 Welcome everyone. Hello, we're going to get started in just a moment while we let the room fill up for just a moment. We want to thank you all for being here tonight. And I'm going to place in the chat box, the document for tonight. And if you've never attended a program with me before. I'm a Nisa, I'm your librarian from San Francisco Public Library, and I use a document for every single event I do. It has links to all of the library resources that I'm going to talk about and links to tonight's authors and always when authors get together resources start flying so I will keep up with that. And I will add it to the doc it's a living document you just take that link. And it will have everything from tonight's conversation. And I want to welcome our YouTube viewers as well. So tonight we are here for Victoria Chang and Kristen keen on exploring grief. 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But if you can come on down the correct is gorgeous, and there's lots of space to move around and space out. One City one book, it is the 17th year of one city one book and we have selected Nigel Thor and Erlen Woods and their book this is your hustle, unflinching stories of everyday prison life. This is based their book based on their podcast. The main event will be in November books will hit your shelf mid September. So keep an eye out for those coming your way. November and December will have two months of programming based around the topic of this book I have lined up. So, beyond just Nigel and Erlen will be in combo with Piper Kerman from the writer from Orange is new black so stars, headliners, and then amazing humans and organizations doing amazing work about incarceration and reentry. So, stick around, you'll hear more about that in the months to come, you will not miss it there will be banners there will be everything. So, get your book and book club starts in October. All right, tonight we are here with writers Victoria Chang and Christine, Kristen keen to discuss change most recent powerful form bending collection of work, exploring longing grief and memory. Victoria Chang is a poet writer and editor, her new book of poetry the trees witness everything was published in copper Canyon press and or Sarah books in 2022. Her non fiction book dear memory letters on writing silence and grief was published in 2021. A little bit on copper Canyon was published in 2020 and named a New York Times notable book, and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Ansfield Wolf Book Award and poetry, and the pin bull care award. It was also long listed for a national book award and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Received a Guggenheim Fellowship lives in Los Angeles and is a core faculty member within Antioch's low residency MFA program. Kristen keen is the author of an encyclopedia bending time, the novella luminaries and the co author of forthcoming academic texts from Gilford press, a writing and research have appeared or forthcoming. The Washington Post New England review creative nonfiction, try quarterly electric lit catapult reading research quarter research quarterly American educator and more. A doctoral fellow at Stanford University she studies teaching learning of literacy. She volunteers at our project read thank you, and scholar match. All right, without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to our speakers, Kristen keen and Victoria. Hi everyone. Thanks for being here. I want to share gratitude with the San Francisco public library, whose programming is such a jewel here in San Francisco. And thank you, especially to Anissa for helping us to organize this evening. All the folks that are signing on to listen tonight thank you for being here and of course Victoria for coming to share and talk about her brilliant work. Before we start Victoria I thought we could set the stage a little bit for folks who joined us, and since we're going to be exploring your three most recent works, a bit dear memory letters on writing silence and grief, and the trees witness everything. When we first spoke I mentioned how I thought it could be interesting to put the three together into conversation, and to explore the ways that they sort of co here. So I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind just orienting us briefly to each one and sort of just what the driving forces behind each work. Thanks for setting this up and thanks to the library and everyone for coming and. Yeah, I mean I guess I'll start with, with obit which came out. You said 2020. 2020. Yes. Yeah, my mother passed away, pulmonary fibrosis, and that is just a really long disease and it's just some sort of unknown lung disease where your lungs, they can't they harden, and then you kind of gradually can't air can't go in and out and then you gradually suffocate to death so she's had, she had that problem. I mean I think when it was diagnosed in her 40s. And then it got worse and worse, and then my dad had a stroke when I was in my 30s so he must have been, I've lost track of all the time sort of thing but he was pretty young, and, and then my mother's illness then sort of seemed like it had gotten triggered anyway, that was way too long I don't know why when is that long explanation I've never done, I've never done that before I don't know why I did that but basically, yeah. Yeah, so my mother passed away in 2015 and then, and I really struggled with with her, I still do with her passing and her illness it was so long and. My father's illness that was at the same time, but I didn't really want to write elegy, so I