Negotiating Between Worlds
March 31, 2022 was a turning point in Eric Yip’s life - he was named the winner of the UK National Poetry Competition 2021. He was not only the youngest poet ever to win the competition, but also the first Hong Konger to do so. As competition judge Fiona Benson remarked, the winning poem “Fricatives” is an “incredibly powerful, vulnerable story of an uneasy assimilation [...] It’s a poem of poise and counterpoise, and is personal, political and acutely musical.” At the time, Eric was a 19-year-old student studying Economics at the University of Cambridge. Ever since, 24-hour days might be too short to fit in all that life has to offer. Winning the competition has encouraged him to live an active life as a poet while studying at the same time.
When we finally found a time to meet, I was impressed by his eagerness and sharpness to make sense of the art of poetry. The spark within him is contagious. Beginning with a discussion of his winning poem, we explored the connection of poetry with truth-telling, multilingualism, and activism.
Sharon Yao: Thank you so much for your time, Eric. I really appreciate it! Since The National Poetry Competition 2021 winners were announced, I guess you must have had a busy Spring when you juggled between studies, poetry-writing, and multiple interviews. You mentioned previously that you were surprised to receive the prize and the subsequent attention could be daunting. It has been a little more than three months now. How do you feel at the moment?
Eric Yip: The past few months have been an absolute whirlwind. One of the best things to come from it was having the opportunity to meet other writers, which was something I didn’t know I needed. Even now, I still feel incredibly lucky, and I’m invigorated to use that luck to learn and engage in dialogues that matter to me. Interestingly, I’ve been reading more fiction alongside poetry, which I guess is a way of keeping reading and writing as what it has always been for me: a private refuge devoid of the pressure to create.
SY: You said meeting other writers was something you didn’t know you needed. I am curious to know more about that realization.
EY: Writing is in many ways a solitary process, but I think it was especially so before I came to the UK. It wasn’t that there weren’t any writers in Hong Kong, but back then I never told anyone about what I was doing. I think meeting writers can add another dimension to reading. You become more aware of the membranous nature of the page, how there’s always a human on the other side granting you a window into their world. Chatting with poets and reading their work reminded me of the brilliance and diversity of those worlds. It was also important for me to find others who were prodding at the questions I care deeply about, whether that be queerness, multilingualism, and so on. Knowing that I wasn’t alone gave me a huge sense of comfort.
SY: It is great that you are exploring both the communal and private aspects of writing.
Let’s talk about “Fricatives,” which is like your debut. I see in it an entanglement of layers of power dynamics – whether it is the use of English with the history of colonialism, racial dynamics when the speaker moves to a new country, migration, or sexuality. There is always this sense of domination and submission. Can you tell us more about the combination of power dynamics and how it came about?
EY: When I wrote the first draft, it came very naturally as a narrative poem. The narrative popped up very clearly in my mind. There is a logical similarity among all the power relations portrayed in the poem: it is not only about submission but the expectation to submit. For instance, in the first scene, as a student, you are in English class. The English teacher expects students to submit to a certain way of pronunciation, which is how it has always been. Even during the sex scene, the speaker is expected to submit. When I was writing the poem, I read a lot of articles about immigrants coming from Hong Kong to Britain. Some of the interviewed immigrants say, “We don’t want to be of any trouble to the British” or “we don’t want to cause any trouble.” A particularly infuriating article in the Telegraph went like “Ready to become model citizens – Hong Kongers find a new home in the UK.” It goes into a bizarre introduction which says those Hong Kongers have democratic values, speak English, are well-educated, and most importantly, have relatively significant amounts of wealth. This is symptomatic of an incredibly patronizing and harmful narrative surrounding 'good immigrants' and model minorities. The message is clear: you are a guest coming into my house, and I, the house-owner, deem you good enough to stay. I think this is where the pressure to assimilate comes from. I know that to a lot of Hong Kongers who have moved to the UK, the language barrier is a significant challenge and has tangible impacts on their lives. Not only would it limit the occupations they can take, it would also hinder involvement in communities that they might want to be a part of. When I wrote “Fricatives,” I was reading quite a few of these reports. I didn’t really know how to label that feeling as I read them, so I guess the way that I tried to do so was through the poem, and that was how the poem came about.
