Interpoetics or the poetics of culture and the culture of poetics in Hannah Lowe, Russell Leong, Marilyn Chin, and Fred Wah

ABSTRACT

Interpoetics is the betweenness and connection between poetry and poetics, viewed from different angles – an examination of the space between that uncovers more about poet, text, image, influence, and genre because it is between and of both sides. The inter is a hyphen, representing either/or and both/and: the cultural poetics of betweenness. Such liminality relates to identity and, thus, a Chinese diasporic or hyphenated poetics. This article examines the poets Hannah Lowe, Russell Leong, Marilyn Chin, and Fred Wah, who explore their own identities: Chinese, American, Canadian, English-speaking, hybrid, and the voice of the poet. How do these poets speak for themselves in a culture that did not always let them speak, and negotiate their art and hybridity or other aspects of their selves as people and artists in ways that refuse, evade, or break the stereotype? Being “Anglo Chinese” is being or writing in English in an English-speaking country.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpoetics
• cultural poetics of betweenness
• hyphen
• diaspora
• Anglo Chinese
• poetry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This piece was first published in 2018 as “Memories of a Chinese-Jamaican Father” in Brinkhurst-Cuff.

2. Produced as a partnership between Kootenay Co-operative Radio and Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History, A Door to Be Kicked was workshopped in two live performances in Nelson, BC in 2019. It has subsequently been recorded and produced for radio and podcast in Nelson.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Locke Hart

Jonathan Locke Hart – writer, historian and literary scholar – received his PhD from Toronto in English and a PhD in history from Cambridge; he is fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, member of the Academia Europea; chair professor of the School of Translation Studies, Shandong University; fellow, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria College, University of Toronto; associate, Harvard University Herbaria; and life member, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Cambridge, Princeton, the Sorbonne-Nouvelle (Paris III), Leiden, UC Irvine, Peking University, and elsewhere.