Interview with Emily Lu

Emily Lu is the author of the chapbooks there is no wifi in the afterlife (San Press, 2022) and Night Leaves Nothing New (Baseline Press, 2019), as well as works appearing in Waxwing, X-R-A-Y, Honey Literary, Arc Poetry Magazine, and filling Station.

Manahil: This is Canthius’s tenth issue, and the first for which we have a guest editor, Sanna Wani. Whether you’ve been a long-time reader of Canthius or are just getting introduced us, how did you come to decide what pieces you wanted to share with the magazine?

Emily: I think I gravitated towards pieces that had a warmer shape, softer than toothache, inspired by Sanna’s work and her newsletters in my inbox which I always look forward to reading. I realized that I really didn’t have that many poems that fit that description so I had to write them!!! Some new ones!

Manahil: I find writing often emerges from a conversation. What conversation is happening in your work?

Emily: I’ve been thinking about the gentle positioning of first person I speaking to a you, compared with the distance that seems more inherent in describing two people from a third person POV. In my poem, I wanted to explore that tiny place before the you and I, with the jumbled-up pull towards things in the distance, heard and unheard. Which positionings of hearing make things more possible, or harder to be possible, and so more interesting when made possible?

Manahil: I love how you dove into a new kind of style to write something for this call. What did you find difficult (or even easier!) about taking on a poetic voice outside of your comfort zone?

Emily: It was a different direction but I like to think it was stylistically in conversation with my previous work. Not really a new struggle but the intended affect shapes the form and even when the form is right for a piece if the affective shape is wrong, it will solidify and the possibilities that were there before kind of die. And so trying to work intentionally in warmer registers of affect made more forms possible, visible to me, that were not visible before.

Manahil: What is something you’re working on that you’d like to share!

Emily: So someone showed me one of those youtube insider news videos about the sanitation standards inside a restaurant where they zoomed in and exclaimed something like, Look at this fish! It’s just on the floor! From there I thought about writing a story about the fish on the floor and the buddha who couldn’t feel, with the genre being romance. I don’t think I’ve written a love story before so that’s why I must try.

Manahil: In closing, what is a poem, story, painting, chapbook, or book you would like to recommend others read?

Emily: My own chapbook There is no wifi in the afterlife came out recently from San Press!

I’m currently reading Complaint! by Sara Ahmed, and it’s the text I needed two years ago but it’s still great now.