“On Poetic Origins, Creative Space, and Writing Across Genres”: An Interview with Gillian Sze

When I first heard about Gillian Sze’s new collection Quiet Night Think (ECW April 2022) in late 2021, I felt immediately drawn to the book because its title references one of the world’s most widely taught and read Chinese poems, written by the Tang dynasty Chinese poet Li Bai. Indeed, the book fulfills the promise implied by the title, offering a deeply moving exploration of the writer’s relationship with Li Bai’s work, Chinese literature, and the ideas of home and nostalgia. The book also delves into so much more: it’s a nuanced and multi-layered reflection on origins, poetic craft, and the creative process, explored through and alongside topics like heritage, nature, and motherhood. 

In April 2022, I reached out to Gillian via email to interview her in the days leading up to the book’s launch. What follows is our conversation, where she shares the story of how this book came to be, her thoughts on craft elements such as genre, space, and structure, her literary influences, and her words of advice for emerging writers.  

Yilin Wang: Hi Gillian, I’m so delighted for this opportunity to chat with you about your latest book, Quiet Night Think. To start with, you mentioned in a recent Poetry in Motion feature on the All Lit Up website that you first wrote the opening and titular essay of this book nearly eight years ago. Then, a year later, after giving birth to your son, you began to conceive of a possible book about origins. Can you describe your journey of envisioning and writing this project, from start to finish? How did the book grow and evolve over the past eight years? 

Gillian Sze: Work on a book usually begins accidentally, unexpectedly, by chance or luck. I wrote the essay “Quiet Night Think” without plans for it to be part of a larger project. I just enjoyed thinking and writing about a poem that had an early impact on me. My reflections on writing—the whys, the hows, the particularities that shaped me, the differences I felt within my family as well as within the broader context of “CanLit”—were ignited by a few events. There was my becoming a mother and becoming a biological point of origin for another human, which made me consider my own artistic and familial origins. Motherhood of course transformed my creative process in both challenging and enriching ways. 

I was also responding to the climate of CanLit, which, during the same time, was becoming acutely aware of gaps and imbalances. I became sensitive to the axes of gender and race, as put forth in Natalie Zina Walschots’ research regarding the disconcerting imbalance between reviews written on male poets and those on female poets; the founding of CWILA (Canadian Women in the Literary Arts) that same year; an investigation of racial uniformity of poetry prize-winners and judges in “Just the Stats: Diversity in Canadian Poetry Prizes (1981–2015)”; and the launching of FOLD. I wanted to explore my own relationship to poetry. How did I get here? And how did it start? A person’s upbringing—the books available growing up, library access, opportunities that encourage creativity, cultural clashes or familial expectations—all impact the path to becoming a writer.

Furthermore, after many years of writing, publishing, adjudicating, and teaching, my shift from “emerging” to “established” writer (whatever that means) opened my eyes to the importance of mentorship—to fruitful, supportive exchanges and sharing of experiences. All of this opened a space for me to reflect on my own poetic process and provide a personal account on the significance of poetry for a second-generation Chinese Canadian woman writer. As Wallace Stevens writes: “One function of the poet at any time is to discover by his own thought and feeling what seems to him to be poetry at that time.” Quiet Night Think, I hope, adds another possible definition to “poetry’s many existing definitions.”

I like the space of the sentence that accommodates the slipperiness of memories and languages.

YW: I love that! I really appreciate that your book expands existing definitions of poetry. I also really appreciate the way that your book interweaves poems and essays as you reflect on language, identity, nature, and motherhood. What led you to write a book that blends the two forms together? In what ways do you think poetry and personal essays can work together in a collection to transcend the limitations posed by each individual form? 

GS: I’m always interested in hearing what writers have to say about writing. I’m drawn to books like Nicole Brossard’s The Aerial Letter, Mary Oliver’s Winter Hours, and Denise Levertov’s The Poet in the World, in which they reflect on art, culture, poetic theory, biography, and private, creative emergences. I initially thought that I would write a book of essays, but poetry seeped in, as it always does. Both forms can do the same things, but differently. I can wonder and wander through both, but the essay felt like the better vehicle for me to meander through biography, literature, research, and time. I like the space of the sentence that accommodates the slipperiness of memories and languages.

Poetry is a space for play, exploration, and finding an answer to a question I didn’t know I had.

YW: Yes, several of your essays delve into the idea of “space”—not only the space that exists between lines of poetry, but also the space between different languages and literatures. What appeals to you most about space in poetry? What kinds of possibilities does it offer you? 

GS: Poetry is a space for play, exploration, and finding an answer to a question I didn’t know I had. In poetry we get a sense that language isn’t just utilitarian. It’s not something we use, but something we dwell in. It isn’t just communicative but intensive.

