Written by: Yiyi He
Rita Wong is an Associate Professor in Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She investigates the relationships between contemporary poetics, water justice, ecology, and decolonization. https://www.connect.ecuad.ca/people/profile/14259
Rita Wong: RW Yiyi He: YH
YH:
1. In undercurrent, there are many allusions to Taoism, which I think have not been paid enough attention to by readers or critics. For instance, you mention “broken lines get parsed back into a cycle” (undercurrent 13); you also directly mention I-Ching (57) and even start the very first line of the anthology by saying that there is a water syntax you are still learning (9). There is the “fluid wisdom” (14) you want to invoke or “the flow of tao” (87) you refer back to at the very end. Does this “syntax” or wisdom have something to do with Taoism? If it does, what is such “water syntax” about specifically? How will these Taoist principles or rules shed light on issues of water governance or help to tackle water issues that are more and more pressing these days?
RW:
Respect for the flow of water; learning from the water by watching it, listening to it, and spending time with it is so important (to not take it for granted, to recognize the gift of life it offers us, to be grateful for what the water teaches us). Yes, I think it does have to do with Taoism in the sense of attending to the flow of energy, the dynamics of nature, the larger flows of energy that we are part of and can work with (rather than against). Many years ago, while I was an undergrad at the U of C, I wrote an essay about the aspects of Taoism that can be found in the romantic poetry of William Wordsworth. I don’t make a big deal about it but I believe there are cross-cultural ways to connect with and learn from Taoism.
YH:
2. You seem to be more engaged with environmental “activism” as a land and water protector than with environmental humanities as a poet-scholar nowadays. Your most recent Current, Climate is a compilation of your previous works on water, which I think is great especially for new readers to get to know your writing. I find it interesting that your poetic lines sometimes foresee/foretell the future and turn into the present. Do you feel the same? Can a poet be a prophet, to some extent? Do you still have faith in creative works to fight for climate justice or to slow climate change?
RW:
I don’t know if a poet can be a prophet. I hope so. It’s not up to me, actually. This question reminds me that there is one poem in undercurrent that I probably should have included in Current, Climate: “epilogue: letter sent back in time from 2115.” That’s a future I work towards. Whether it happens or not remains to be seen. Regardless of outcome, it’s important to do whatever’s needed to achieve climate justice. That includes creative works, and also much more than that is needed too.
YH:
3. In your poems, you often insert Chinese characters, which sometimes may lead to good “misreading” or “misinterpretation” from readers who cannot read Chinese. Is this act of including texts in Chinese spontaneous for you? Is it to give credit to your culture or to create the literary effect of defamiliarization, as most of your readers are from the English world. For instance, during one interview with Fazeela Jiwa, she mentions that she has read the Chinese characters 一，二，三(referring to numbers, one, two, three) as aesthetic choices about equations, while literary critic Sonnet L’Abbéor reads them as “i” turned on their sides in an article in Canadian Literature. To be exact, you are of Cantonese descent, which I feel privileged to share as a fond reader of yours. Do you think that being able to know or speak your mother-tongue has made you different from other writers with similar backgrounds (i.e., Larissa Lai) in terms of your thinking and writing?
RW:
I insert Chinese to refuse complete annihilation of my mother tongue, which colonial education systems lean towards. I’m grateful to stay connected to my ancestral languages, even if it’s just in small, simple ways. There’s much more there that could be done, and poets like Leung Ping-kwan encourage me in their ability to move between Chinese and English.
YH:
4. Speaking of cultural backgrounds, as a diasporic writer, how has your positionality influenced your writing in general, and water poetics and politics in particular? In your debut poem anthology, monkey puzzle, you have recorded your trip back to China, visiting the Three Gorges Dams. Is China an imagined motherland which was quite distant- I think at least physically- for you at the beginning? If I am not mistaken, has that impression changed after your visit? Meanwhile, in sybil unrest, your poetic collaboration with Lai, and many other occasions, you mention you are “uninvited guests on unceded territories” (123) on Turtle Island. In your situation as a Chinese Canadian (un)settler facing two nations-Canada and China, would you feel both intimate and distant at the same time? If you agree, how has this “tension” or “distance” between land and humans affected your creative writing and environmental activism?
RW:
The poet Fiona Lam has a book called Intimate Distances, which your question reminds me of. I think part of my work is to learn to be a good relative to the Indigenous peoples wherever I happen to live, be that Treaty 7 territory (Calgary) or Unceded Coast Salish lands (Vancouver). It will take many generations to heal the damage that has been done, and this is work that is far larger than my humble life, but I will contribute whatever I can to this larger journey to respect and care for the land that gives us life.
YH:
5. Can you share a bit why and how you begin your journey (about writing and beyond) with water and allying with Indigenous Peoples?
RW:
I’ve discussed some of this here: https://thecapilanoreview.com/44-rita–wong-is-downstream/ (my response to Dorothy Christian and Denise Nadeau’s invitation to Protect Our Sacred Waters is how I started with the watery journey).
YH:
6. You seem to love to play with the English language, i.e., avoiding capitalization, commas, etc. in your composition. You refer to English as the colonial or master language. Besides challenging the English syntax or grammars, etc., what actions can we take to unsettle the hegemonic system(s) in today’s world, as a reader, a writer or just as a human being?
RW:
We can practice paying attention to the land and climate around us, and the Indigenous peoples of these lands, wherever we happen to be. Build better relationships than colonization would have permitted. Show up when people ask for help, if you can. But keep in mind Lilla Watson’s words too:
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together” (Waston, qtd. in beholden 139)
Everyone is born with different gifts and skills. If we’re lucky, we get to develop them and share them. Whatever you do, try to come from a place of love, respect, and listening to learn.
YH:
Thank you very much for your insights and kindness.
Sources of books and interviews mentioned:
Wong, Rita, and Cindy Mochizuki. undercurrent. Nightwood Editions, Gibsons, BC, Canada, 2015.
https://49thshelf.com/Books/U/undercurrent
Wong, Rita, and Nicholas Bradley. Current, Climate: the Poetry of Rita Wong. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2021.
https://49thshelf.com/Books/C/Current-Climate
Wong, Rita., and Larissa. Lai. Sybil Unrest. Burnaby, B.C: Linebooks, 2008. https://www.newstarbooks.com/book.php?book_id=1554200695
Wong, Rita, Fred Wah, and Nick Conbere. Beholden : a Poem as Long as the River. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Talonbooks, 2018.
https://49thshelf.com/Books/B/beholden
“Fazeela Jiwa in Conversation with Rita Wong and Larissa Lai: sybil unrest”
“4/4: Rita Wong is Downstream” https://thecapilanoreview.com/44-rita-wong-is-downstream/
QWOCC 