SY: Your answer shows the process of writing to be very organic.
In the poem, I also felt a sense of hopelessness in relation to places. The Alcatraz to Angel Island allegory seems to run through the poem. One could attempt to escape from one place to another, but in truth fail to reach a better “place” in life. Do you see any place for hope in this piece?
EY: I could start by describing the mood I was in when I wrote the poem. I feel like it did come from a certain place of desperation. It was a pent-up feeling of having to pour something out. Especially since I didn't expect anyone else to read it, it was a very confessional poem. But looking back on the poem now, as a reader, I see a very ironic sense of hope in that the poem won the competition in the UK. After receiving this honor, I did several readings to a mainly UK audience. It felt surreal, because the poem became self-referential. The fact that this poem could only be created in English is by itself ironic. If it weren't written in English, no one would have cared, and it wouldn't have spread so widely either. But I believe there is hope when people, especially young writers, look at this poem and its National Poetry Competition win. They may feel there is a place for them to express what they want, and that the poem is evidence that there is the possibility for them to challenge what is considered the norm. That being said, I never considered the possible impact of my poem on readers when I submitted it. I literally forgot about the competition until I received the call. It was a really bizarre experience.
SY: It is amazing how hope can spring up from unexpected places – of all places, a place of desperation. Did this urgency to release your desperation come from a place of nostalgia in relation to your homeland? In other words, was home to you already a place you could never return to?
EY: I think it’s interesting for writing, probably especially for poetry, because you’re trying to capture a specific moment when writing. It's a snapshot. It can be very microscopic. Some works are just a snapshot of a singular object or instant. Same for “Fricatives,” it was a snapshot of the mood of the moment. At the same time, memory is unreliable. It is tainted by what we want the memory to be. It's not stagnant. So, when I put something from my own life or experiences that I've heard about into my poems, it becomes something I can play with. I can alter and even mis-remember things. For “Fricatives,” a lot of the comments I saw online were written by people who approached the poem at a very autobiographical level. They say how “Eric” instead of “the speaker” did this or that. The amount of attention did make me feel like someone was flashing a light in my face. I remember what Caroline Bird said about a poem in her book In These Days of Prohibition, “This poem is true but contains no facts.” There’s a difference between poetic truth and factual/informational truth. I think a lot of poetry is not about information. “Fricatives” isn’t. Poetry is beyond the autobiographical. It does not matter whether you know how much I am drawing from my own experience. If the poem captures a certain true feeling, then I believe it has achieved its purpose.
SY: I recall that you shared in other interviews about poetry writing in English being a place that conceals and reveals at the same time. It brings proximity to truth but at a distance. Would you like to tell us more about the significance of these juxtapositions in English poetry writing as a site for truth?
EY: My English writing has always been better than my Chinese writing, so maybe that’s why I ended up writing poetry in English. I also started out by reading poems written in English, so it was natural for me to gravitate towards writing in English. An added complexity is that my fluency in English is a product of the privilege I had. I was able to be exposed to English and learn it. Further adding onto that is the question of “Why would knowing or being able to speak English better be a privilege?” There is a huge chain of connotations and those are important to address, but for me, it was a very innocent thing. I simply have another language and write better in it. In retrospect, writing poems in English instead of Chinese does add an extra layer that separates my writing from the immediate external world. In Hong Kong, most of my conversations would be in Cantonese. My friends in the UK are mostly from Hong Kong too, so we use Cantonese. Reading and writing poems in English gives me a second room where I can be completely divorced from the quotidian world. It is a way for me to shelter myself. English is like a shield as well; I don’t necessarily want people close to me to fully understand my poems. When I write, I value honesty – not necessarily biographically but in terms of the truthfulness of feeling. Sometimes, you do have to shut out everyone else and look within, and that is easier to do when you are writing in a language that is a bit more difficult for people close to you to parse.
SY: Interestingly, when you are honest to that deeper truthful feeling, even strangers could resonate with your poems. On poetry as truth exploration, you said in the interview with Varsity: “I suspect no one really knows why they write what they write, other than the fact that our minds latch on to stories and experiences dear to us, and hence poetry becomes a way of unfurling the sail that carries us towards some semblance of clarity.” Poetry almost acts as a guide in your journey of life towards truth. Is it apt for me to say that poetry resembles faith or religion?