purposely actually said I'm not going to write anything about my mother. And then I ended up writing these obituaries so I think it wasn't that I didn't want to write about my mother and her passing or my Greek but it was those hadn't. I don't want to write the traditional elegy so yeah that came out and then, and then at some point I think I found a lot of boxes because my mother was a classic hoarder and then I found all these great documents and papers and various things and was really excited actually, but then that initial excitement started to become another sort of layer of loss when I realized I couldn't ask her these questions, once I started finding all these documents. And so one day I set out to sit down and just write her a letter so that was the first, maybe not the first, maybe it is yes the first letter in the book, yeah on page one. I just kept on going. So, then it became this book became kind of like a dear anybody really it was just kind of, it just kept on writing and so they're all sorts of people that I wrote to. And that book came out in 2021. It was a long period of time that I had written all this work but you know poaching is different than writing and then these, these little mini poems miniature poems in this book came out this year. And I wrote these during the pandemic so I was just actually doing just like a sort of fun to me silly joyful writing process where I was trying not to write toward anything if that makes sense and so I was wrote these and little syllabic forms and they're all various different syllabic patterns and at some point I just thought maybe I'll challenge myself more and I use WS Merlin's titles to make my life that much harder. But yeah, so that's kind of how these, these three came together and then I do what I do a lot which is just see what else is I have around and I just jam them into books and put them there. So there's a middle section that I wrote when I was at a residency in Marfa, Texas, and then the end, there's an end section in the trees witness everything where the LA public library had commissioned us a whole bunch of us to write a bunch of small poems that ran on these, the LED lights across libraries and so I just put that at the end because I thought that arc was like I was forced basically or asked to write more sort of hopeful poems, right, which was was hard for me and so I thought that might be kind of fun to put at the end so that the arc of the books sort of rises a little bit versus staying in the low parts where I tend to write toward. That's so helpful I think to sharing about about your mother and father I think that that's like really helpful context, and we're thinking about these three works sort of going in order and some of some of the questions I've brought to you tonight. When I reread the three of them, I started kind of like envisioning almost a matrix and where like the forms and motifs and themes and themes and even the language. For me as a reader reading all three in it like a short period of time whereas the first my first encounters with them were stretched across across time. I started thinking about the ways that they were speaking to each other, and they're so different from each other form formally. But there's so many like connective tissues, especially around sort of the orbit around around grief, and also aiming towards writing and finding language for some of the inadequacies that we experience in loss. So to start, I'd like to invite you to read the first part of the last letter in dear memory which is called dear reader. And while you read while you're you're reading all sort of all share with the audience, some of the other images that are in this work which is, which is multimodal it's it's the it's the letters but it's also as as you mentioned this, these documents and ephemera that you found and put together and the images are very powerful so I'll sort of click through those as as you're reading. So I'd like me to read the first page or yeah I think if you can read page 142 up through the paragraph and I actually it's on this like you so whatever's easier for you. Okay, up in second paragraph so ending at history. Okay, got it. Okay, yep. Okay. Right here we go. Dear reader. Yesterday during dinner at a writer's colony, a fiction writer said, I've never written about playing hockey, even though I did it for many years and reached a really high level. I'll be right across from me said, maybe you just aren't ready. Sometimes it's just not time yet at breakfast this morning, I spoke to a poet about trauma, and how neither of our mothers both of whom had left their countries rarely spoke about their pasts. She fled from China to Taiwan when she was eight or nine, and then left Taiwan for America when she was 21 or 22. This poet said that, maybe it's us, the next generation, who will write in response to that history. I think the poet was right to borrow Julia creeds phrase, maybe memory is where we have arrived, rather than where we have left and arrived means here in this country. It's just an imagination of the next generation. I think the playwright was right to willing and summoning is like dragging a small unwilling dog toward the larger dog. When I drag the dog looks italicized muscles tight tail down dragging and not yet memory thought or feeling toward language too early feels something like the dog. I'm thinking about what Rainier Maria Rilke said, and it is not even enough to have memories. When there are many of them you must forget and have the great patients to wait for their return for the memories