An Underlying Tenderness: Interview with Grace Lau
Grace Lau is a Hong-Kong-born, Chinese-Canadian settler living in Ontario on the traditional and Treaty territory of the Anishinabek people, now known as the Chippewa Tri-Council comprised of Beausoleil First Nation, Rama First Nation, and the Georgina Island First Nation. Her debut collection of poetry, The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak, was published by Guernica Editions in May 2021 and shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. Her work can be found in Grain Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Frontier Poetry, Arc Poetry, and elsewhere.
In this interview, Digital Content Editor Manahil Bandukwala chats with Grace about writing a debut poetry collection, finding communities in new cities, and writing our ways of seeing the world.
To learn more about Grace, follow her on Twitter @thrillandgrace.
Manahil: Hi Grace, congratulations on your book, The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak. How have things been since the release?
Grace: Strange. Maybe because from hearing what other people say, I feel like I'm supposed to think it's strange. It’s my first book, so I have nothing to compare it to, pre-pandemic or otherwise. On a mental level, it was strange to only do virtual readings, but the nice thing was it also makes it more accessible for people to attend. I do enjoy the in-person experience. Attending slam poetry events in Vancouver was awesome, but I haven’t had that in quite a while.
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Manahil: I’m curious about how you came to poetry, and how the poems that are now in your book came about.
Grace: It wasn’t until I met my current partner that I started writing poetry. I did my undergrad degree in English literature and psychology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), so I wasn’t writing so much as studying literature. My partner did a creative writing degree at UBC, and has been super supportive and encouraging. One of her professors was actually Amber Dawn, who is amazing. I started to read more poetry, went to readings in Vancouver, and started to learn about poetry and the community surrounding it. At that time, most of my poems were pretty bad. [laughs] I kept writing, though. Sophie, my partner, was my main editor. Whenever I wrote something, Sophie would be the one to read through and point out what she liked and what she didn’t like.
And I kept reading and kept writing. A lot of the poems came out of—as I think it does for many poets—stuff that I went through growing up. Family things. My family wasn't a big talking family. We don't talk to each other about feelings and things like that. Writing helps me process and think through painful memories—ones that I probably should have talked to a therapist about. Poetry helped.
There is a big difference between the poems in the book and more recent work. My earlier poems are very inward-looking and obsessed with the past. You could say they were memory-obsessed.
Manahil: I resonate with that. I feel similarly about my older poems.
Grace: That's really interesting. I was wondering if that was just me. With my recent poems, I feel like I’ve exorcised out that obsession. The knots are now untied, loosened. And the forms of my recent poems also reflect that—the poems are more experimental. I’ve played around more with writing recently, which is a lot of fun.
Manahil: I found that when I put my early poems into chapbooks, I collected that memory-obsession and my writing felt free to shift.
Grace: I wonder if that’s a stage in every immigrant person or BIPOC’s growth out of childhood, in order to get to a relatively healthy adulthood, as though you’re writing the crappy things out.
Manahil: Maybe. But also, there’s so much tenderness in your book. There was a sense of “I see you.” A shared experience comes through.
Grace: On a surface level, you could say these poems are the painful experiences of being an immigrant. There is pain, but there are other emotions as well. I love that you connected with a tenderness in there. I did realize, as I wrote those poems, “Oh, I do feel love for my parents even though we haven't always been close.” When you dig beneath the surface of the pain, there's always that underlying tenderness present.
Manahil: Despite the similarities that are present in both of our works, there are also so many differences. In the first poem, you write about a drag show in Toronto—you bring your own life and experiences into your poems, your particular way of looking at the world.
Grace: Thank you. That's very kind.
That’s the beauty of intersectionality. You could probably put both of our books under a bookstore sign that says “BIPOC,” but if you read the books under that category, you see the differences between each individual poem. I see that when I read other Chinese-Canadian poets.
Manahil: Isabella Wang’s Pebble Swing is on my desk right now. You both could be put into the category of “queer Chinese-Canadian poets” but in my mind, your book is very different from Isabella’s. The core of how you come to writing is so different, and so uniquely you.
Grace: That's reassuring! When I first started writing, the worry of competition definitely crossed my mind. When you feel like you're a minority, there's only so much that's available for all of you. If you buy into the narrative, you might really believe there’s only room for one Chinese-Canadian poet, or only one queer Chinese-Canadian poet. What should be so special about my work that it would stand out amongst all these other amazing people who share the same qualities? It took me a while to get out of that mindset and start really, truly believing that there was room for all of us. When I studied poetry and English in school, all we read were white men, and that never seemed to be a problem.
Manahil: It’s reassuring to find that the competition doesn’t exist. In fact, a lovely community can form around shared experiences. I’ve built a great friendship with Sheniz Janmohamed through the shared roots of our writing.
Grace: It also asks readers to be open to actually seeing those differences when they borrow the book from the library or go to the bookstore. Are you willing to pay attention to the details? To go beyond those surface similarities?
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Manahil: I want to ask you about your experience of working at Guernica. My good friend, Margo LaPierre works with the press. I’m curious about the author side of it.
Grace: Margo was amazing to work with, and Guernica was great. My editor was Elana Wolff. She and I worked through seven or eight drafts of my book over the course of a few months. I felt super supported the whole time, and with indie publishers with limited resources, I know everyone is probably overworked. Given all that, Dylan (Curran) and Margo put together great opportunities to promote the book leading up to the launch as well as after the launch of the collection.
Manahil: Were you living in Midland when the book was released?
Grace: No, I was still living in Toronto.
Manahil: I’m in Mississauga right now. Being invited to events in Toronto was difficult because of the commute, which is two hours one way. Online events are much more accessible for that.
Grace: Especially with people moving out of the city in the past couple of years.
Manahil: I listened to the feminist caucus interview you did with Renee Sarojini Saklikar and Margo, which brought together three people from three different places.
Grace: Oh, that was such a great conversation. I was actually on the rez at that time because my partner's family is up by Cape Croker. It would probably have been very difficult to get Margo and I in the same room with Renee! I'm looking forward to more virtual events—maybe a mix of both in-person and virtual. I miss people.
Manahil: I miss being able to talk to people after readings.
Grace: I used to hate the idea of mingling, and I do miss it, but now I have to remember how to do small talk.
Manahil: How long were you in Toronto? You mentioned you were also in Vancouver. I’m curious about the writing communities you’ve encountered.
Grace: To be honest, when I was in Toronto, I didn't completely throw myself into the poetry community at the time. I was still new to the city and was finding my footing. I also work full-time, and once I got off work, it would take quite a bit of energy to steel myself to leave to go to an event. I did end up going to a couple of events in Toronto, and when I was there I felt welcomed and supported. One of the events I went to had a prompt, and you could submit any poem on that prompt. It was run by Probably Theatre Collective, and it’s a very experimental vibe, with all the different people and poems that resulted from the prompt.
But it was also difficult to grasp where the little pods of poets or writers were. You have to always be on social media to figure that out, especially since 2020. And the writing community as seen on Twitter can be so different from what’s in person around you. Have you found that being in Mississauga? Do you miss Ottawa?
Manahil: Because of COVID-19, there haven’t been that many in-person events in Ottawa since I left. I do have a writing group with Margo and some other friends—we call ourselves VII—and though I’m not physically present in Ottawa, I still feel connected to the city.
Grace: Social media and being online is helpful for finding communities. I’m sometimes tempted to leave Twitter, but the community there has always pulled me back.
Manahil: Thank you so much for speaking with me, Grace!