ChicagoPostmodernPoetry.Com

Poetic Profile

 

 

Shin Yu Pai

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

General Questions

 

1) Where did you grow up? Was poetry and writing part of that mix?

I was born in Decatur, Illinois and grew up in Riverside, California, a small city located south of Los Angeles and north of San Diego, in what’s known as the Inland Empire. There was little to no Asian American community in Riverside, maybe a handful of Taiwanese families scattered throughout the city.  My older brother and I were for many years the only Asian kids in our classes and were both brutalized and fetishized for our otherness. At the time that I was growing up, many families from the L.A. area were relocating inland, to get away from the violence and gang life of the city, consequently, the ethnic mix where we lived seemed to be heavily Hispanic and African American.

Poetry was always a strong interest from an early age – I can remember writing concrete poems and haiku in the 1st grade in the GATE program at Highgrove Elementary where my brother and I went to school, though I probably didn’t begin to develop my sensibilities until high school, in English classes with many great teachers who deeply inspired and encouraged me. I remember discovering a book of poems by Allen Ginsberg in my high school library. Southern California was rather vacuous – heavy emphasis on looks, fitness, and outdoor sports vs. intellect and culture.   I left California when I was 17 and have never really gone back for any substantial period of time.

 

 

2) Who are your poetic influences, favorite poets, writers, artwork, other things that inform your work?

Favorite poets include Michael Ondaatje, Arthur Sze, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Andrew Schelling, and Lisa Gill. Favorite artists include Wolfgang Laib, Jackson Pollock, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Yoko Ono, Joseph Cornell, and Peter Adsett. I think of my work as being in a conversation with the writers and artists who engage me, therefore these artists are less influences than individuals who interest me.

 

  

3) When did you 'become' a poet? When did poetry become part of your everyday life?

I think the pivotal point for me as an artist came during my first residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire in 2003.  I was working on finishing my 1st collection of poems, Equivalence, which had been accepted for publication and I was under deadline to finish the book. I completed the collection in 2 weeks, generating roughly 20 new poems for the book, after struggling for close to a year with revising existing material and generating new work for the book.  The spaciousness of that environment and the freedom from responsibility, the generosity and inspiration of my peers at the colony instilled in me the confidence to become an artist, to choose that path. Despite this breakthrough, it is of course easy enough to lose sight of this from time to time. I do think of myself as being in a continual process of becoming as an artist, like the way that we are all beginning over and over again all the time.  Always reinventing one’s self.

I have observed my process through enough seasons to be able to say that writing is NOT a part of my everyday practice, though I may attempt to blog on a semi-regular basis and scribble down the odd thought, read as much as I can.  It is of course all a part of one’s process – living, working, engaging in the world.  I can say that writing is a disciplined part of my daily life when I am focused on a project and on retreat.  I’ve watched the seasons of my creative output since leaving grad school and entering the working world. I’ve found that I am more prolific in the spring, than at any other time of the year.  For me, all that may be required is this intense and isolated few months out of the year. That gathering of energy that allows me to really see the world, see my own mind and the connections between the two. During other parts of the year, I seem to spend time on photography, collaborations, freelance work which feel like less abstract practices. 

 

 

4) Where were you educated? Was this important?

I got my undergrad degree in English at Boston University. My first creative writing course was a poetry workshop with Deborah Bennett, a grad of the MA program at BU, who taught a curriculum of diverse and international poets (Neruda, Sor Juana, Komachi, Shikibu, Walcott).  Deborah was a great teacher - personable, a mentor, someone who introduced me to the notion of craft in poetry.  I reapplied to take the advanced poetry workshop for a second semester, this time taught by a different grad of the B.U. program.  The workshop leader lost my portfolio submission and ultimately denied me entrance to the course because the class had filled, which was horribly disappointing and shitty but consistent with B.U.’s bureaucratic and corporate nature. I ended up in a lower level intro to creative writing course with very beginner level writer-readers which was remarkably unchallenging. At times, I was lazy and admit to skipping the occasional assignment -turning in previously workshopped poems. I thought it was ridiculous that poetry classes were graded instead of pass/fail. The prestige of the graduate creative writing program at B.U. appealed to me for all of three seconds – I served as an intern at Agni and got to know the culture of the program, its students, faculty, grads. I was very happy to move on – B.U. taught me enough about what I wasn’t interested in.   