themselves aren't yet it. I was a transcriber of my own experiences and memories, adding an image here and there. But now I think I am more of a shaper. I take small fragments of imagery memory silence and thought and shape them with imaginary hands into something different. What's left doesn't need to have a firm precise shape that resembles reality though. It can be unshapely splayed. The epistolary form was away for me to speak to the dead, the not yet dead, the sky, the wild turkey scurrying away its white feathers waddling deeper into the woods into myself into a younger self away from myself toward my dead mother toward my history toward father silence toward silence toward death. Thank you. I thought we'd start with with that last letter because it sort of contains a lot of a lot of the things that I'm hoping to talk about this evening and the the role of story in your work and imagery at grief sort of as a figure and and form. So I'd like to start maybe with the role of story and in obit you write in the poem subject matter my mother's death is not her story. My father's stroke is not his story. I am not my mother's story, not my father's story. And then later you write in my mother's favorite potted tree which is another another obit obituary and obit. My mother would not have approved. I can see her face as I tell her the wrong story is time passes my memories of her or like a night animal racing across the roof. And then I noticed that story was referenced in a couple of the letters of dear memory, and in the first and last poems of your new work the trees witness everything. And the first title of the first poem is far along in the story and so that just, it got me thinking a lot about, about sort of the treatment of story and these works and so I was wondering if you can talk to us a little bit about that, like how how are you just treated or how you sort of conceive of story in these works of very personal material, and then maybe what you're trying to make sense of in your own writing, when you're writing around, and about the concept of story. Yeah, it's really interesting when I think about the use of story or narrative and poems. They're almost like something that helps move something forward. You know, I think it's it's I'm almost having a conversation with a memory or a story actually these stories aren't necessarily all fully factual. And that's something I tell my students all the time is that we can modify these stories to some extent because our memories are so malleable and flexible to begin with and so, yeah, I think I think it's there, I think of them as sort of imaginative stories and they're ways to enter, you know, I've been, I wrote a collection of ecstastic poems, and then I wrote something today for Litt Hub on ecstastic poetry and I was thinking about how all of writing in some ways, you know, if we separate the definition of ecstastic is ecstastic, you know, not visual art necessarily, but we're all, I mean, I'm at least responding to things and so or corresponding or reacting or interacting. And for me, story is like a piece of visual art that that you, it's a way to enter a piece of writing. And so sometimes they'll just go in the middle of something or they'll just bring something up and then it allows me to kind of keep the the wheels of whatever I'm working on moving. So I think I tend to inject a lot of stories in my writing for that reason, because I get stuck a lot in the middle of things and then I'll just say oh, oh yeah, just suddenly just insert a story that helps the thing move. Yeah, it helps me sort of react, you know, and have a conversation with whatever it is I'm thinking thinking about. But yeah, I do tell people that that not everything is exactly true. Which I think is really fascinating. And that's what I think is so fun about writing is kind of like whatever comes into you at the moment can be used in your poem to to or whatever this this dear reader which is more like a epistolary poem or prose poem or NASA, whatever, to help propel it forward otherwise, it gets stuck a lot. So I think for me it's a it's a mechanism to move things forward. Did you notice that process. I'm curious if it was different working with like in dear memory working with actual materials and documents. Did that sort of shift how you sort of approached incorporating story into the other works or was it shorter? Absolutely. It was more like, it was more ecstatic, right, because, and I just wrote this today and this little thing I was working on for Lit Hub is that the role of ecphrases or ecphrastic work poetry is that it can actually help with writer's block. You know, because all you have to do is just look visually at something and, and I have this great quote, it's like, let's see if I can find it. No, I just, maybe I can't find all this stuff on my desktop. Oh, it's by Jeff Dyer when writers write about painting insert anything into painting. They're in a sense on vicarious holiday. I thought that was interesting because I that really resonated with me because I feel like whenever I'm looking at something. I'm on a vicarious holiday, meaning like, okay, I'm looking at this, you know, Bruegel painting or, for me, Agnes Martin or on Kauara or whoever it is I'm looking at. I'm not really thinking about the things and the way that I normally would think about. It's just by nearly looking at something else I freed my mind. And so in some ways, these documents, I think, functioned in the same way like I was just sit there and look at photos. And then I wouldn't really be thinking normally