Mangosteen & temperance: A quick Q & A with Zhi Yi Cham
Subbed In director Dan Hogan had a quick chat with blur by the author Zhi Yi Cham.
Zhi is a Malaysian woman currently based on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country which now exists as the esoteric wormhole known as Canberra. She is a believer of deep joy mediocrity and aspires to full time tenderness.
For the entire month of January 2020, $14 from each purchase of blur by the will be donated to the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) to assist at the frontline of the climate crisis and assist with bushfire recovery efforts. The NSW RFS is largely staffed by volunteers and volunteer retirees. Years of austerity measures installed and continued by the conservative Australian government have stretched the resources of the NSW RFS.
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Dan Hogan: You write how blur by the is ‘a yearning for freedom from grief, memory, and—ultimately—from definition’. This longing for emancipation from categorisation is a recurring theme in blur by the. Your writing is striking for its strong poetic voice balanced with a wide range of ‘experimental’ structures. Was this an inspired approach, something you developed over time, or something else?
Zhi Yi Cham: Like many things, I learn by emulation. In this instance, I was shown what’s possible by poems I read in journals, etc. I can’t quite recall which ones, except that I was moved that lines can suspend themselves away from a spine. That’s when I started playing around with my poems. I never really know what I’m doing? I just enjoy following what my gut tells me.
‘throwaway lux’ is one of my favourite poems from blur by the. The way food manifests ideas and images throughout the collection is really interesting. How central/important/indirect/deliberate was food—as an act and concept—to your writing process?
Thank you, I’m so glad you enjoyed it x
I remember going back through the collection to more concretely understand what was happening in each poem and it surprised me how much food surfaced in the text (nearly every poem!?). Maybe because so much of my conscious thinking is actively about and from food—in honing in on cravings of my body and satisfying them. Food has always been for me a mode of healing, a reminder of trauma, acts of love for the self, and for people around me. I am incredibly socially challenged and can come off aloof. The two languages of care in which I am confidently proficient, are poems, and eternally, food. I don’t have a choice, this is just what’s available to me.
‘you a blur by the counter’ is a phrase from a poem in the collection from which the book’s title is derived. Why was it important for you to title the book blur by the?
The poem describes wires crossed between two people. In that moment, the you persona turned into a smudge in the vision of the i persona. Blur by the meaning you – You, whom I love and cherish and so desire to see me. You, who cannot. You, whom I’ve erased in that moment to protect myself, but in all iterations of reality will retain x
It represents for me an unresolvedness waiting to be released.
Who or what were some of your artistic influences when writing blur by the?
I can’t say for sure. I absorb a lot very easily, which is possibly why a lot of pop culture weaves into the text, and of course food because I eat.
If the year consisted of only one season, which would you choose?
Temperance.
If the core of the Earth had to be one giant fruit, what fruit would you want it to be?
Mangosteen.
Who are some poems or poets you would recommend to people who might not be very interested in poetry?
Toward the Poetics of Phantom Limb by Jennifer S. Cheng, Jennifer Nguyen, Chen Chen, Incantations / Incarcerations by Bernice Chauly.
What is the musical soundtrack to blur by the?
One of the more prominent (and long) poems in blur by the is post Solange which I wrote post seeing Solange in Sydney.
So, to start with:
By Solange: Rise, Mad, Cranes in the Sky and Junie;
In editing and setting intentions for the book: Weight and San Marcos by Brockhampton;
sleepless in __________ by Epik High;
And other tracks:
Make Me Feel by Janelle Monáe;
Havoc (cover) by Elizabeth Tan;
但愿人长久 by 王菲; and
Pagi Yang Gelap and Papa Mama by Hujan
In terms of writing and art, what are you working on at the moment?
Last year I worked on a film / food project named The Moon Is Beautiful, Isn’t It? in the You Are Here Artist Development Program which formed part of the festival in October.
I am working on digitising this work to be distributed as a newsletter.
Also I stopped writing poems, so I’m learning how to do that again.
blur by the is a collection of fractures that make not quite a whole. It is a giving of permission to the self, to exist as messily as ( i s ). These poems are a record of navigation through longing and dis [ place ] ment of the body and of place, a shattering of expectation(s) of the self and of family, often through dreams, food and eroticism. blur by the is a yearning for freedom from grief, memory, and—ultimately—from definition.
The form through which the poems take in blur by the is dancing-in-your-bedroom free, un-velcro-ed false bravado free. The poems eat a lot and hope to feed you too.
Zhi is a Malaysian woman currently based on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country which now exists as the esoteric wormhole known as Canberra. She is a believer of deep joy mediocrity and aspires to full time tenderness.
Dan Hogan is the director of Subbed In.