I met Chia-Lun Chang when we were both enrolled in the Poets House fellowship program in 2016, when I had only been writing for a few years and was hesitant to call myself a poet. We bonded over how new we were to writing poems. In this following conversation, we retraced her unconventional introduction to writing poetry and how English as a second language offered her a newfound identity to be playful and purely honest. Her book Prescribee (Nightboat Books, 2022) wields humor like a dagger, rife with cutting repartee that reveals how cruel, yet liberating life is for her in America. Her poems from the book have appeared in Granta, The Brooklyn Rail, and BOMB online.
Chia-Lun Chang (CC): In Taiwan, the genres are not as distinct as in America, but I noticed that many high-profile writers in Taiwan primarily write non-fiction prose, expressing their opinions. Readers think of it as culturally significant; it provides a getaway into the lives of another world, a world full of writers or cultured individuals. During our conversation, I’ve also realized that many novelists are telling one story. They have numerous novels, but it’s one same story from a core idea because it originates from their body.
Anne Lai (AL): Do you feel like you’re also in pursuit of one idea when you’re writing?
CC: Because of my experiences, I tend to question my identity. But, aren’t we all, in some ways, asking ourselves, “Who am I?” In that very question, I’m afraid of finding the unknown. There are moments when I write in English, where I create a new persona that reflects this nation and the body that I inhabit within it. That is the direction I’m heading and it’s tied to my identity, this very new role that I’m cultivating.
AL: This reminds me of your experience in trying to get your green card, and eventually getting it.
CC: Yeah, both of those experiences—applying for a green card and learning the language that I speak most of the time. The green card process was brutal so I was constantly facing a blackhole answer: what’s necessary for me to stay? I’m terrified of my desire. I don’t believe I have the opportunity to create art in Taiwan, I’m not talented enough or I don’t have space to do what I’m doing here, and many may disagree. But I’m grateful that I can be playful and try different things in this new language and space.
AL: I’ve never asked you this, but have you written poetry in Mandarin? How did you start writing?
CC: Never. Growing up, I was always interested in writing, but I saw myself more as a reader. There were times when I would write essays for school; the requirements of exams in Taiwan were like the SAT tests in the States, but they asked for more melancholic and metaphorical compositions. Those were my experiences in building my first language. I remember the question on my college exam was, “Who is your idol? Who do you look up to?” I actually wrote about the poet Su Shi. In my society, I felt that people had a moral obligation in writing; they had to be heroic—even in love, in pain, or struggling. Deep down, I have a cynical personality and worry about not being accepted by society.
Maybe I’m just not brave enough to write in Mandarin creatively back in Taiwan. I never pursued that path. All my life, my parents were all about finding a job to survive. I never saw anybody from my background become a writer, to use writing to make a living. It’s not a viable career choice. I spent time thinking about what I wanted to do, and writing or making art never crossed my mind.
I’ve always been interested in language, but solely in Mandarin. In college, I scored 79 in Mandarin, which is considered good, and my English was 24, extremely low! After the test, I determined, “I can never speak English fluently.” I went on to study business in college, and I failed accounting three times, so I knew I was not going to succeed there. I thought that I had to do something else.
I chose Business Administration as my major and teaching Mandarin as a second language as my minor. I decided I wanted to teach Mandarin, and I thought, “Okay, that’s the job. I’m committed.” Luckily, at that time, learning Mandarin started gaining popularity. My first job was to teach Mandarin in Vietnam, and then I got a job teaching Mandarin in Mississippi.
AL: It’s ironic, isn’t it? You were teaching Mandarin to others, the language that you actually wanted to study for yourself, and you started writing creatively, only because you had to learn English to teach Mandarin.
CC: Yeah, but that’s how I started to write, and when I was in Mississippi, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do next. I was thinking of going to graduate school, and I found out that studying fine art was expensive, so I came to New York to pursue creative writing for an MFA.
When I began to write, I was thinking: “What is a poem?” I established a voice first, and that voice didn’t fit in fiction or nonfiction. I feel that poetry found me. I know it’s very cheesy, but I’m incapable of writing anything else. I can’t afford fine art, I can’t do novels in English based on the strength of my English proficiency. Still now, I speak “broken English”. However, here is where I can explore my limited English as a vehicle, within this ambiguity.