I'm writing something, you know, I just be like, Oh, that's really interesting like looking on page pages is 30 at my picture of my grandmother. I didn't know doing Tai Chi. And but I know that that's her because I do remember photos and what she looked like and so things just kind of looking and I think in that act of looking there's this freedom that happens. And for me it's it's really that love a lovely feeling where you're not in that mode of I am consciously writing something you're just you freed yourself creatively so I do think it's different. If you're looking at an photo a sculpture, you know, a tree even so there's, you know, different type of looking and seeing versus sitting there and thinking about a story and your memory I think it's different. That kind of that brings up some some ideas for me about form which is also something I'm really interested in talking with you about. Your work is described in lots of different ways. And when you were talking about about the epistolaries right now even you said or essays or poems. And so I'm kind of interested in, and how your, your work has been described as is uncharacterizable but also sometimes characterizes poetry hybrid, etc. And even in the forms that you choose there's often other forms inside of them. So like you mentioned in orbit. There's also the Tonkas that are woven throughout. I'm curious about whether you have an interest in in classifying your work and and perhaps what what those different forms are enable you to either contain constrain or release. And kind of the way you just beautifully described, and like looking at a painting. What is that what are the different forms you've selected allow or constrain in terms of writing about about loss and grief. Yeah, I mean I think form is so interesting. I don't really know if I categorize my own writing because I just write, or I just, I just make stuff and I don't really think about what I'm trying to make I just, I just do it, if that makes sense. It does. It's interesting it becomes exceptionally characterizable when it's sort of done. And I think for me form comes in different ways sometimes it's like it comes a little bit ahead. And, you know, like with the trees witness everything I was like, I'm going to write in syllabic forms for a specific purpose which is to literally shove my self out of the way, my mind out of the way. And then I'm going to use a prompt so it's like giving, you know, students writing prompts or you must, you know, write with this title. It's like it's kind of a fun thing to do. So that came first and with obit. I'm not sure I think it all came at once. And, and it just happened and with the pistol areas it just you know I just wrote one one letter to my mother I just kept on going. And so I think for for me I don't know like lately I've just been. I don't know I don't know how I, I would write I feel like it's almost like I have too much freedom it's not that great, but then I feel like I'm lost I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing so I think giving myself. Some forms is has been a helpful as a process. And I also think my brain is a bit all over the place and so are very rapid little balls and little pinballs flying all over the place and so I think that form can help me focus a little more because I don't focus. That well sometimes and so I think that for me form is a part of an important process that paradoxically allows me to be very free within that and I can't remember the quote but is like strong feelings requires strong containers or something someone said that to or strong emotions requires strong containers and that has stuck with me a little bit to I feel like writing about grief or just kind of these really tough emotions. You kind of just want to tell people how bad you feel, but you can't because that's not going to work for some reason and so I kind of in with addiction and the syntax it's all intentionally I think not unintentionally intentional that makes sense. It's very flat and very syntactically conventional, you know, and, and just really clean is how I, you know, spare and sparse is really how I think for the open homes I wrote them and so I think, I think I'm sort of subconsciously thinking about these things at one time, while I'm writing, if that makes sense and then I just have to work it through and work it out in the as a process just like everyone else does. Right. There's two poems in obit that are titled form. And will you read us the second one and I'll project it for the audience. Okay. That's the last image from to your memory. Yes, yes. Form died on August 3 2015. My children sleep with framed photos of my mother. My 10 year old puts her frame in the red velvet bag that held the cremation earn and brings it with her on vacation. A photo of my mother sits in the bag that once held a container of her ashes. When we die, we are represented by representations of representations, often in different forms. These two are representations of the dead. I go through quarters, looking for the original, but can't find her in Palm Springs. The desert fails me, dust, sand, gravel, bits of dead things everywhere. A speck of someone else's dead mother blows into my eye, and I start crying again. Now to optimistic the pool and its luster, like an inquisition, my own breathing between the splashes and children laughing, no longer a miracle, but simple mathematics. Thank you. So to expand on the sort of some of the ideas about form. One thing I was, I was noticing when I revisited and these works was, and I think on my, on my first