Chen Chen – Nature Poem

12/15/21 • 26 min

Chen Chen is an award-winning poet based in the United States. In this episode, he talks about the composition, editing, re-editing (and re-editing), process of his poem 'Nature Poem' published in his debut National Book award longlisted collection When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017 and Bloodaxe Books, 2019). On apocalyptic pineapples, giving yourself permission, and what writers can learn from Marie Kondo.

'Sometimes you have to make mistakes, you have to allow yourself to go on tangents, on little side adventures ... and then return home.'

Craft is brought to you by Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing and Queen Mary University of London with funding from Arts Council England. Check out www.wasafiri.org for outtakes from this interview that didn't (quite) make the final cut, and much more from writers from all over the world.

Chen's forthcoming book is Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (2022).

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

'Sometimes you have to make mistakes, you have to allow yourself to go on tangents, on little side adventures ... and then return home.'

Chen's forthcoming book is Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (2022).

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Nina Mingya Powles – Tiny Moons

Nina Mingya Powles is a writer and zinemaker from Aotearoa New Zealand. In this wide-ranging reflection on writing her memoir and travel diary Tiny Moons, she discusses trying (and failing) to become more Chinese in Shanghai, the language of the body, and the politics of the untranslated.

'I want to intentionally decentre English as the main language and decentre Western ideas about Asia and Asian languages ...'

In 2018, Nina was one of three winners of the Women Poets' Prize, and in 2019 she won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing and the Landfall Essay Competition. She is also the founding editor of Bitter Melon苦瓜, a very small press that publishes limited-edition pamphlets by Asian poets.

Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai is published by Birmingham(UK)-based publisher the Emma Press. Nina's latest book is Small Bodies of Water.

Craft is brought to you by Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing. Check out our website (www.wasafiri.org) for outtakes from this interview that didn't (quite) make the final cut, and much more from writers all over the world.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Daniel Mella – Older Brother (El Hermano Mayor)

Daniel Mella is one of the leading writers in contemporary Latin American literature. Born and based in Montevideo, Uruguay, he is a two-time winner of the Bartolomé Hildago Prize. His autofiction novel El Hermano mayor (2017) is his first translated into English, by Megan McDowell, as Older Brother (Charco Press, 2018). In this episode, he discusses the difficult process of converting the real-life tragedy that inspired the novel into a fictionalised account, the dangers of viewing the world through aesthetic eyes, and the revelatory power of dreaming.

‘It wouldn't have been a true book if it was only sad.’

Craft is brought to you by Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing and Queen Mary University of London with funding from Arts Council England. Check out www.wasafiri.org for transcripts and extras from this interview, and much more from writers from all over the world.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.