THE POET LAUREATE PODCAST

Season 2 Episode 3

Host: Kyeren Regehr
Guest: Anna Yin
Recorded at Haus of Owl Creation Lab, Victoria, BC, on Lekwungen Homelands

Links

Queen's Quarterly: https://www.queensu.ca/quarterly/

Anna Yin / Poetry Alive: https://www.annapoetry.com/

Breaking into Blossom — Frontenac House: https://www.frontenachouse.com/product/breaking-into-blossom/

Haus of Owl Creation Lab: https://www.hausofowl.com/

Transcript

Classical guitar intro music

[ANNA READS POEM #1: “Shades of the Name”]

Kyeren: Welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast, a sonic sanctuary for poetry. The poem is listening.

Kyeren: I'm Kyeren Regehr, and we're recording at Haus of Owl Creation Lab in Victoria, BC, on Lekwungen homelands. This episode of The Poet Laureate Podcast is supported by Queen's Quarterly. Since 1893, Queen's Quarterly has published generous and accessible analysis, opinion, and reflection in the guise of prose, poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, art, and reportage.

Published at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, the quarterly invites readers and writers alike to join the Canadian conversation. Discover more at queensquarterly.ca. 

We just heard “Shades of the Name” by Anna Yin, inaugural poet laureate of Mississauga. Welcome, Anna, and thank you for being here.

Anna: Thank you, Kyeren.

Kyeren: Anna, that poem we just now heard, where did that begin for you?

Anna: I began writing it several years ago, and there is a very interesting story behind it. Anna is my English name. I choose it at Nanjing University in China after my English teacher asked us to pick one. Around that time, the film Anna Karenina was very popular.

Anna: I was very impressed by Anna's beauty and courage, so I choose it. And later, in Canada, I started receiving emails from strangers, some from party promoters, others from church organizers. Curious, I googled my name and discovered several Anna Yins in different countries, each with a different profession.

Anna: One is athlete, one is a chess champion, one is a table dancer. I thought, “Oh, I can make a poem for that. It's so interesting.” At first, I wrote a few pieces just for fun, but when I was designing my Poetry Alive program to teach students how to write poetry, I began to think more carefully about it. I searched for compelling stories and selected the four distinctive Annas to shape the poem.

The original title was “As Much as You Know” because I want the piece to feel more auto for me. So this poem was published in Queen's Quarterly in spring 2021. Today, my thanks to Queen's Quarterly again for their sponsor this interview with you.

Kyeren: Mmm.

I'm always been fond of the poem and have read it at many events. More and more, I think this name changed me. It changed my fate. And you know, in Chinese culture, name is very important.

Kyeren: Yes.

Anna: And the people sometimes change the name to see they can change the fate. Fortune teller can use name to foresee one's future. So for me, I think Anna bring me good luck. In 2024, when preparing Breaking into Blossom, my editor, Micheline Maylor, noticed the theme of names running through the collection and suggested revising the title. That's why I shifted it to the first person and changed the title accordingly, Breaking into Blossom.

Kyeren: Wow. I'm so interested in the idea of a name changing someone's fate. I wonder, do you still use your Chinese name at all, or have you transitioned completely to your English version of that?

Anna: Oh, good question. You know, in Chinese, I have another pen name.

Kyeren: Oh.

Anna: It's more like a starlet, but in Chinese called Xingzi Anna.

Kyeren: Oh, wow.

Anna: So Xingzi is a starlet. So when I published in Chinese, I used that name.

Kyeren: I see. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So interesting.

I read about you as a child, uh, that you were taught to recite classical Chinese poetry, and that later after coming to Canada, poetry began coming to you in English. That feels like such a profound crossing.

Anna: Yes. Yes. Chinese always teach the kids at a very young age poetry, but it's not really teach, just ask them to remember and recite poetry. But mostly is a Chinese traditional poetry. And, uh, I started to writing some Chinese modern poems at my university, but it's in Chinese, and, uh, I don't feel any good, so I abandoned them.