read of all of them I kind of thought about how, you know, you seem to be exploring the like the limitations of language and in sort of convey this, the the experience of grief and loss to some degree. And when I when I read through them again, I was struck by the difference between sort of the limits and inadequacy. And I noticed some different things that that perhaps hadn't hadn't struck me that the first time around like, and for example in Obit, you mentioned like images of picking up words and looking for words. And then in Dear Memory, you actually incorporate other others words right like with some of the documents you're using we actually see their, their script their handwriting. So you're actually showing showing the words. And then in the trees witness everything. I noticed a couple of things about like question marks, for example, there's a lot of questions put forward in in the trees, which I didn't notice the frequency of that so much in the other two works and so I'm curious about that but then how that kind of relates to to the the inadequate quizzes of language when you're putting forward questions to someone who is no longer there. And even like the trees, take the trees take the shape of question marks in one of the poems. And so that struck me because, you know, when when we lose someone or we have a death in our life, it's, it's, it's common to hear someone say you know there are common words to describe that experience or to convey. You know I don't have the right words to give you having written about about death myself. I think it's interesting to think about a writer writing from loss as a kind of active like pushing back against that notion that that there isn't language for it I'm curious if you agree with that. And, and if that's something you grapple with to, and how you might see those ideas sort of unfolding across the three works in different ways. Yeah. I mean, I, I've said this before but I remember, I remember saying this in other places that that I think the impulse to write the book obit was to see if it was possible to describe my own feelings into words. And then I imagined, I think in retrospect, talking to corresponding with like a friend sitting across the table, as we're talking now and seeing if I could describe those feelings to that person. And ultimately, I think it was impossible. We're trying to get as close as possible, you know, but we're always going to be inches feet centimeters away. I don't, I don't know, but I tried my best and that was most important to me as process. And I feel like in the trees witness everything. I noticed that the syllabics and the short small space that I had really made it hard to like it ended up having a lot of declaratives and the poet Jane Wong was like yeah they feel like proverbs and I was like I know I hated that about them. But I also do love the, I love aphorisms. And so, so I think intuitively, you know, if I'm just thinking aloud here, I tried to ask a lot of questions because they didn't want the palms to feel so certain of themselves because they're they weren't and they're the syllabics were really driving the the thought process there but within a such a short space. It just has that kind of like stapler effect or nail effect and so I think being more query based was a part of that process I think I intuitively felt that myself. I didn't want them to feel so certain and if I, if they ended up being certain I wanted them to be certain in their uncertainty. So that was I think the challenge, boy those are hard to write like I had stack of revisions like I printed them out they're so high and so many of them. I just I ended up giving up on because I was like, I cannot get these syllabics to work and I, you know, so I just said that's good enough. And that was a very freeing process like I was like I can't. I can't do any better with this in this small space that I have, then, and I just and so I, that was that was hard and fun. And yeah, and I think that. Yeah, I think that just definition wasn't as much a part of dear memory. I think that was just kind of wandering around and, and, and just talking to people so I think, I think all of these are just talking to people if I think about it because, and just working things out because I think for me, that's a work things out in my writing but I also talk a lot, so I have to talk to people to kind of work things out so I think they're all, they're all sort of in that mode of conversation and. But yeah I think it's I also think it's fun to define things. And the weirdest way possible so like grief is, you know that actually be really fun exercise like write a poem, a writing issues like write a poem that has a, like an abstract concept and then to trying to find it in the weirdest way that you can it was really fun to do like memories are you know it's like, you, you discovered that you can't explain it and you can explain it about permutation wise. Permutation wise of millions of ways, which is what's so exciting about having those sorts of defining definitions is that we know that it's not possible to define what grief is, you know, which is why I think I kept on writing because I couldn't quite get at the complexities of it and yet I also know moments it was very specific so it's so expansive grief, and yet it's so specific at a particular moment so I think that that kind of micro macro attempts of defining something we're very much so part of obit, if I remember correctly. Are you frozen, my frozen. I think Kristen is frozen. I think Kristen is frozen. Yeah. She'll come back. I