Interview with Andy Quan

June 07, 2011 Michael Brennan: When did you start writing and what motivated you?

Andy Quan: My writing journey was at times entirely my own and at other times influenced by mentors and teachers. On the one hand, writing was not something that people did in my family. I did not know writers. My cultural milieu certainly wasn’t one to encourage becoming a poet and short-story writer. So, in some ways, I feel that I forged my own path. On the other hand, I am the type of person who needs guidance and encouragement, and this I found in various places. My mother read to me from a young age. I was a good reader and loved books. I occasionally received praise from teachers for my writing in elementary and high school, and then from various mentors during university.

At the end of high school, I was attracted to write poetry – typical teenage stuff, poetry as self-expression (angst was usually what was being expressed). But when I encountered my first poets: Margaret Atwood, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, I fell in love with their words. I shared my poems with other friends who wrote – my international college (Pearson Colleage) was a place that nurtured and inspired creativity, as was my small Canadian university where I continued to write, study literature, and hang out with other writers. My poetry professor kindly read my poems and started steering my writing in the right direction. Once a year, Trent University would also have a writer-in-residence which allowed students a private talk with that writer. So, rather than an isolated activity, I found writing as a way to connect with people, and learn from others.

When I found out that I could get published in magazines and literary journals, it was further motivation – a way to be seen and define myself and get recognition. While at university, my writing pursuits fused with my political activism. I was determined to make my voice heard, break silence and sameness and be a young, gay Asian writer. Finding publications that welcomed diversity was further encouragement to continue. Even though I had always been drawn to writing, I didn’t relate to the romantic notion of writers who felt that it was a ‘calling’ that they could not ignore. For me, I wrote, I developed my craft, and I worked to get it out to the world.

MB :Who are the writers who first inspired you to write and who are the writers you read now? What’s changed?

Andy Quan: I read many Canadian poets in my first years of writing poetry, and I was attracted to lyrical, accessible voices, often storytellers. A friend advised once that it’s good to read writers who are better than you, but not so much better that you can’t apply it to your own work and I’ve found that sometimes lesser known writers have inspired me just as much as the greats. There was also something instinctive about who I read because after reading their poems, I would often find myself inspired to write my own. Margaret Atwood was a first hero, particularly the poems she wrote in the mid 1980s. Patrick Lane, another wonderful Canadian poet, and also his wife, Lorna Crozier. I was amazed by Sharon Olds’ long lines and storytelling and vivid, intense personal histories. I started to look towards gay poets, and found John Barton, who became very important to my writing career, and I also fell in love with the poetry of Mark Doty. I was also fond of Pablo Neruda. I’ve often read anthologies of poetry, which show me the range of what’s being written and who's writing it – I quite like the Best American Poetry series. James Merrill’s Changing Light at Sandover was an amazing literary experience. Gerald Stern was one of my discoveries of the last years – I’ve also been reading various Australian poets in the last years; Martin Harrison’s Wild Bees was a particular revelation. Apart from poetry, I read a mix of fiction and short stories, combining writers unfamiliar to me with old favourites. Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro and Michael Cunningham are all favourites.

MB: How important is ‘everyday life’ to your work?

Andy Quan: When I was first publishing my poems, there was a string of first novels out from young Canadian writers. The lynchpin of each of the stories was a killing, a murder, something dramatic enough to lift the story out of everyday life. At the time, I remember thinking that everyday life had enough small drama in it, terrible tragedies and small victories. Why such melodrama to sell a story? I admired writers and poets who could illuminate everyday life, and make magic out of our common experiences. But years later, looking at my poems, they were most often based on intense experiences and key memories, the parts of life that are not every day. I’ve learned that it is possible, but not particularly easy to make literary magic out of the day-to-day.

MB: What is the role or place of subjectivity in your poetry? Do you see your work in terms of literary traditions and/or broader cultural or political movements?

Andy Quan: Certainly the voice of my poetry came out of the Canadian poets that I was studying in university in the late 1980s – free verse, heightened conversation as opposed to formalism or experimental poetry. At the same time, it very much fused with the politics of the time, how minorities asserted themselves, how we worked to diversify Canadian literature by inserting our voices into it. I was at an Australian panel on poetry where a number of the poets seemed to fear subjectivity, a complete opposite experience to my writing where I embraced it and, in doing so, aligned myself with poets and writers who spoke directly from their experience to talk about being a person of colour, or of a non-mainstream sexuality. To not speak from a personal viewpoint, to deny subjectivity in this context, would be useless.

I even went a step further in terms of a subjective voice and minority politics, and saw it as important to speak aloud as an Asian-Canadian who was gay – to show a diversity of Asian identities and perhaps break stereotypes of Asian cultures as conservative and quiet; and at the same time, I wanted to write about real experiences as a young gay Asian to contrast with a sameness in gay literature, a canon of old, white American gay men. So, my writing, both poetry and short fiction, is often in the first-person and is highly personal, a literary trope which I hope rather than being self-indulgent and egotistical is instead about how we discover other people by first understanding ourselves. I’ve wondered at times whether this approach stands in opposition to an Australian personality, which I see as self-deflecting or self-deprecating rather than self-centred and playful or subversive rather than serious or sincere. I also see an absence of the identity politics of North America around issues of race and sexuality that grew out of earlier discourse and social organising – the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, black power! and more. I don’t consider this either good or bad, except that non-white Australian writers really forge their own paths. In a similar ways, gay Canadians writing about gay lives and sexuality have had an easier time than gay writers in Australia – closer in proximity to the lively discourse of American neighbours, or even having a larger market by including the USA – rather than the relative isolation of this large, island nation.