Kyeren: Oh.

Anna: After I immigrated to Canada, I want to learn English, improve my English, so I started writing in English. But then because I work as a, like, computer software, like, uh, programs, so I don't have so much time to write or to learn English, so I write very short. I said, “Okay, poetry is more freedom.” So that's why I pick the... Uh, not I pick the poetry because I more thinking is poetry found me. Later, reflect back, I really think it's poetry found me because that time I felt trapped, trapped in, in the real life. Then poetry came to me and bring me-Like opened me up.

Yeah. Actually, it's like when my son was, was young, three years old, every night I read a s- bedtime story to him. So one night after I read The Emperor's New Clothing, I couldn't sleep. I felt as a child, ask me who I am, and I felt lost. So at that time, later a poem came to me, awakened me to let me see I was lost. But fortunately, I also feel a child inside me. Mm-hmm. And, and so I continue to learn more poetry and writing, and later I feel poetry become a healing process for me, let me rediscover myself. So, yeah.

Kyeren: Wow. When that first poem came to you in the night, like, how did it come? How did you know it was a poem?

Anna: Uh, I don't know. I just write down. Mm-hmm. And then I posted it online, and other people ask if I'm real Chinese immigrant, because I post in Chinese forum. I use English, right? Mm-hmm. So people ask me-

Kyeren: Oh.

Anna: Yeah. And I kind of feel a lot of people like it. So then I start write more, and I also join, I try to find the local poets, like, uh, Ontario Poetry Society. I wanted to learn from them. And then later, one years later, there is a tragedy happened in Toronto, and a young girl was kidnapped and l- later died. So I wrote a poem, “Toronto: No More Weeping,” to remember her. Mm-hmm. So that poem was, uh, broadcast by CBC Radio and won award, so.

Kyeren: Wow. 

Anna: So at that time I, I know I can really write a poem, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Did you hear the words? Did you hear a rhythm? Did you feel it in your body?

You know, at the very beginning, each day I want to learn one word. Mm-hmm. So if sometimes a new word just sparked me, for example, the drizzle, drizzling.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Drizzle.

Anna: Drizzling, yeah. Yeah. I said, “Oh, so beautiful. I want to write something about it.” So it's like when I go to the playground, I see the seesaw. At that time, I don't know it is seesaw. Mm-hmm. I know Chinese name. I don't know English name, right? Then I found out. I said, “Oh, it's so beautiful. I can make a poem for that.” See, saw. At current tense, past tense, right? So it's kind of bounce, beautiful. It's kind life, balance. So I wrote poem about that.

Kyeren: Oh, I love this.

What about your new collection, Breaking into Blossom? When you wrote this book, what questions or pressures were shaping it most?

Anna: The book was originally titled Truth in Scent. Mm. Yeah, it begins in 2016. You know that time, the world has a lot of troubles. Mm-hmm. So I want to explore ideas of truth through personal experience and historical events. Later, I became very busy with, uh, my poet laureate work. Mm-hmm. And I shifted to other projects, for example, Mirrors and Windows Poetry Translation Initiative.

And although I still continued writing, some poems doesn't fit in, I feel, to the Truth in Scent, but I continue write, writing. Then later I submitted the manuscript to several publishers, but without success. Mm. Oh. In 2024, just before heading to China for a poetry tour, I happened to see that Flannery O'Connor House had an open submission call. I sent it in and was delighted to receive Micheline's message when I came back.

Kyeren: Mm. Lovely. I'd love to ask you about attention in your poems, 'cause there's a, a sense that you're turning towards things in the world with such clear-eyed attention. You're allowing something to fully appear, not hurriedly, not decoratively, but with real patience. So I'm wondering what kind of attention poetry asks of you.

Anna: You know, in my real life, I'm a doula. 

Kyeren: Oh, wow. 