My parents were insistent that I go on to get my graduate degree directly after completing undergrad.  I decided that if I was going to get a degree so soon after finishing undergrad, it would be in something that I loved, and in an environment and community completely different from Boston that could nurture my creative impulses. I combed thru the college guidebooks and found information on the Naropa Institute that Allen Ginsberg helped to establish with Tibetan lama Chogyam Trungpa Rinpochce.  I moved out to Boulder 1 month after graduating from B.U. and enrolled in the MFA Writing and Poetics program which I studied in for a full year before transferring out to finish my coursework at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).  Naropa was great. I was very young and inexperienced at the time, working out a number of cultural identity issues, and not yet ready for an experiential education or to deconstruct my unformed identity.  My favorite teacher at Naropa was Andrew Schelling, though I also studied translation with Anselm Hollo and forms with Reed Bye. I did not enjoy writing in metrical forms, which I knew already from B.U.  During the summer writing program, I met and assisted Arthur Sze and Mei Mei Berssenbrugge who made a lasting impression as poets and teachers.  Naropa was a wonderful community of vibrant and diverse writers, many of whom were active publishing one another.  I remain in touch with several people from that period of my life, many of whom who have gone on to start larger publishing projects – Derek Fenner of Bootstrap Productions, Michael Smoler who produces handsome little chapbooks under a small imprint in New York, and Jerry Tumlinson who runs Third Ear Books from Korea. Though I ultimately chose to leave Naropa, the experience was formative and ultimately prepared me for what I would go on to study at SAIC.  SAIC was interdisciplinary in a way that Naropa also sought to address the wholistic education of the individual.  At SAIC, I studied photography with Joyce Neimanas and Aimee Beaubien and took writing courses with Rosellen Brown and Bin Ramke.  Sitting in on Bin Ramke’s classes was mind-expanding.  He introduced his students to Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift and also talked a lot about fairy tales, Freud, and the sciences.  I had many excellent mentors, including Elise Paschen, during my time at SAIC and one disastrous relationship with an advisor who I chose to work with because of her ethnic background. She was estranged from the department and motivated by her own set of complex political, racial, and gender agendas, not able to be fully present with her work as either an educator or mentor.   It was an interesting time – the writing program at SAIC was still very young in those years – I think I was in the 3rd or 4th graduating class when the program was still very much developing its identity, finding its niche in the market of MFA programs – the students were an eclectic bunch – narrative, performative, occasionally experimental.  I’ve stayed in touch with a handful of classmates from the program and track their progress.

I loved art school in general which felt for me like the natural place to study writing.  This environment and interdisciplinary approach very much laid the foundation for my current work which deals with the relationship between visual arts and language.

 

 

5) What is your goal with your multi genre work particularly the dance sequences?

I was approached a few years ago by Mei-Kuang Chen, dancer and choreographer with Hedwig Dances based in Chicago.  The company has a history of collaborating with poets, and Mei-Kuang took an interest in my poem “Recipe for Paper”.  Like me, Mei-Kuang if of Taiwanese origin, and I think the cultural content of the poem, which deals with Chinese history and invention captured her imagination.  I enjoy and deeply value the opportunity to work with artists from different disciplines and am open to what develops.  Mei has bounced a few ideas off of me and I gave her my feedback and thoughts about her interpretation of the piece. The performances will take place from November 4-6 at the Chicago Cultural Center as part of a word/dance program co-sponsored by the Poetry Center of Chicago.

 

 

6) What is your favorite food?

Sushi. Chinese, Thai, and Indian. Prosciutto sandwiches.  Fresh peaches and various summer fruit.  Guacamole.

 

 

7) Sports Team?

I am not a fan of team sports or sports culture, although I have written surprising amounts on the subject, considering this sports aversion.  My project “Unnecessary Roughness” with NY photographer Ferenc Suto explores attitudes about sports in depth – how it contributes to the socialization of violence and the development of sexuality in youth, the notion of tribe, pain thresholds.

 

 

8) Vacation Spot?

Beautiful other worldly places - New Zealand, Tibet, Dharamsala, Japan and China. 

 

9) Curse Word?

Sadly, I use all of them.

 

 

 

Craft Questions

 

 

1) How do you form a poem?  Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?

Poetry is both organic and synthetic in its process for me.  I sometimes sit for a very long time with an idea, up to a year, sketching out notes and ideas and collecting images and lines which spring from a very organic process of engaging with the world and language.  When I sit down to finally give shape to an idea, that can be more synthetic and automatic in terms of beginning to integrate and weave together the separate strands.  I collage different bits of language together and when I can begin to see what’s in front of me, a more intuitive process kicks in.

 

 

2) Where do you write? Is ambiance important? Do you have rituals or habits when you write?

I write where the moment seizes me – on trains, at work, in my  sun room at the back of the house. I do my best writing when I am on retreat.  Ambiance is very important – I do best in quiet, solitary environments.  My process changes a lot.  About a year ago, I was composing and revising a lot on the computer –something I had never done before.  It made moving things around on the page so much easier. More recently, I have returned to writing out poems by hand, mapping out more of my process for creation and using the computer in the stages of finalizing a work.  I sense that my writing practice will shift a lot in the next year.  For the first time, I will have a lot of unstructured time to devote more attention and energy to new projects.  It will be interesting to see what changes.

 

 

3) In the balance between found language and created language where does your work fall?

My earlier work was primarily created language, but my recent projects have employed more found language and appropriated liberally from my collaborators and their sources.

 

 

4) What is your vision for your work going forward?

I’ve been moving gradually towards a more collaborative writing/art-making practice.  I recently wrapped up work on 2 collaborative manuscripts – a book project with a painter, David Lukowski, and my previously mentioned sports project.  I’m presently focusing my energies on a project with a composer.  Next Spring, I’ll be exhibiting an installation piece developed with book artist Ellen Sheffield which will be on view in Candida Alvarez’s SubCity Projects space down in the fine arts building on lower Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

I hope in the future to work on a book of prose and have also had a family ancestry project incorporating photographs and stories on the backburner for much too long a time.