YW: Let’s return to the topic of the book’s inclusion of both essays and poetry. How did you go about deciding on a structure and order for the pieces? What tips do you have for writers and poets when it comes to arranging different works into a collection? 

GS: I think in some ways I’ve always had a problem with genre, or at least sticking to just one. I began with very, very short fiction when studying with novelist David Bergen in Winnipeg. (I had a problem with titles too. I wrote a short collection of texts that were all “Untitled.”) Then in Montreal I turned to poetry when I saw how the line break could be used to open up and scatter the white space. My books have been increasingly flexible in terms of genre too. I start to include prose poems in my second book, The Anatomy of Clay, and finally move further in this direction with essays in Quiet Night Think. The “poetry collection” as a form can be so expansive. I find germane Susan Holbrook’s definition of poetry as something that “lies at the far end of the spectrum, rich with language that doesn’t behave in familiar ways.” We can also imagine the poetry collection as inhabiting that same “unfamiliar” space. There isn’t as much pressure, I think, for the poetry collection to have the sort of linearity and cohesion as, say, the chapters in a novel, or even a collection of short stories. Writers can always take advantage of that freedom.

Much of my process of becoming a writer is, as I convey in Quiet Night Think, informed by accidental encounters and felicitous intersections.

When I put together a book, I think of my first poetry editor, Jason Camlot, who described the ordering of the pieces as “flower arranging.” I print out the manuscript in the final stages and puzzle the pieces together, finding the overlaps and the unexpected leaps. Much of my process of becoming a writer is, as I convey in Quiet Night Think, informed by accidental encounters and felicitous intersections. I wanted to reproduce this experience by playing with genre, order, and subject. As Jeanette Winterson states, “Our mental processes are closer to a maze than a motorway, every turning yields another turning, not symmetrical, not obvious.” So as interested as I am in “turning” my reader from here to there, I am also interested in interrupting my own narrative.

YW: Yes, in the essay “To Draw Water,” you also explain how you’re drawn much more to moments of shifts and pauses within poetry as opposed to the sense of order and structure, such as the one created by the Chinese tradition of a “generational poem.” What are some poems that you like for the ways that they meander, resist structure, or challenge the illusion of order? 

GS: To name a few: Anne Carson’s poem, “Essay on What I Think About Most” (even the title is perfect). Everything in William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All. Phyllis Webb’s Naked Poems. Many poems by e. e. cummings. (I recently taught “since feeling is first,” so I’ll mention that one.)

YW: Let’s talk about the opening essay, where you recall the time that you first encountered Li Bai’s poem “Quiet Night Think.” In the poem, the speaker gazes up at the moon, then looks down and thinks of home. Likewise, you share that although you have seen many moons throughout your life and travels, the moon still “looks most natural when it lands in the backyard of [your] childhood home.” What are your favourite memories of the moon? When you look up at the moon and then look down, what do you think of as “home”?

GS: I see the toothed outline of the fence my father built around our home. I see the patio stones he set down in a checkered pattern of brown and grey. I think of the metal screen door that burned in the summer sun. I see my mother at the sink, always at the sink, and framed by the kitchen window. And now I think of Wordsworth’s lines, “The things which I have seen I now can see no more.”

YW: Soon after the opening essay, you include a series of works called “Ten Translations,” which are creative translations of poems written by your uncle Aldo Lam. Can you share what your translation process was like? 

GS: My uncle published a book of Chinese poems, and when he passed a copy my way, I fed the poems through Google Translate. The resulting work generated by Google, as you can imagine, strayed—or erred—completely from his original meaning. I still found the English “translation” compelling and so I smoothed out the sense, used the resulting text as a constellation for something new. I was, in short, just playing.

YW: How did the process of translating your uncle’s poems from Chinese to English influence or change your understanding of poetry written in either language, or offer you new insights into the art and craft of writing?

GS: I decided to include my creative translations of my uncle’s poetry in the book because they felt like an extension of a project I had started as a child when I was learning Li Bai’s “Quiet Night Think.” How do we move across languages, geography, time, and experience and meet somewhere in the middle? Learning Li Bai’s poem brought forth a number of issues that I didn’t realize would shape so much of my creative practice and concerns: multilingualism, translation, cultural difference, and family history. Working on these translations was part of that same network of processes: my uncle writes these poems following the rules and constraints of traditional Chinese forms, and then I playfully—perhaps clumsily—pull some of that into English filtered through my own imaginings, creative sensibilities, desires, and questions.

Poetry—art—is play. When I begin to write a poem, usually there is a moment, an image, or an emotion that I want to get down on paper. The first draft is usually just my putting words down. There may be a rudimentary shape or an outline of what I want to happen. But a lot of writing is re-writing. I go back and reshape, reword, rethink. I don’t necessarily go back to “add” meaning. The meaning is there (often put there unconsciously or accidentally), but what I intend is not always what emerges for a reader. A reader participates in the poem’s meaning, bringing with them their own unique coordinates within which the poem will fit and resonate (or not). 