EY: I guess I would define faith as belief but without the condition of reason. You don’t have to have evidence to have faith. If we can apply that to poetry, I guess it does require a certain amount of faith to write poetry because ultimately poetry is just words on the page. At times, poetry or any form of writing can feel helpless because the writer is not a doctor. I believe words can save lives but not to the extent that a surgeon or a firefighter, for example, can. Poetry changes people's lives on a very abstract level and that, I think, is unique to humans. The act of continuing to write poetry and believing that it actually has some significance requires a certain degree of faith. This faith is not necessarily in the reader, but in the fact that language can actually challenge the borders of meaning and that meaning can be translated to something more tangible. One's relationship with poetry can also be like one’s relationship with religion. There might be times when you are doubtful and your belief starts to be a bit more shaky. That can certainly happen with writing. It’s very natural for anyone who’s writing to sometimes wonder, “What am I doing? This doesn't make any sense. No one's going to read this … even I don't want to read this.” That wavering of faith is, in some sense, a parallel between one’s experience with religion.
SY: Right. At the same time, the writing process involves a lot of trimming and rewriting. Given the time and contemplation required, poetry writing itself is like a spiritual or mindfulness exercise. What are the insights you have gained, or the joys and struggles you have experienced in this process?
EY: When you’re revising, you sort of give in to the logic of the poem itself. I feel like each poem has its own internal logic that does not necessarily abide by the logic that we’re familiar with. That’s why some poems are so weird, right? But it makes sense within its own world, and a lot of the revising is about clarifying or distilling that internal logic or thread of thought. I personally haven’t really tried meditating as a spiritual exercise, but I can conjecture the revising process, which is very introspective, to parallel that of meditation. Sometimes, the revisions just don't work. There are poems I tried to revise, but they just didn’t work and I had to shelve them. It doesn't mean that the process was worthless. Maybe you can use those lines in another poem. And even if you do not use anything from that poem, you still would have gained from the experience of creating and editing. I think it’s the same with meditation. When someone is looking inward, it does not seem like anything is happening. You’re just sitting there with eyes closed, yet something is changing. You're in a state of flux. I can definitely see how poetry writing resembles spiritual meditation.
SY: I love what you said about each poem having its own logic. It is as if the writer is oddly passive by allowing the self to be guided into the logic.
EY: Yes, a good poem would have a force of its own that pushes you. If you try to write against that, it won’t work out. I'm very interested in the difference between writing more subconsciously (like free writing) and writing in a very conscious manner, and in fact these differences might lie on a spectrum. In Cambridge, I had the great opportunity to chat with Valzhyna Mort, a Belarusian poet and translator. Starstruck, I asked her, “Do you think being a translator helps with writing poetry?” She gave a definitive yes, with the reason being that translation forces you to make choices. In translation, you have to be very specific about the words you use, but when writing poetry, when you're leaning more on the subconscious end, you can become a bit lax. You are not exercising new muscles, basically. That translator mindset of having to consciously choose can be very helpful during editing. So there are two different modes going on here. I do agree that in the drafting phase, you just let everything out. It’s “word vomit,” after which the trimming and choosing happens. Those two different modes are both enjoyable to me because they almost require different skills.
SY: Using English as a second language could feel like a disadvantage, but based on what you just said, it helps with word choice and precision.
EY: Yes, multilingualism can be a huge gift. I can actually demonstrate this. Let's consider the word “firework.” The Chinese word for it is “煙花” (Cantonese pinyin: [yin1][fa1]), which directly translates into “smoke flower.” You would hardly be aware of the combination of literal meaning if you only use the vocabulary in Chinese. We say “煙花” so matter-of-factly that it has bypassed the literal meaning and simply conjures up the image of fireworks. We don't think of it as a flower of smoke. But when I move it across a new language, it suddenly becomes so apparent that a firework really is smoke shaped like a flower. Another example would be the Chinese character for waves. It's “波” (Cantonese pinyin: [bo1]). The character is made up of the water radical (氵 ) with the character of skin (皮). When I contemplate the word from a linguistic distance, I realize waves are the “skin” of water. It makes so much sense, and it is the use of English that creates for me the distance which enables the realization. It's not necessarily about translation. It is about removing yourself from another language – a repositioning that allows you to look back at either your native language or any language that you know, through a different lens. It's like moving around a statue so that you see different angles. Discussion surrounding multilingualism in poetry, or in diasporic poetry, seems to be getting increasingly complicated. I'm afraid of veering off topic here, but I was just reading an essay in Astra Mag that criticizes the kind of handwavy multilingualism in diasporic poetry where one simply inserts random Chinese characters or Vietnamese words into a poem to signal ethnic credibility. You have to be careful when you do the things I just mentioned in poetry because it can be borderline fetishization or exoticizationof a language, but I do think the ability to cross between languages is a massive, massive gift.
