Interview with Lina Wu

Lina Wu is an artist learning and playing in Tkaronto. She conjures images and stories that meld adolescence, gender, fantasy, and figuration. Lina’s work has been found in LooseLeaf Magazine, Half a Grapefruit, Shrapnel Magazine, Silverfish Magazine, and can also be found at www.linawu.com or @linaw_u.

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?

Lina: Being creative daily is important to me, but poetry is a medium I only enjoy sporadically. My faith in language is flimsy. When submitting to Canthius I selected from a wide assortment of different pieces and bits collected over a long period of time — that curatorial process was a lot of fun. “Man III” is one of three or four vignettes I wrote around masculinity and my relationship with it. I chose this poem because it seemed to resonate with others and fit the mandate of the magazine.

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

Lina: Gender and adolescence are themes that I always return to, no matter what medium. I think it’s especially important for cis people like me to question our relationship to gender and what living as a gendered being entails — it’s just been a fruitful and healing endeavour to explore my own subjectivity in relation to these old and absurd ideas of masculinity and femininity. I like the feeling of twisting these ideas around and making them squishy and spiky and surprising.

Manahil: Every line of your poem, “Man III” brings a surprise, especially the last line where the surprise holds an instance of delight. How do you maintain this sense of surprise in a poetic way while moving the narrative of the poem forward?

Lina: It’s important to me to create work with a playful attitude. Even though some of my works end up kind of sad or twisted, the process is always guided by pleasure. Kids are so great at playing and coming up with unexpected twists in their stories; they know how to follow their intuition. That’s a big inspiration to me.

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

Lina: I’m working on some drawings of soft and somewhat threatening suits of armour. I’ve been looking at so many clothes and costumes online. I love drawing emotional costumes, designs with ambivalent feelings…

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

Lina: To be honest I’ve mostly been reading comics as of late. In terms of a recommendation, Margot Ferrick makes comics that are quite poetic, if you can get your hands on a zine of hers they’re amazing…I think Yours might be available on 2dcloud.