MB: What aspect of writing poetry and working as a poet is the most challenging?

Andy Quan: Here is my story. I wrote poems. I got them published. I loved that. I wrote more, got published more, and worked very hard to get my first book published. It sold a modest amount of copies. I enjoyed being a published author, and later, found it stressful to manage the identity of being a writer. My self-esteem suffered when I wasn’t writing or publishing. I continued to write poetry because I loved doing it. I put together another manuscript. It was extremely difficult to get published. For whatever reasons, this one didn’t sell many copies. I’d gotten used to the fact that most of my Australian friends didn’t read my books though occasionally I wondered if I had more support that I would be more driven to write. But at the same time, I’d learned to stop worrying about being a writer, and for whatever reasons, have not written much in recent years, though I do occasional public events and editing work. Occasionally, I fret about whether I am wasting a gift to write. I wonder if my writing, in particular my poetry, has a particular Canadian voice that would have joined with community if I had stayed in Canada – as I can’t say that I have a regular writing community here in Australia, not that I’ve put in much effort. I do find that the people I’ve met in Australia generally don’t like poetry and often aren’t crazy about literature either. They seem to read a lot of biographies, popular fiction and non-fiction! So, I guess that’s what I find most challenging as a poet and writer – that the culture that I encounter in my daily life has not been particularly nurturing in a creative sense. I've felt out of step.

MB: What reading, other than poetry, is important to your work as a poet and why?

Andy Quan: I think I’m going to pass on this one. I read widely, but attempts at poems that deal with current news or politics or philosophy have always been a failure for me. Other poetry is what inspires my poetry. My wide reading of fiction helps me be a better person and enriches my mind, but I'm not sure I consider it important to my work as a poet.

MB: What is ‘Australian poetry’? Do you see yourself as an ‘Australian’ poet?

Andy Quan: I think I’d cut this question down to the second part of the question. Growing up as a third-generation Chinese-Canadian, fifth-generation Chinese-American, I’ve dealt with identity issues all of my life. Among other Asians, being Chinese was simply a way to indicate your specific cultural background. It was how I knew myself for many years. In university, being Asian-Canadian was more important as the political discourse that I was engaged in was about racism and inclusion and belonging and identity – and the larger grouping of an Asian Canada was more useful for this. Living in Europe for four years was a strange, puzzling experience in terms of identity. A hyphenated multicultural identity seemed something only of the new world. No matter how many generations in a country, immigrants, especially those of visibly different skin colour, would always be identified as from the ‘old’ country. In Europe, I was mostly Canadian and often North American to posit the difference between Europe and that continent. Friends and strangers could not understand what I thought simple concepts: cultural background and nationality are not the same, nor do they need to be, but where they intersect is complex. Now I have been in Australia for 11 years, and a citizen for three. I read Australian poetry and hang out, on occasion, with Aussie poets. Can I lay claim to kinship with these poets by dint of living in Australia or how much I love this country? On one hand, I would feel a faker; on the other, why wouldn’t I consider myself one of the diverse poet voices that I’ve read here?

MB: Don Anderson once described Australian poetry as Australia’s only “blood sport”. More recently critics have seen Australian poetry in terms of a “new lyricism” (David McCooey) and “networked language” (Philip Mead). What is the current state of play in Australian poetry? How do you think Australian poetry and discussions about Australian poetry might best develop in the next ten years?

Andy Quan: I wonder how any state of Australian poetry could be evaluated – is it in relation to perceptions of poetic cultures in other countries? Or to five or ten years ago? By neither of these criteria can I offer insight. However, I like an opinion and I like people with opinions, so I find it embarrassing to offer so little here. I have somehow managed to become a poet with two books to my name who is not strongly engaged with discussions of poetry. I read what I can. I am inspired by other poets. But I’m unable to trace what various strands of poetry are becoming more popular and finding themselves in conflict with other poetry. Meanwhile, I’m loathe to make generalisations and I can't sum up either Australian poetry in general or the current state of play from the two or three dozen Australian poetry books I’ve read. At one time, I thought that I’d detected among Australian poets an unwillingness to write emotionally and from their own experience, as well as a tendency to undercut serious moments with wry or witty interjections. But I don’t know how much of that was my own insecurity in trying to match my poetic voice with what I was hearing and reading. I think I should be able to offer an opinion – thanks to a few poet friends, I’ve hung out with some Australian poets and participated in events; lately I’ve been a guest poet at different poetry evenings. But I still can’t piece together what I’ve observed, heard and read: the voices of experienced poets who have written over many years; younger poets waiting for a first publication; those who are challenging the boundaries of the written page with sound and image, experimental poetry, language poetry, lyric poetry. How do these parts fit into a whole, and what is that whole?

MB: How is poetry relevant or valuable to contemporary society and culture in Australia or at an international level?

Andy Quan: Faced with such a grand question, my mind starts spinning off not into answers but into more questions: Why is art valuable? How is literature relevant? Do my conceptions of how we communicate have any relevance beyond people who don’t think the same as I? Is it possible to talk on behalf of ‘poetry’ as a whole with so many types of poetry, and types of poets, and poetic intentions, and unexpected results?

Fear of questions such as these chase me back to my tiny place of subjectivity where all I can say is that I find beauty, inspiration, truth and challenge in poems that I am drawn to; I hope that other people do as well.