think it's a good playground definition someone wrote in the chat. Yeah, actually I'm going to write that down because I actually I'm going to write a writing exercise that does does this sort of definition thing she'll come back don't worry. I think she's there. She's there. Okay, I got I got dropped out of the room. I don't know. No worries. I'm sorry about that victory I didn't get to hear, hear your last last. No, I didn't say anything that I'm sure. I'm sure you did. So interesting though to hear like here you describe how just putting the constraint on for choosing the particular form and constraint in the trees actually ended up sort of predicating what language the ways that you engage with language like for example at like, asking questions. And just hearing you describe how the different using almost like prompts for yourself and to open up the boundaries of form. I wanted to let everyone hear you read from from the trees witness everything so if you don't mind. And I'm going to ask you to read fog horn, the dragon fly, the removal to the margin and some last questions and I'll screen. I don't know why I can't see the screen. I'll read. Here we go. Okay, there you go. Yeah, so you'll see they're like this one's five we have it in five seven, seven, five, seven, seven. Yeah, fog horn. Sometimes the language we have is inadequate. On rainy days people leave yellow boots on the porch. The egret takes off its yellow feet and steals the boots. The dragon fly. What if it's small mouth, the dragon fly speaks English. I write down each word, but I'm disappointed. It just tells us what it sees the rows of gravestones faceless pigeons that sadness is the only thing that doesn't have a shadow to the margin. I will never love anyone the way I love my memories and their cliffs. The removal. My hair falls out as I near 50 plus 200 years or more. When my mother died, I jumped onto a new track made of sandstone smooth as a candle, never lit. There are no words here just rain on the nape of everything. Some last questions. Did the clock dissolve? Did rain enjoy falling? Did the hands truly love me? Did the tree tops know? With sadness, what we wanted were the fireflies warning us. Thank you. I'll talk to you a bit about image and imagery. In Obit, in the poem language, you write, a picture represents a moment that has died, then every photo is a crime scene. We remember the dead at some point. You're frozen again. Oh no. She was asking about image. I'm going to go through two page spreads of images. I'm wondering if we can talk a bit about what, as you see it, the images you brought forward in each of the works and maybe how they speak to each other. And how you sort of make the decisions in a work like Dear Memory of what images you'll actually marry to the text itself. I mean, I think, I oftentimes ask writers to think about, or to name, like what's important to you as a writer. And for me, image is always there in the mix somehow, no matter what age I was or what stage in writing I was at. I've always loved a good image. And even now when I'm reading poems or anything really, I'm always excited when I read an image that I feel like I've not seen before or some combination of words that creates a new image in my brain. And it happens every single day. That's how amazing it is to feel that new image. So I would say, for me, image is hugely important to my writing. And also, yeah, I would say that's probably the most important thing. In other places, you know, in other books like Barbie Chang and like probably line breaks sound sound also and like, like the boss and other book that I had written so I think though, even in those instances, the image was always at the forefront. So I was just asked people like, I'm interested to hear what other people say like what's important to you and I always ask that question because I love to hear what people say. Because I think at the end of the day, you know, I, I've always loved to drawing. So I was drawing and then also writing poems and playing music so percussion and all types of music and so I think those elements all appear in my poem. But I don't really draw that much anymore. And so I mostly look at stuff. So I love looking at visual art, just in my spare time for fun. So I think, I think that image is important to me for those reasons. And I've been combining more and more sort of text with image as a lot of people have which is exciting because I see it more and more and I get more and more excited about it but it's always been a part of poetry. I think people have been doing this forever. And it's just we don't see it as much in finished collections because so expensive to do and publishers are lagging in and writers and artists have been there forever. And so, yeah, I think that, that, that I like drawing now to so in this ecstatic book of poems I have some really rudimentary illustrations to so I think that's always just something I'm interested in. And in Dear Memory, it was all just an experimentation that was really rudimentary and was very much so process book I always call it because it originally there were no images. So they kind of made their way in despite me not wanting them and then I had to ask for help from some visual artist friends I have and then also friends to help me along the way and so they'd say things to me like oh why don't you put photos in there. Okay, so I put the photo in there and then another friend would say why don't you write some poems to put in the photos and then I would put these like little speech bubbles. And then the visual artist