While my uncle will be the first to tell me that my translations completely miss his intended meaning, I hope that he can also see that his poetry has still worked on me. When I read, I take the pieces that mean the most to me in that moment, and those pieces differ from reader to reader. This is something he (and I) can never plan because a reader’s response can never be anticipated. It is something like magic.  

YW: Like the poems that you translate, many of your own poems in the book also revolve around vivid descriptions of nature, whether the passing of seasons, the falling of light onto moss, or the pulling of weeds, juxtaposed against moments of everyday life and contemplation. As a poet, what do you find most inspiring about nature? Since you mention that poetry gives you the chance to “fold, replay, imagine, and extend the lines of time and movement,” how does writing poetry about nature affect the way you gaze at the world around you?

GS: So much about nature inspires me: the common names of plants, the way green keeps track of time, how a winter can be so quiet, that nature is there at all, that everything is a possible metaphor. Mary Oliver said it best: “The attention of the seed to the draw of the moon is, I suppose, measurable, like the tilt of the planet. Or, maybe not—” 

YW: In the poems “Multiverse,” “Yard Work,” and “Nursery,” you explore the possibility of other worlds and realities, describe sweeping away dead leaves to make way for spring, and reflect on your preparations for the emergence of a newborn. In what ways do you think pregnancy and mothering are similar to or different from the process of literary creation? How has motherhood affected and changed your relationship with your writing practice? 

GS: Becoming a mother meant having to meet the demands of another subject (even before they become a subject!). I realized quickly how finite were my days, energies, and capacities. I also realized how much writing was mostly for me: the sheer pleasure of playing with language, uninterrupted. There were material changes: the notebook and pen in my bag were replaced with spare diapers and wipes. Nursing in the dark meant taking notes on my phone. I worried that I couldn’t write in those slivers of time and wakefulness. Motherhood, like any other experience, became another opportunity for art. I was interested in the linguistic development of my children, how they created their own words, how I quickly learned their sounds and we could have secret conversations. I read only picture books for a time, and that, unbeknownst to me, was its own program of study. When I started to write again, I suddenly found that my creative energy was moving me towards a new genre, and so I started writing picture books.

Motherhood, like any other experience, became another opportunity for art.

YW: I really appreciate your thoughts on how motherhood has affected your creative process. I remember that in the essay “Perennials”, you share that your answer to the question “why do you write?” is “I must.” You also share elsewhere in the collection that when you first decided to leave a pre-med program to study literature and writing, your decision clashed against familial, cultural, and societal expectations. What words of advice or encouragement do you have for your younger self? What would you say to emerging writers and other creative folks who are navigating similar challenges? 

GS: I took part in a project a few years ago where three college students read Panicle and wrote a letter asking me questions about a specific poem and writing in general. They asked me something that I fretted over and wondered myself at that age when I decided to make the switch into the Humanities: As a poet, do you think writing poetry is a skill that can be learned or that comes naturally to only a handful of people? The response I gave them is below: 

Some say that writing can’t be taught, that it is a natural “gift” endowed to a select few. Talent may play a part, but I mostly believe that anyone who loves to read can learn to write. Writing emerges from a deep, even obsessive, love of reading. It is important to read widely, to examine what language is doing, to carry around with you poets, novelists, artists, and philosophers that you feel understand you. A clarity of expression is important in this world. To write is to connect. I would like to think that anyone who desires such contact (a letter, a love poem, an ode to a friend) is able to learn how to write poetry.

YW: What have you been reading lately that you enjoyed and would like to recommend to readers? What projects are you working on now and have coming up next?

GS: I just started Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. I’m also teaching Scaachi Koul’s book of essays One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None of This Will Matter. As for my own projects, I’m excited to share my next picture book, You Are My Favorite Color (illustrated by Nina Mata), which comes out this June. My last book of poems, Panicle, will be performed on stage. And I dream of making another film with Sofia Bohdanowicz one day. 

Gillian Sze is the author of multiple poetry collections. Her poetry has been nominated for the QWF’s A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry, as well as received awards such as the University of Winnipeg Writers’ Circle Prize and the 3Macs carte blanche Prize. Gillian has also published two picture books, including The Night Is Deep and Wide, which was listed as one of the Best Books for Kids in 2021 by the New York Public Library. Her work has attained starred reviews from Quill & Quire, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews, and has been translated into Slovenian, French, Italian, Turkish, Hebrew, and Greek. Gillian studied Creative Writing and English Literature and received a Ph.D. in Études anglaises from Université de Montréal. Her latest collection of poems and essays, Quiet Night Think, explores the early shaping of a writer, the creative process, and motherhood.