1. How long have you been writing?

I’ve been writing since I was a child. I put together my first chapbook in 2nd grade. The story was called “Life as a Piece of Paper Named Zeus.” The cover was made of leftover pink floral wallpaper and the binding was duct tape. I didn’t seriously consider the possibility that I could actually be a writer until my last year in college in Washington, DC, where I was studying Chinese and political science. My friend, Mike Zito, invited me to a poetry reading and I went. The next time I attended a reading, Mike convinced me to go to a bar afterwards with some of the poets—Kaia Sand, Mark Wallace, and Rod Smith among them. Meeting actual writers who weren’t independently wealthy but who were, nonetheless, doing amazing work while navigating the tricky necessities of employment was encouraging. I realized that a writer was something one could be. So, I cancelled my post-college plan of returning to China and decided to stay in Washington, DC and be a poet and go to readings. I’d spent a substantial amount of my college years (and before) in China or studying Chinese, so staying in the United States and trying to be a writer seemed a lot more daring.

2. What sparked your interest in visual poetry/concrete poetry?

At least three things, and probably more: seeing a lot of visual art, teaching at an art school, and meeting visual poets.

In the years after I graduated from college, I saw a lot of art at the National Gallery, Hirshhorn, and Corcoran, as well as shows up in New York.  Until then, I knew pretty much nothing about modern visual art, let alone post WWII art. One of the first shows I saw was an Ed Ruscha show at the Hirshhorn and one of the last shows I saw before I moved to San Diego was an Ed Ruscha show (of drawings and studio notebooks). In between, the Ana Mendieta and Cai Guo-Qiang exhibitions at the Hirshhorn both stand out, as does the Russian Futurism show at MOMA. A Xu Bing exhibition at the Sackler Gallery in 2001 also stands out; I love his scrolls printed with thousands of imitation Chinese characters.

My first adjunct teaching job was at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, where many of my students were already accomplished visual artists. Visual art became the language I used to describe the nuts and bolts of writing because the comparisons worked well for my students. Teaching at an art school also helped me see poetry as part of larger, more complicated, cultural, historical and multi-disciplinary frameworks.

One of my students described drawing as “just making shapes that resemble real shapes.” I started drawing and making visual poems because I thought it would be interesting to attempt something I have no obvious talent for and because I was looking for a way to critically and creatively respond to all the poetry readings I was attending. So, I started doodling during readings, and those were my first visual poems. At this point I have more than a hundred reading responses; I’d like to publish them as a book of criticism or essays.

In between all of this I was corresponding and hanging out with my friend Jessica Smith, a poet/artist and author of Organic Furniture Cellar (Outside Voices, 2004). Jessica’s work is very visual, or plastic, as she would say. William R. Howe is another poet/artist and friend whose work is also a frequent source of inspiration—it’s very interdisciplinary and frequently performative.

Right now, I’m editing a forum/dialogue on visual poetry for Area Sneaks, a magazine based in LA. In addition to Jessica Smith and William R. Howe, Johanna Drucker, Robert Grenier, Derek Beaulieu, and Peter Ciccariello are also participants, so all of their work has been on my mind recently.

3. How would you define it (visual poetry)?

“Visual poetry” is a pretty broad term, but then again so is “poetry.” I suppose I think of visual poetry as one of many kinds of concrete poetry. Broadly speaking, concrete poetry is poetry that emphasizes the materials from which it is made while using some combination of language and non-linguistic materials. Visual poetry, then, would be particularly interested in the visual elements of that materiality and use of language.

4. Who are some of your favorite writers/artists? Who has influenced your work?

Well, in addition to all the people I mentioned above, there are many.  I came of age, so to speak, by going to readings in Washington, DC and New York—just being a part of those social/art/poetry communities had a huge impact on my work and the way I think about how to be an artist in the world. I don’t have an MFA, so I really learned to be a writer by going to readings, and hanging out and talking with other writers. The people from that context who most obviously influenced my work include Nada Gordon, Abigail Child, Rod Smith, Kaia Sand, Laura Elrick, Rodrigo Toscano and Mark Wallace, my partner. Several Canadian writers affiliated with the Kootenay School of Writing are touch points for me as well—writers like Nancy Shaw, who recently passed away, as well as Kevin Davies, and Jeff Derksen were and continue to be important to my own thinking about collaboration and a politically, socially engaged poetics.

Tina Darragh’s work has become increasingly important to me. She’s  a poet I also know from Washington, DC and often associated with Language Poetry. In 1999 she started working on a project that eventually became opposable dumbs, a multigenre piece that combines reportage, theater, letters of protest, visual pieces, and notes that examine and think about pain, animal subjectivity, economics, labor unions, feminism…Even after years of hearing her perform different parts of this piece and now reading the 2007 “project report” I have trouble summarizing it. Her work has so many possible sources that connect and expand into other possible sources. It’s  investigative and process-oriented, but the process and investigation are always shifting.

I’m interested in emotions and psychology, and how both relate to the various social, political and cultural structures we’re all a part of. So, while I’m mostly a poet, I read a lot of fiction: Djuna Barnes, Gerard de Nerval, Mary Butts, Jean Rhys, Edith Wharton, Colette, Jane Bowles, Paul Bowls, Kathy Acker, Peter Matthiessen (I love At Play in the Fields of the Lord), Alejo Carpentier, and Dodie Bellamy are all important writers for me.

Other writers & artists important to me include Marie de France, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Mina Loy, Catullus, , H.D. (especially her fiction), Hannah Weiner, Sophie Calle, , Leslie Scalapino, Övind Fahlström, Eleanor Antin, Louise Bourgeois, Frank O’Hara, Merce Cunningham, Pina Bauch, Bernadette Mayer, Caroline Bergvall, Adeena Karasick, Joanne Kyger, bpNichol, Alice Notley, Nick Piombino, Kristen Prevallet, Jerome Rothenberg…

5. What does poetry mean to you or what has it meant?

Well, poetry and extended art communities have shown me that there ways of living in, interacting with, and responding to the world that are different than many of the values I grew up with. Meeting other poets and artists really gave me the courage and knowledge to question all sorts of basic social assumptions about the way I thought I was supposed to live my life. It all sounds very tame, now, but meeting people who weren’t focused on getting married, having children, and landing some wonky DC job at the expense of everything else was incredibly important. The art I love and learn from most questions assumptions—and asks me to question mine; and it does so in ways that often simply aren’t acknowledged or allowed  in other discourses.

6. If you had to, define poetry.

If someone, anyone, calls it poetry, then it’s poetry. After that we can argue about whether or not it’s interesting or fun or effective or risky…