Startled Heart. It just arrived in the mail, so I can’t be more excited to leap in—another little cosmic universe to be paired alongside the works of Phyllis Webb, John Thompson, Adrienne Rich, and many more past the borders of this language.
Canthius: Urdu ghazals by women writers – two of my favourite things! Which women writers are you looking at with the ghazals?
Isabella: I suppose I am not looking exclusively at ghazals written exclusively by women writers, but at the moment, any Canadian poet who has published substantial collection of poetry written in the ghazal, couplet form. That includes Phyllis Webb, John Thompson, Adrienne Rich, Lorna Crozier, Eve Joseph, and Patrick Lane. You will see however, that the majority of this list are women poets.
Each of these poets have done something extraordinary with the traditional, ghazal form. John Thompson, as part of post-modernist movement, lifted the form from its tight, structured regiment of repetition and flow. Eve Joseph, against the conventional theme of love, centered her poems around grief and mourning, while retaining the delicate lightness of the couplets. Likewise, Phyllis Webb is known for writing about small and everyday things. My research interests then, has been to locate a kind of écriture féminine within ghazal form, and accounting for the risk of making the gender binary, as well as the problematics of cultural appropriation when you take a poetic form that has traditionally been used to engage in ceremony, times of sharing, and break it apart. That is not to speak negatively of innovation. Again, many of these poets are writing in a post-modernist style, where we’ve essentially inherited a worldview that is already broken. At the same time, there is a kind of breakage in the translation of these ghazals from Urdu to English, where due to the rigidity of the form, it is impossible to retain the form of the ghazal and ensure that the poetry still makes sense in English. These are not light waters, hence the time, hence my need to study the poetry written by women writers from not just across Canada, but globally, and reinsert the political back into the act of the everyday. I believe it is possible to find wholeheartedly, the joy in these ghazals, while still engaging in dialogue, and the conversation we need to break the silence while addressing these issues.
Canthius: What started your interest in this project?
Isabella: It started as a casual project in Steve Collis’s fourth-year poetry class. Phyllis, in her introduction to Water and Light, wrote that it was her friend, Michael Ondaatje who had introduced her to the form, and that in an attempt to challenge herself, she began writing a ghazal a day on the back of index cards. This collection of anti-ghazals, is by no means an easy read on the first try. In wanting to engage with the poems better, to take myself deeper, I challenged myself to doing the exact same thing and began writing a ghazal a day.
It was a scavenger hunt from there. The semester had ended, but Phyllis had led me to John Thompson who led me to Adrienne Rich, and so on. Each of these writers accredited the famous Persian writer, Ghalib, as inspiration for their ghazals. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Ghalib’s poems. But the library has rows and rows of Ghalib’s poems in translation, and not a single poem by a woman author. At first, I thought that only men wrote in this form, but a bit of further research led me to discover that there were women writers writing ghazals, but they had essentially invented their own form, the rhekti. What becomes clear then, is that while Phyllis was writing what she called, anti-ghazals, these poems that were about small ongoings, everyday occasions, there were women writers in Persia doing the same thing.
The UBC library has a collection of rhekti in their archives, but not one of these poems have been translated. That is why I have decided to learn Persian, Arabic, and Urdu, so that down the road, I might be able to better trace the ghazal form back to its Urdu roots. I’m hoping to be able to study the work of these women writers, and translate a selection of them. Only a selection though, because not all literature should be translated into English, but the rhekti might offer us an alternative lens for reading the innovative works of these women writers in Canada.