Anna: I don't have patient. Yes. When I was young, I was often told to be more patient and be more attentive. I was usually, like, the first, uh, to hand out my exam papers. But actually, the poetry let me slow down. Mm-hmm. Let me be more patient. And then I discovered more g- surprise and the magic in our daily life, or even sometimes I take a walk, I see neighbor's garden that has, uh, two stone frogs. Then I saw I can write a poem for that. Sometimes a floating cloud, and I see some shapes. I say, “Okay, I can write a poem.”

Anna: So every day, each small things, for example, even a raindrop, I feel so appreciate to the beautiful nature.

Kyeren: So it's your appreciation that is leading you into the poem often.

Anna: Yeah. Attentive maybe because you let the child in you. Like, uh, the child in you always keep the curious.

Kyeren: Yes.

Anna: Yeah. Then also be open. I remember, uh, some quote from Emily Dickinson. “The soul should always stand ajar-”

Kyeren: Yeah.

Anna: “Ready to welcome ecstatic experience.”

Kyeren: I love what you're saying about the child. You were talking about that when you read The Emperor's New Clothes to your son, and you, you've sort of accessed this child within you. Is this the wonder that you find comes from this child within?

Anna: Yes. Nowadays, when I look back, I feel a lot of poems that seeking something always attract me. Mm-hmm. So for me, I think myself always tried to search something and the seeking, so that kind of poems also resonate with me. So when I even do translations, I - now I found another poem have some, like, uh, similar subconscious, like, uh, qualities there attract me, so.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Mm. Oh, wonderful.

Uh, you've written in relation to memory and to migration and family and culture, but your poems never feel merely documentary. How do you transform lived experience into art? Like, what happens for experience to become a poem rather than simply a record?

Anna: I believe each artwork comes from life. Mm-hmm. But is distilled from it. Every day our lives contain many items that can enter a poem. A good poet learns to felt what is essential, the moments that truly matter to you, the ones you trust through intuition. I often place these items in a surprising way. In this way, I think it can enlarge what we see and hear and deepen our experience.

So for example, I did write a lot for real thing happen to me or to my family, but I always change a little bit or like, uh, make it enrich it a little bit. My father sometimes said, “It's not true,” but I said, “It's poetry,” right? And whatever I write, even I add something, whatever I write, I in some sense become it.

I share my genuine emotion there. Mm. As Kant suggested, I think therefore I exist. So in this way, writing poetry is similar. Through attention and expression, existence is affirmed.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. I'm so interested in what you said about that emotional truth. Like, there's a felt sense of truth, and even if the details aren't quite the same, you're allowing that felt sense to come forth.

Anna: Okay. So for example, when I wrote “The Hollow Tree,” I truly felt I had become that tree. Actually, I encountered it on a hiking trail and wrote the poem naturally, guided by a deep sense of sympathy with it as if it were my own kind. So I feel sorry for that, uh, tree. That poem later won the 2022 National Broad Sheet Poetry Contest.

Kyeren: Mm. Wow, congratulations.

Anna: I, yeah, I also wrote a lot of poems about fish, and sometimes I believe maybe my previous life may be a fish.

Kyeren: That's so-

Anna: So I really truly have this kind of feeling, and because I think any experience when written with sincerity and attention, this can be felt by others. Yeah. So a poem is never simply a record. It's a life transformation.

Kyeren: Mm. Thank you, Anna. Would you please read us another poem? And people who are listening, there will be a guitar interlude after this poem so that you can relax and receive it.

Poem #2

[ANNA READS POEM #2: “My Accent”]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

[Classical guitar interlude]

Kyeren: You were Mississauga's inaugural poet laureate, and I'm always fascinated by that firstness, when there isn't really a template yet and the role is still being kind of invented in real time. What did being first teach you about what a poet laureate can be? And did the laureateship change your sense of poetry's place in public life?

