Interview with Yi Wei
Yi Wei
Yi Wei is a first generation Chinese writer with a BA in Asian American Studies and English from Swarthmore College. She currently serves as the Assistant Flash Fiction Editor at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Yi has been awarded the Lois Morrell Poetry Prize and is the third place winner for the 2021 Sappho Prize for Women Poets. Her work can be found in Palette Poetry, Lantern Review, and Crosswinds. She’s currently a Writer in the Public Schools fellow at NYU’s MFA in poetry.
Manahil: How did you come to decide what pieces you wanted to share with the magazine?
Yi: To be honest, I have five or six poems that I like every couple months that I try to send out when they feel ready but not finished. This is one of them. I am a fan of this magazine and Sanna Wani’s writing and hoped the poems would work out.
Manahil: I find writing often emerges from a conversation. What conversation is happening in your work?
Yi: I agree with this! I’d go so far as say that writing is a riff and continuation of whatever conversation we’re having internally or with someone else, with whoever’s listening. The conversation in my work is grounded in what we want from each other and what we need from each other—what’s at the intersection of desire and responsibility when we live in a place that tells us what we should want and that we don’t need. I firmly believe that caring about each other and ourselves is not only a basic human desire but what will help us survive. To want more is to begin to demand it.
Manahil: What do you see as the difference between a love poem and a love poet?
Yi: Some love poems are journal entries. By this, I mean the poet is on the page and the love interest is the idea the poet is grappling with. When I started writing poems about love, I think I wrote love poems but wasn’t a love poet. I asked love to do a lot, mostly make sense of the person I was writing about. Now I ask love to hold questions that I have about the world, or my interactions with people, even myself—and my poems in turn ask things of me. I think being a love poet is about learning to orient myself towards the world in a way that asks me to care about it.
Manahil: What is something you’re working on that you’d like to share?
Yi: A roundtable conversation for the Brooklyn Book Festival on the possibilities and limitations of language work, humor, and rest as an industry with brilliant writers Natalie Wee, George Abraham, Cynthia Dewi Oka, and Jenny Xie. Very excited and if you’re in the city, save September 29th at 6pm!
Manahil: In closing, what is a poem, story, painting, chapbook, or book you would like to recommend others read?
Yi: I’ve been returning to Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha recently, but one of my favorite chapbooks right now is Lone Lily by Tariq Thompson. I would also recommend almost any reality dating show on Netflix with a butter pasta.