friend would say, you know you have to take care of those awful speech bubbles. That's your first task. And she's like, what do you want me to do with them and she's like, I don't know, but gave me some ideas made a Pinterest page for me. And then I landed on these little pieces of paper that I started gluing on first but then eventually I made. I just didn't seem like they needed to be glued on so they lifted them off. So then I took photos so that the shadows appeared so it was a very organic process, because I didn't really know what I was doing. I didn't know what made it really fun, but I was very nervous, nervous, insecure is actually probably an adequate, more specific adequate word. When that book first came out. I felt like I just hated the book so much. And now I have a better relationship with it because I, I see it differently. I think about it as an x-ray of its own process of being made. Seeing the process of being made as you're reading the book in some ways and so many people told me that they found it helpful to them in their own writing projects in some way. And I found that to be really rewarding in a different way because I struggled so much with it and to know that other people somehow find help in my struggle was it was a new relationship that I ended up having with the book. I lost my train of thought. That's, that's all, that's all great and very interesting to hear. I'm curious how. So you finished the letters and then you sort of made the images, is that right? Or was it kind of a back and forth? Back, well, I finished the letters and then I, yeah, I started, I had like really bad, imagine like the worst PowerPoint presentations you ever seen with like little flow chart squares and boxes and, you know, I actually had, I knew there's something visual that that I wanted there because I had the trouble of integrating my mother's only interview I did with her 15 years ago that I found and remembered about after I'd written all the letters so I was struggling at that point I was like, Oh my gosh, I think I asked my mother some of these questions, but I couldn't remember it and then I found I had to look for these I didn't find the interview. Finally I found it then I had the trouble of trying to figure out how to integrate it into the book. But yeah, I remember actually at that point though I thought oh the writing's done I'll send it away kind of thing and I remember the editor at milkweed was like I love the writing. This is great. But these, these PowerPoint kind of like illustrations are not clip art he called them are not really working for me right now. But let's, let's put a pin on it and think about it later kind of thing. So, then another year, like I worked on it for another year and new ideas came up and then, by the time I sent it to him it was a totally different book, and it had color and so I was really, I was surprised when they were willing to, you know, put so much time and effort into making the book as beautiful as it is because I didn't mean yeah I didn't have that vision originally. Yeah, that's that's so interesting to hear how it how it evolved and kind of kind of goes back to like some of the things you said earlier about form and sort of jamming things together until it just sort of works. I have so many more questions for you but I definitely want to leave some time for for the folks who joined us so let's open up the Q&A. Anisa, since I got kind of kicked off out of the room I don't have the record of all of the chat. So, if you have some suggestion for how to proceed there that would be helpful. Sure, there is one Q&A and the Q&A function already. What is a syllabic? Great question. Yeah, and always ask questions if I would tell you to ask questions if you don't know what the thing means because I don't know what everything means but syllabic is like syllables like counting syllables and it's really interesting because you know, like the Japanese form of a haiku is syllabics five, seven, five. But, you know, I think that we can't really hear syllables, which is that so many times I was writing these little syllabic poems I was like, Why am I using syllabics nobody can actually hear them like if you're writing an iambic I wonder everyone, well not everyone I should not say that people can some people can hear that in or if you're writing you know different meters, but I think that for syllabics it doesn't, you can count five syllables and sonically it's hard to hear that. So then I in the middle of I was like why am I writing in syllabics and it was again more part of my bit just the process of writing to get me out of my own, own way but interestingly like, I thought I also thought hard about, you know, using Japanese forms called wakas, because Chinese Japanese and it's like there's one character and that's one syllable. So it's different with the English language and so at the end of the day I was like oh I'm just really using syllabics and syllables. Mary and more or David Baker, you know it's not not really using Japanese, you know haikus or forms. Well, the haiku is in English, not really similar to the Japanese form, which is a character based. So I recognize that and I, I'm okay with that though, you know but I did think about like appropriation and what is what is it that I'm doing. I wanted to put that information in the back because it was part of my process but then to also talk about how I didn't really think about it like that I was thinking more like just counting my fingers, so that my mind free was writing. So we have another question, and what is an aphorism. Yeah, that's a great question to. It's a pithy short kind of proverb like sort of saying. So, any quote that has, I think a little bit of wisdom to it, I would call it an aphorism and it's usually like something you're like, Oh yeah, you know that's a quote I would say quote is an aphorism so I'm trying to remember. I don't remember what I'm going to say later. So I'll just stop otherwise I'm going to, people are going to want to know what I'm talking about but I'll remember later. I actually have a follow up the last section of the trees witness everything. I think it's just called letter love letters. Do you do you consider those to be aphorisms. