Interview with Natalie Lim
Natalie Lim
Natalie Lim is a Chinese-Canadian poet living on the unceded, traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples (Vancouver, B.C.). She is the winner of the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize and Room Magazine’s 2020 Emerging Writer Award, with work published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, arrhythmia, is available now from Rahila’s Ghost Press.
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 to us, how did you come to decide what pieces you wanted to share with the magazine?
Natalie: Canthius is a magazine that I’ve admired for years, and Sanna Wani a writer who I’ve admired for years also! So when I saw that Sanna was guest editing this issue, I absolutely knew I had to submit.
I’ve been writing a lot of love poems lately but I’ve never tried submitting any for publication, and this piece in particular has a lot of qualities that I think are reminiscent of Sanna’s beautiful poetry. I thought I would give it a shot—and I’m so glad I did!
Manahil: I find writing often emerges from a conversation. What conversation is happening in your work?
Natalie: I think there are actually two conversations going on here. One is, of course, between me and my partner; after I wrote this poem, it took me a few weeks to get up the courage to share it with him. The memory of sitting on the couch together as I read it out loud for the first time is very precious to me.
However, I think there is a second conversation going on here, and it’s with myself as a writer. A bit of personal history: the first poem that I ever got published was a serious piece about my complicated struggle with my Chinese-Canadian identity. Since then, I’ve wrestled with the idea that I need to write—or perhaps that people expect from me—a specific kind of poetry; poetry that is deep and emotional and ties to important questions of identity and culture and and and…
None of the love poems I’ve written come close to that. They feel small and intimate. I’ve referred to them as “silly little love poems” in conversation more than once. But I think the act of writing them has been an exercise in writing the things I actually want to write about, rather than the things I think I should write about, or the things I think people might want to read. And it turns out, sometimes people want to read love poems too.
Manahil: Your poem exudes so much tenderness. How can a poem be tender?
Natalie: Oh, I love this question. I think a lot of the emotions I tend to explore through poetry are big, loud emotions—anger, sadness, grief. I find them the easiest to write about because they take up so much space.
But over the past year I’ve been feeling a lot of contentment and happiness, which I’ve found much harder to express. It’s been an interesting process, learning to write about a feeling that isn’t constantly in my face, yelling for attention. Putting on paper the quiet delight of dreaming about a future with someone for the first time; the squeeze of a hand; the promise of rest.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, in my experience, a poem can be tender when its poet has learned to be so. And I am grateful to have found a partner who opens me up to tenderness every day.
Manahil: What is something you’re working on that you’d like to share!
Natalie: Since the publication of my chapbook arrhythmia earlier this year, I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about what I’m working on next, and the answer is that I don’t know! I’ll certainly try to put together a full-length manuscript at some point, but I’m nowhere close to having enough material for one, so right now I’m writing poems here and there when inspiration strikes and just enjoying the process of doing it.
Manahil: In closing, what is a poem, story, painting, chapbook, or book you would like to recommend others read?
Natalie: Following the theme of tender love poems, I am fully convinced that Manahil Bandukwala’s “Atmosphere” was somehow also written about my relationship, beard scruffing and all. Would highly recommend if you want your heart to grow an extra three sizes. (The poem also references Foxes in Love, a comic I adore, that you should check out as well!)