SY: It is fascinating to see that this cross between languages enriches both languages involved. I feel like if I do not personally know those languages, I might miss out on the beauty of this art. What advice would you give to whoever hopes to approach poetry with elements unfamiliar to them linguistically and culturally?
EY: In my mind, there are different associated discussions surrounding this issue, and the first one is the notion of the universal nature of literature. That is, some core fundamental human issues should be the core of your work because that is what makes literature great. However, the idea that literature should be universal is always biased towards the status quo due to how the universal often equals things that people are familiar with. There’s an essay by Chen Chen on this that I fall back on sometimes. What people are familiar with are usually works or themes that appear a lot, oftentimes from more privileged groups. When I approach works based in cultures foreign to me, I don’t expect there to be something beyond the culture from which I must extract for this work to be meaningful. I don’t need to be able to understand everything about another culture (and probably couldn’t if I tried) in order to resonate with or appreciate the poem as both a poet and a reader. I do remember recently reading Sonnets for Albert – a collection by Anthony Joseph. It consists mostly of elegies about the poet's father from Trinidad of the Caribbeans. I know next to nothing about Trinidadian culture and there are a lot of cultural references in those poems. Me not knowing them doesn't make me feel excluded, however. The purpose of the work is not to make me feel included or in the know. It's just that the poems have something to say and I have the privilege to be able to listen in on that. I have always had that attitude when I approach any work that I read, even when reading poems by Eduardo C. Corral, who uses Spanish very unapologetically in his poetry. I don't necessarily understand what the Spanish words mean. I could look them up, but I don't really have to. Sometimes, it’s the musicality of the word that matters. Other times, there are contextual clues. The whole point of this long-winded explanation is – if someone feels excluded when approaching a work of a culture unfamiliar to them, it’s not the work’s fault. I think the problem is with the perspective or attitude that readers are bringing to the table.
SY: In other words, we can learn to accept our cultural limitedness through exposure to culturally unfamiliar works. In view of this mentality of acceptance that poetry can potentially cultivate, do you see your work or poetry in general as a site of activism?
EY: Personally, I don't start writing a poem from a place of activism because that's not really my goal, nor would I consider myself an activist simply because my poems or poetry touch upon social issues. To me, activism implies an intent to not only discuss certain social issues, but to also direct actual change in certain directions. Using “Fricatives” as an example, it was just a personal expression. I wasn't writing the poem to incite change. It is true that change could be incited, but that’s based on the decision of the audience. Maybe they read the poem and recognise there are issues they hadn’t thought about, so they then decide to start reflecting on them. The reflection process is on their side. For me, I care most about the poem itself. Although this may seem like a very selfish thing to say, I simply can't envision myself as an activist first and a poet second. I know there are activist poets like Audre Lorde. There are also writers who, other than writing poetry, write a lot of essays, often very argumentative ones even. The connection between writing and activism is worth exploring. Let's say for someone like James Baldwin. Is he an activist simply because he wrote a lot of essays about race and masculinity, or was he simply creating art out of it? It becomes a bit blurry, but for me, definitely, poetry is only made into a site of activism through the response of the reader.
SY: Indeed, readers take an active role in making meaning.
At the moment, you are frequently labeled as the Asian diasporic queer writer. Do you claim this title or feel confined by it?