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I mean there are things like. I don't know how many of them there are probably like close to maybe 20 or 25 something like that and they're separated. They're all three lines right I think and they're separated by like a little bullet point. And when I was reading these, I was curious I was like I wonder if this, if she would describe this as a long form poem or if these are aphorisms. And maybe it may be the intention doesn't even really matter but I'm curious what how you landed on that as the end to this, this particular call. Yeah, I mean I think that I was just assigned to writing a whole bunch of them. And, and so I just picked the ones I kind of like, like the bus and jam them all together and put them at the end and they have a very pandemicy feel because that was the the prompt you know they're like write a love letter to the world during this very difficult time. And so, yeah, I mean some of them are very much so pandemicy, you know, I can. I can, I remember and I'm looking at them do you remember where you were last May, I do, you were here, you were alive, you know that it has that kind of feeling to it. And the last one is let me tell you a story about hope. It always starts and ends with birds. So that's not something I would normally write. Right. So writing toward promises is actually quite fun for me. I can follow up to the aphorism question, does your writing intentionally include aphorisms or do you stumble upon them, and then we have one more question and I think we might need to turn it back over to Anisa after that. Yeah, I think I stumble upon everything. Yeah, I think I just, I think that's the beauty of writing and create a creative process is that the act of discovery is so joyful that for me it almost feels like an addiction. And so it's so fun. There's nothing to me more joyful than the process of discovery. Now I think writing is can be painful like I have like this morning I was trying to work on something I was so tired that my brain just didn't work and then people were trimming a tree and that loud noise. I just gave up, but other days. I know if I keep showing up as much as I can. One of those days. I'm just going to have that really joyful feeling of discovery so yeah I would say it's discovery or stumbling upon but I definitely create the environment in which I show up as much as I can to hopefully get that feeling. So we have a few more coming through. But I think we actually were short on time is that right Anisa. It is but I think we have time for one more is fine. I kind of like the question about Victoria's relationship to Mandarin and did it change after dear memory. Yeah, I mean, I think that I grew up speaking Mandarin, but I was born in America so my native English speaker but my parents spoke Mandarin in the house and I love learning Mandarin so I was always studying Chinese and I even watch a lot of Chinese dramas and trying. I just try and learn Chinese that way to K dramas to know I can't speak Korean but I do try and learn certain certain things. And I think that did it change was working on dear memory. Yeah, I think it gave me a greater working memory gave me a greater appreciation for my background and my culture and I suddenly after I think wrote that book I didn't feel as much embarrassment or shame about myself or my background or any of the things that I felt and so it was a great learning lesson that's like I think writing through things can help you change your perception of yourself or your relationship with your heritage and so definitely I see Christmas frozen again. So, yeah, okay. Okay. Now that we're in the question phase. Thank you so much and audience what a lot of wonderful questions that you have for Victoria. One last question we'll ask is where can we see your piece on a classic writing. I'll just take it in here. If you just Google Agnes Martin and my name. I wrote a whole bunch of poems, and they are. Yeah. Yeah, I'll put it actually put in here, Agnes Martin. So I just wrote a bunch of poems and some of them are on the road on Agnes Martin and their festive poems so they're just in the ether. Yeah. And audience thank you so much for all your wonderful questions and being so engaged in tonight's talk I put in the chat, the links where all of where you can find Victoria's books, you can get them all right this second on who blah with your library card. And if you don't have a library card, get a library card. And California has an amazing consortium where you can, if you live in LA you can also get a card in San Francisco. So, and wherever butte County, any like small town and it just increases how many books you can get. So friends, Victoria, and Kristen, thank you so much for being here tonight and sharing your knowledge, and your beautiful work so amazing and library community. Thank you all for being here. Thanks, and he said thanks, Kristen.