AL: I think this process of “breaking” English is part of writing poetry, and every poet puts it back together in their own way. This makes me think that sometimes in your poems, you use words that sound similar to what the “proper” word should be, but it’s intentionally the wrong word. It feels very unpoetic and yet quintessentially poetry, poetry with a capital P, this choice in using the wrong or unexpected word. It’s the ultimate poetic move, to invert a wrong word into the right one, and saying this word could be the right word too.
CC: I’m drawn to spontaneous concepts because all of a sudden, they let me think, “What’s happening?” It’s not something overly dramatic; I’m attracted to those small moments of surprise when someone acts a little weird or says unusual things. Maybe it stems from the society I grew up in, where people were taught to follow rules and to behave straight. It drives me crazy, so when a person deviates slightly from the line, the norm, I think, “That’s strange and cool.” Surprise breaks the stillness, so I can move out of the way. In Taiwan, people focused on security, and it made me long for the moments when little crazy things would happen. In the beginning, when I started writing, I craved these moments, and in poetry, I am allowed to surprise. When I shared my work in workshops, participants gasped and asked, “What is going on?” It made me happy. It’s almost like playing poker, trying to figure out how to get certain cards for reactions.
I don’t want to create something entirely different. A metaphor for what I do would be like adding an ice cube to a cup of tea, which slightly changes the taste. Being a non-native English speaker, I often feel frustrated when people don’t understand me. However, there are also times when people anticipate what I’m going to say, but I’m aware of my words not meeting their expectations.
This is precisely what I want to confront, especially when others correct me. I question, “Why do I have to talk conventionally?”
AL: In one of the poems, your father buys you an electronic dictionary. I know that my parents had one as well. It is a poignant development, in that you’re now writing poetry in English, breaking and assembling a new dictionary, and even the beginning of the book prefaces with the different definitions of ‘prescribe’.
CC: I don’t want to be too melancholy. I feel my parents were going through a time when they didn’t want me to leave, but they believed that in order to get a better life, I had to go. My dad bought me the dictionary as if to say, “In this life, this dictionary will be my parents to guide me.”
AL: Were there any connections between teaching Mandarin, learning English, and writing poetry?
CC: Through learning English, I have become more honest with myself. I’ve noticed in my class that when American English-speaking students say something is interesting, the actual meaning is they don’t like it, or it’s negative. In Mandarin, we wouldn’t say “interesting” (很有意思), but “not bad” (不錯) to sound positive. However, when students reach an advanced level in Mandarin, they lose this wrongness. They begin expressing themselves politely and friendly, no longer using the phrase: “It’s interesting,” Somewhere between the newbie and advanced levels is when the language gets really “interesting” and fun.
Students try to get it right while still having parts from their first language co-existing in the space. If I were to describe it, it’s like a river merging with the ocean. It’s a moment between being slightly salty and yet, and that’s the moment I enjoy.
I remember growing up, whenever someone cooked for me, I never dared to say, “I don’t like it” or “It’s interesting.” Instead, I would say, “Thank you, it’s very good” or “It’s great.” If they force me a bit, I might say, “Slightly salty, but it’s perfectly fine.” I couldn’t be completely honest. Poetry is the only place where I can be purely honest. For example, English teachers were not really interested in how my day was, but I couldn’t help but share that my day had been horrible. Taiwanese Mandarin is a language that emphasizes politeness, and some people have said that my poems can be too honest, which freaks them out. I want to be more honest and bold because I don’t usually have permission to do so. That’s also why it’s enjoyable; I get to explore a wide range of sensations that I don’t get to discuss in daily life. I can focus on topics that carry stigma or controversy. I’m grateful to open those doors through art. I don’t want to come up with an answer that makes readers feel okay to move on with their lives. I want to come up with poems that scare, crush, and haunt us about what’s going on.
Anne Lai is an artist and poet based in Brooklyn. Her publications include Evergreen (The Song Cave) See-Blue (Booklet) and what tends apart (Oso Press). She was an Emerging Poets Fellow at Poets House in 2016 and received a Dickinson House Writing Fellowship in 2015. She runs a publishing platform called Care of Time that produces language-focused projects by artists and writers.
Chia-Lun Chang is the author of Prescribee published by Nightboat Books in 2022 and two chapbooks: An Alien Well-Tamed and One Day We Become Whites. She has received support from Jerome Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Poets House, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Born and raised in New Taipei City, Taiwan, she lives in New York City.