Interview with Hua Xi

Hua Xi is a writer and artist. Their poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. They love grass.

Manahil: This is Canthius’s tenth issue, and the first for which we have a guest editor, Sanna Wani. Whether you’ve been a long-time reader of Canthius or are just getting introduced us, how did you come to decide what pieces you wanted to share with the magazine?

Hua: I chose this poem because I had written it in a springtime and felt it contained both a bit of beauty and a bit of despair.

Manahil: I find writing often emerges from a conversation. What conversation is happening in your work?

Hua: I think many of my poems are conversations with myself. I think here, I am asking myself about hope and perhaps the different layers other things beneath or surrounding it.

Manahil: The line in your poem, “hope / is not a living thing,” is gutting. But what gifts does hope give us if it is not living?

Hua: I wanted to explore a more unresolved ending with this poem, so perhaps it is more bleak. There is a way to end a poem where the last few lines resolves the earlier questions of the poem or take a turn towards the hopeful — perhaps this is more common in American poetry. I wanted to resist having a turn wrap up the earlier question of the poem. I wanted to explore if sometimes we perhaps turn to hopeful language too quickly in our moments of despair. Hope and despair do often coexist and bring each other into existence, and despair is not necessarily a bad thing, it's a real thing that people feel and can be acknowledged as a truth.

Manahil: What is something you’re working on that you’d like to share!

Hua: I am in the process of furnishing a new living room, and I might buy a green couch.

Manahil: In closing, what is a poem, story, painting, chapbook, or book you would like to recommend others read?

Hua: I recently reread "Night" by Etel Adnan in all its loveliness!