Anna: Good question. Interesting, becoming the first poet laureate felt relatively natural to me, as I had already done many of the things the role required. So for example, having my work recognized by peers, promoting poetry and the arts in the city, and writing for special events. The poet laureate experiences brought me great confidence.

I had often worried about my self-taught background in poetry as well as my accent as a Chinese immigrant working in the IT field. You may recall the poem I read earlier that reflects this concern about my accent. Being selected as poet laureate helped me see how diverse and open our society can be in this recognition and embrace of different voices.

I'm deeply grateful for that. When I teach my Poetry Alive program in schools and communities, I often share this poem to encourage others, also to show students how to transform your challenge and emotion to poems. I believe each step shapes who I am, whether through hardship or success.

Kyeren: I love that you're bringing poetry into schools. Would you tell me a little bit about that?

Anna: Yes. That's also because, uh, my disadvantage of my accent, but I have a very good skill for IT, for software, how to use software. Mm-hmm. So that's why I use my IT background, IT skill to, to design the program to be more engaged. For example, I will design some like a match game, like poetry match paintings or poetry match other things or words games.

And also I use some like tools to help students to understand the poems and to don't worry too much of others. And some schools every year invite me back.

Kyeren: Oh.

Anna: One school continually invite me 11 years.

Kyeren: 11 years?

Anna: Yeah, yeah, for Poetry Alive. Because I also choose poems related to the students, related to our daily life. Most of my poems use like simple word. Use images. So I guess students can easily see it or feel it. Yeah.

Kyeren: Amazing. Mm-hmm. Wow. You are obviously bringing or have brought and are still bringing, uh, poetry beyond the page into civic spaces and, you know, not everyone is arriving as a poetry reader. Uh, what have you learned about making poetry genuinely accessible without flattening it? What opens the door for people? What closes it?

Anna: For me, each time for public reading, right? Mm-hmm. I always spend time to select poems resonate with the audience. Mm-hmm. Usually, I first ask what kind for audience will be there, like, uh, some old age or younger one, so I make the different choice. And also, most time I will bring my computer, like a PowerPoint slide show.

So for some people, if they have a problem, they can see visually, feel it. And also, I made poems for poetry film. I made a project for our city for public art. I went to s- 10 public art site. Mm-hmm. And I wrote a poem, connect the 10 public art, and to displays our city's history, culture, and the missions.

And also, I collaborated with the musicians to make poetry a song. And so today I try to practice my voice. I do voice training because I found some sounds so beautiful, and I want to sing by myself, so

Kyeren: Wow. Amazing. And so you took the various art spaces in the city and you made them into a film with your poetry?

Anna: Yes. This is one project for a few years ago. Mm-hmm. So it's like a, I called it Awakening, like the film called Awakening. So it's a poetry with public art. Like for example, s- statues. Mm-hmm. For example, some paintings. For example, some history like, uh, mark there. Mm-hmm. So we go there to do small films, then connect it as a poetry film.

Kyeren: Anna, I'd love to turn to translation because it seems, you know, central to your poetry life, and I really interested in the Mirrors and Windows project where you've translated over 50 poets. You're kind of acting as a literary bridge. Uh, what does translation give you as a poet writing your own poems does not?

Anna: You know, at the very beginning, I seldom translated. Okay. Because I want to improve my English, so I'm more focused on writing in English. But after my poems got award, right? So Chinese media asked me to translate it and to showcase for Chinese people.

Kyeren: Oh, what an honor.

Anna: That's I started translate my poems to English. And later, a lot of magazine invite me to translate for them. So then I got more and more demand. So that's why later both Chinese poets and English poets all ask me to translate the poems. Some from magazine, some from, like, poets themselves. Mm-hmm. So that's why later I said, “Okay, I can make it a project, and I want to show.”

Also, I felt it can connect us together.

Kyeren: Yes.

Anna: And, and also improve myself. Like, uh, before, if you don't translate the poem, you feel you understand it. Mm-hmm. Only after you translate it, then you do close reading. Then you discover some unknowing, you know, magic there or some technique or deep, deep thoughts there.

