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Ep. 15. Jane Yeh, 'This Morning,'
144 Plays3 months ago
In this episode, we read Jane Yeh's poem 'This Morning,' from her collection The Ninjas. You can read the poem online, and buy this collection from your local bookshop, or at Bookshop.org.
Jane Yeh was born in America and has lived in London since 2002. Her collection Discipline (Carcanet, 2019) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She was named a Next Generation poet by the PBS for her collection The Ninjas (Carcanet, 2012), and her first collection, Marabou (Carcanet, 2005), was shortlisted for the Forward, Whitbread, and Jerwood Aldeburgh poetry prizes.
Episode references:
- Jane's 'craft book' recs: Rishi Dastidar (ed.), The Craft; Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird; Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town
- Jane's recs: Morgan Parker, The Magical Negro; Hala Alyan, The Twenty-Ninth Year; Terrance Hayes, Lighthead
Follow the show on Instagram. Find Jane on Instagram, Bluesky, and her website. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close'
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, the podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and language nerds.
Introduction of Jane Yeh and Her Work
00:00:10
Speaker
In today's episode, I talked to Jane Yeh about her poem This Morning.
00:00:15
Speaker
Jane was born in America and has lived in London since 2002. She's the author of three poetry collections, Discipline from 2019, The Ninjas from 2012 and Maraboo from 2005, all published by Carcanet Press.
00:00:30
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for joining me, Jane. It's really nice to see you. It's nice to see you as well. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Of course.
The Art of Close Reading and Poetry Analysis
00:00:39
Speaker
um You know I'm a fan of your work and I want to talk about this poem.
00:00:44
Speaker
I love this poem. But before we get into it, I want to know your thoughts on close reading as an activity, how you feel about it, but also how you feel about close reading your work. Well, I mean, I guess, you know, at like secondary school, we were taught to do close reading in English classes. It was kind of the main thing they taught us even.
00:01:03
Speaker
So, you know, like you kind of learn how to do it, to write essays and get good grades if you can do. I mean, i enjoy it because i actually think that looking at a text closely and kind of thinking about how it works and what the author is doing is actually like fun and interesting.
00:01:20
Speaker
And I think it also helps you understand the text more deeply because, you're taking time to analyze it. like It's a kind of slow reading, sometimes people call it, rather than just when you're consuming something like a page turner, which i also enjoy doing, but you know it's ah it's a different thing.
00:01:34
Speaker
But then on the other hand, there's like a different school of thought, which I also can sort of partake in, which is especially with poems, rather than like books or a passage from Shakespeare or whatever. Like there's there's a kind of feeling sometimes that, you know, a poem should be enjoyed more like you the way you enjoy a song or a piece of music or like looking at a painting.
00:01:55
Speaker
You know, like the idea that you can kind of just take it in and absorb it and that this whole apparatus of close reading or analysis kind of misses the point. a little bit or kind of and of course like that it might shut people out from kind of enjoying something and also slightly different but i would also agree with is the idea that kind of like trying to analyze a poem all the time or like pin down the meaning of it is kind of inadequate to to understanding or feeling like the kind of magic of it the art of it
00:02:30
Speaker
you know, like in the way that like some, like sometimes an image can't be explained logically or rationally, but it just works. And so, you know, there's kind of the idea that trying to do a close reading is, yeah, like missing the point.
00:02:42
Speaker
But I mean, I guess for me, like I sort of see both sides or I can feel both sides. And as a writer, i feel like, you know, I'm coming up with these images and lines like with a certain amount of intention, like for how I think that people will read them.
00:02:57
Speaker
But then at the same time, i feel like I do come up with stuff that can't be like explained logically or, you know, solved like a riddle or whatever. And I am kind just going on, you know, what people call vibes, their intuition or whatever.
Exploring the Tone and Language of 'This Morning'
00:03:12
Speaker
yeah.
00:03:13
Speaker
So does that make reading your own work, does that feel strange or? I guess it feels a little strange, but only in the sense of that. It's like, it makes you feel self-conscious. Do you know what I mean?
00:03:25
Speaker
Listening to your voice on recording or whatever. Like, I don't think that it's wrong if people are trying to close read my poems or whatever. You know, I think. if they find that interesting, that's really great. And I'm glad that they want to engage. But again, like at the same time, I feel like it doesn't mean that you have to, or that that's like the right way to read a poem necessarily. So.
00:03:45
Speaker
Well, we've chosen in to talk about a poem called This Morning. i don't know whether, i don't want to say too much ahead of time, but whether it sits in, as like slightly different from some of your other work or that it it speaks in a slightly different register from some of the other poems in that collection ah don't know whether you wanted to say anything about the poem before you read it is i like anything you want people to know or not know do you want to just jump straight in I guess I mean all I like there's not that much to know about it really but I would say i guess it's maybe it's not as depressing as poems are, or you know what I mean? Like it's kind of, it's kind of quite straight up cheerful, I would say, which is kind of refreshing or for me it is at least.
00:04:24
Speaker
And then I guess just like in terms of the words in the poem, um because I'll just say I use this word edema and the second line, which is a medical term that I learned from like years of watching these medical dramas like yeah ER or great anatomy.