EY: I would not actively refer to myself as a certain type of poet, as I’m not entirely sure what that even means. Categories can be blanket terms, somewhat like the genre labels of “crime” and “romance” on bookstores shelves. There are poets who claim the label because they are proud of that identity, which is totally fine. There is a benefit to doing so, too. If I own up the title of being a queer poet; it makes people confront that identity and deal with it. I do not want to confine myself with such labels though since I am still very young and have a lot of poems to write. I don't want to box myself in. Recently, I have been trying to work against the perceived expectations of what someone like me “should write”. The whole thing about giving a platform to marginalized voices is not just about letting them talk about the issues you expect them to talk about. It is about giving them space to do whatever they like to do. I do not mind the labels, but I personally would not just introduce myself as a certain type of poet.
SY: It is great that you give yourself the freedom to keep exploring different topics and issues in writing. I look forward to the many more poems you will write in the future!
At this point, we switched into Cantonese, thinking that the interview was coming to an end, but what arose from an informal conversation afterwards became equally meaningful. With the permission of Eric, I have transcribed the following snippets into English.
I am fascinated by how you would start reading poetry on your own.
EY: I started by reading older poetry, such as the works of the Romantics. I think those are easier to understand. Let’s say for someone like Alfred Tennyson. He expresses very clearly what he wants to convey in some of his poems, so it was reasonable for me, a Form 4 student at the time, to read. The more I read, the more I realize that things don’t have to be so explicitly explained in poems. Surrendering the insistence to understand a poem is key, I think. Some poems hand you a platter of images like a dish. It is like a magic show. You do not have to understand how the magicians did it as long as they are able to perform the trick. Sometimes we do not even want to know how the magician did it unless you want to become one yourself. For example, in Padraig Regan’s Some Integrity, one food poem describes a tomato only. It writes about the tomato so awe-inspiringly and that is already enough. When you look at a painting, it doesn’t need a wordy explanation of how it is trying to say its main message. The painting could just be beautiful on its own.
SY: Instead of giving yourself the pressure of having to make sense of the poem, you simply immersed yourself in it, right?
EY: I think so. In Hong Kong, reading comprehension is taught with the emphasis on finding a thesis statement, which is a very anatomical approach to literature. I think when one is to appreciate the beauty of things, they should not break them all up into parts. I would not take each internal organ out and say a creature is beautiful because it has this or that organ at a certain place within its body. The same applies to the appreciation of a text. You will not simply say a text is beautiful because a certain technique is used. It comes as no surprise to me that many students do not enjoy reading literature at school. The overemphasis on breaking down a text in analysis is not specific to Hong Kong, I guess. Syllabi for teaching poetry tend to talk about what poetic or literary devices are used. However, all these are auxiliary to the essence. I do not think it is right to judge whether a poem is good merely based on whether it has used a specific technique.
SY: There is a danger of reducing a piece of art in the effort to analyze the form, or figure out the main message. The poem could either be reduced to a combination of techniques or a thesis statement [...] The relation between form and content is worth thinking about.
EY: I recently wrote a series of what I call “character sonnets” and these poems will be published soon in different magazines. What I mean by “character sonnets” is that I used a Chinese character in each poem. They are pseudo-sonnets, really. There are no rhyming words. The reason I call them sonnets is because they all have fourteen lines and a volta. I confine myself to the form so that I must make a turn as I approach the ninth line. I love the conceptual idea of the sonnet form; it forces change. Form is definitely something I want to explore further. The visual presentation can have a great impact too. Whether the lines are all left-margined or on both sides, divided into stanzas, or made to look messy etc.. You can try a lot of things to achieve different effects. There are lots of toys to play with.
SY: What you said reminds of English essayist Addison’s criticism of false wit in The Spectator no.58. To him, some poets try to be witty by playing too much with the form so that the content of the poem becomes compromised. The notion is that form and content should have a relation. Of course, there would be instances where people play with rules and intentionally break boundaries. Those works also have their value.
EY: Yes, the best application is when something “meta” is happening. Take my character sonnets as an example, the sonnet to me is representative of the Western poetic tradition, so it’s interesting to impose it upon a Hong Kong context to write about Chinese characters. To me, it hints at the aftereffects of colonialism not just in my city but also in my own personal development. Perhaps this is simply my internal justification after the fact. To be honest, the real reason might just be that the sonnet has a dictated turn which makes it fun for me to write them.