So in this way, it opened me up, and also it, uh, have more diversity and more other skills you can learn. Then I said, “Okay, I continue to do that.” So this year I will do another new poetry translation project.

Kyeren: Yes, very exciting. Poetry translation asks for so much more than carrying over meaning. You know, there's tone and pressure and music and cultural weather and even the shape of thinking inside a language. When you're translating a poem, what are you most faithful to? Like image, music, breath, emotional truth?

Anna: It's a little difficult to generalize it. Mm-hmm. It really depends on each individual poem. For example, some poem, the poem may be very strong in image, right? So you, maybe you need to focus on image. But most poem for me, first I wanted to be faithful in the essential.

Essential for me I always feel is meaning. Another poem, the meaning is more important for me than other skills or other, like, uh, images, rhyme, or sound patterns, then I will follow. But yes, some is very difficult because English and Chinese total different. The sounding is different, so sometimes I needed to let go, trust myself.

At least I want my translation become a poem in the other language. It's not just word by word translate.

Kyeren: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Anna: Yeah. This question a lot of people also wondered, and for me that- that's why sometimes I want to do some workshop and to select a special example to show people what is challenge. And which way we maybe use a different approach to solve the, I guess, the challenge.

And sometimes, for example, two nights ago, I did a dialogue with Richard Greene, uh, for his poem, “Cannibal Rats.” It's a very challenging poem to translate. I always found if the translator can talk with the original poet to find not the surface meaning or the subconscious things, then the translator can use some freedom to transform that.

So that's what I did. Maybe I want to continue for my next project to do that. Because nowadays we also talk about the AI, right? Mm-hmm. The tools. So we also talk about what AI cannot do. Mm-hmm. So in this way, for the subconscious understanding, subconscious connection between the translator and the poet, the AI couldn't achieve.

So I want to try to use this way to overcome, like, AI's, like, weakness.

Kyeren: Yeah. It's something that only a human mind can do.

Anna: Yeah. Connecting human to human. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: Well, thank you, Anna. I was thinking about the ghazals of Ghalib when you were talking. There's an amazing book, and I cannot remember the name of it. Uh, the translators are people like Adrienne Rich and W.S. Merwin, and they have such different takes, and some are translating very literally and others are taking these great emotional leaps. The literal version, you get to see the workings of the mind, and then in these poetic sort of leaping versions, they take you into yourself. It's very emotional, and you feel like the essence of the poem. Both those things feel so important.

Anna: I'm more, uh, lean to the, you said, the emotion or essential understanding, connection with the original, like, uh, poet. Mm-hmm. Because, uh, it's also a way of discover myself as well. I always feel if I do this way, I gain something. Hmm. I not only offer something, I also gain something. But if go the first approach, I think AI can do that already. Yeah. So I wouldn't choose this way, so.

Kyeren: That's so current and so wise. Thank you, Anna. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Amazing. I was recently recalling Erin Moure describing translation as a creative act and that it's part and parcel of a poetic practice. Do you feel that translation has changed the way you write poetry? Has it made you a different kind of writer?

Anna: I'm not sure, but, uh, I do feel translation opened me up, and sometimes after I translate some poems, I can write another kind of poem to respond to it. For example, I translate Al Moritz's five poems, and I wrote two po- wonderful poems to respond to this kind of translation process.

Because I translated one of his poem, he talk about the pruda. He become the brother's, uh, brother or chi- like, uh, two childs go t- or two children pursue the poetry. And I do. For me, I found I'm a child to watch them or to follow them because it opened me up. I see them, we are all child. So in my poems respond, it's like I see myself as a child also.

So in this way, yeah, I feel the magical of poetry is reading or translating. It's always not only discover yourself, also connect with others. You find belonging there. That's the beauty. I mean, at the very beginning, I don't know I will be poet, right? Now, maybe more than 20 years I continue this journey, and, uh, I didn't see it will end somewhere, so I didn't see it. I feel fortunate because y- you'll find something you want to go for your whole life, right? I feel a lot of people lost because they, they couldn't find anything they want to do. That's, yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. I'm glad you found it. Yeah.

Anna, would you talk about, uh, what can't be fully translated? Can you talk about anything that just doesn't move from one language to another?

Anna: Some poems are very, very difficult to translate. For example, Lorna Crozier's poem. I read The Snake. You remember The Snake?

Kyeren: I know the poem. Fear of snakes.

Anna: Fear of Snakes, yes. I, I read so many times, I still couldn't find a way to translate it. It's so difficult. And also, I did translate one, “Not the Music,” but I never feel satisfied for my translation because I still feel I didn't connect or get the s- essential of it. So tomorrow night I will meet her. Maybe I can talk about that to know more detail, more subconscious for that. Sometimes, yeah, for if you wanted to have a good translation, you really needed to grasp it then give your own, the freedom to convey or to transform it.

Otherwise, you still feel it's other people's thing, right? A lot of people say translation is another art. It's also creative art. If I couldn't fully or give my freedom to commit it, I don't think it belong to me. Mm. So I wanted to have this kind of, uh, feeling or confidence first, then I can create it again, recreate it.

Kyeren: I see, yes. You need to feel that the poem has kind of become yours as well in order to feel like you've satisfied the task of translation.

Anna: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the Borderless, uh, poetry translation project, I think I will le- narrow down a little bit to do things better, not just wider, you know?

Kyeren: Yeah, lovely. I love that you're meeting with Lorna.

Anna: Yeah. Yeah.

Kyeren: She was, in many ways, my poetry mother.

Anna: Oh, okay.

Kyeren: She was my thesis advisor in my, in my master's degree.

Anna: I found, I found her poems so difficult. They're so beautiful.

Kyeren: Yeah, they are.

Anna: Yeah. They, they're so condensed. But it surprised me, opened me up. So for example, the Poetry in Voice select my poem, “Picking a Dandelion.” Mm-hmm. That poem is inspired by Lorna's poem, The Sex Life of-

Kyeren: Of Vegetables.

Anna: Vegetables. Yes. Sex Life of Vegetables. I said, “How can one can write like that,” right?

Kyeren: Yeah, she's amazing.

Anna: Interesting. And so usually I don't write too erotic, like, poems, right? Mm-hmm. Then I challenge myself to write s- like, but “Picking a Dandelion,” you can read it as self-discovery. Mm-hmm. Self-awakening, but you also can read it in another way, so I love that about poetry, right? Ero- yeah, yeah, erotic way. So yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah. It's beautiful.

Kyeren: Anna, it's just been so delightful to talk to you today.

Anna: Thank you. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Thank you.

Kyeren: I'm grateful that you came to be here on the podcast.

Anna: Thank you.

Kyeren: I would like to thank Queen's Quarterly again for supporting this episode of the Poet Laureate Podcast. Published at Queen's University since 1893, Queen's Quarterly is one of Canada's most distinguished literary journals, bringing together essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism from writers across the country and beyond.

You can explore current and past issues, purchase subscriptions, or learn more about the journal at queensquarterly.ca. And Anna Yin's impressive biography can be found on the podcast website and in the show notes, and you can find or order Anna's books at your local independent bookstores. Anna, would you please leave us with a final poem?

Anna: I will close with a short poem from the final page of my poetry collection, Breaking into Blossom. The poem is titled “Choose.” I will read it in both Chinese and English. In a world clouded by misinformation and distortion, this poem calls for clarity of mind and a careful awakened awareness. I think it can serves as both a quiet warning and invitation to remain grounded in reality. So here is the poem.

[ANNA READS POEM #3: “Choose”]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

[ANNA READS THE POEM AGAIN IN CHINESE] 

 [Classical guitar outro music]