00:04:40
Speaker
And it just means an abnormal swelling of tissues or organs. caused by fluid accumulation. And then near the end of the poem, I use this French phrase, bonjourné, which means have a nice day in French. And, you know, like when you if you're like in in France and you are leaving a shop, say they'll often be like, bonjourné.
00:05:01
Speaker
So that's the only reason I kind of know it really, because not in French. But yeah, that's that's all people need to know, really. Okay, great. um Yeah, please read it. be great. This morning, the romance of the world washed over me.
00:05:16
Speaker
My heart swelled with positive feelings, not edema. The forklift out the window beeped, I love you, in Morse code. A curious pigeon molested my bird feeding contraption.
00:05:29
Speaker
I pined longingly for my absent biscuits, which had been eaten last week. Even the unfriendly cat sensed the fragility of the moment and refrained from licking its bits.
00:05:41
Speaker
How sweet it was to breathe the sausage-scented air and feel the throb of the washing machine like a second heart keeping me true. In the garden, a host of petunias dangled and waved their skinny limbs.
00:05:56
Speaker
Oh, darlings, some days are painted in high-saturation pigment. Some are faint as a blueprint seen from space. Today, the bees are droning hosanna to wish me bonjourn.
00:06:11
Speaker
It's ridiculous to be so full of honey for a living. It's ridiculous how ardently the washing machine sings. Dear Pigeon, I used to be a heretic from the world.
00:06:24
Speaker
Then romance washed over me, I think I might believe.
00:06:29
Speaker
I love this poem so much. And I think partly because it is in that maybe more optimistic, I don't know, quote unquote, vein, right? I don't know whether maybe it's just my writing or whether I'm just used to poems that lean towards the dark, the ambivalent, the strange maybe, right? And writing in that more optimistic tone, was that strange to write? Like, do you do you remember the conception of the poem at all?
00:06:55
Speaker
Kind of. Yeah, no, I mean, like you say, i think it's, it's less common for a lot of writers, including me, to write things that are optimistic or sort of positive. Like, you know, I say in the second line that my heart swelled with positive feelings and like, I kind of meant to when I was writing the poem, like it wasn't sarcastic or whatever.
00:07:15
Speaker
So yeah, it was kind of strange. don't know, I guess it was a bit like, you know, just trying to capture this feeling where some days you wake up and you do feel like, oh, it's gonna be a nice day or whatever. Things are possible, right? Like i what I really enjoy is that like the title this morning has that comma, right? This morning, the romance of the world, you know, that we run on into the first stanza. I love a title that does that.
00:07:35
Speaker
You know, that really feels, I don't know, when you've got a title for a poem, there's a certain like literariness about it, as opposed to the title and the poem are one and the same, and they're kind of running into each other.
00:07:47
Speaker
Oh, okay. And do you what mean? In the sense of this poem is called da-da-da-da, whereas instead there's the tumble of stuff and it's like the romance of the world washed over me and it's almost like we're moving with that wash, right? There's a seamlessness to it that I really appreciate in terms of the form and the sentiment, as well as that ah the alliteration of the world washed over me. Just like such soft...
00:08:09
Speaker
sounds in that early bit and the w and swell my heart swelled with positive feelings i'm like okay we're really in a particular territory here and then you say not edema and you use don't know what you call it with the o in the ear The ligature.
00:08:22
Speaker
Yes. Like that feels to me like a, like you're kind of winking or, know mean? Like the you've, A, you've picked a word that is of a very specific discourse, but also you've used this like typographic feature you're like, huh, that's not where I thought we were going.
00:08:38
Speaker
And I don't know whether, I don't know for me, whether there's a like keeping me, the reader on my toes slightly, like not getting too caught up in the, the wash of positive feelings. Yeah. Oh, okay.
00:08:49
Speaker
I mean, I guess in a way, I mean, I agree with what you said, but I would also just say, like, I kind of threw in not edema as a kind of joke. Like, it's like an aside, but a joke also, because I guess, you know, I do like putting jokes in poems or like poems, my my own poems, I mean, to be like funny, and, you know, kind of not so po-faced, really. Yeah.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you could easily write a optimistic poem that's quite sincere, right? Or very straight-laced. but but that But I guess that's what I mean in that it kind of made me think, wait, is the speaker being arch here?
00:09:24
Speaker
You know, the the first time I read it, i was like, wait, are we actually going to go somewhere else? And there's that sense of the the different kinds of register that I'm interested in and that you do in most of your poems, I think.
00:09:34
Speaker
That, you know, even the next line, like the forklift out the window beeped, I love you in Morse code. And like the love is L-U-V, right? And you just the letter, you know, that's in a very different world linguistically from Edima or My Heart's World. Yeah.
Contemporary Poetry: Language and Structure
00:09:51
Speaker
And that, like just the mixing of kinds of language, I think is something that you seem to be interested a lot in your work. Yeah, no, definitely. i would say so. i mean, I feel like that's kind of one of the things that you could say we're allowed to do you know in contemporary poetry or like kind of in the 20th century, maybe.
00:10:09
Speaker
But yeah, no, I mean, I think it's more interesting to me, at least, that things are kind of more of a mix or like a mashup, maybe. Yeah. But also, I mean, it just feels true to me. Like, I feel like a lot of us, maybe most of us or me exist in this world where like, you know, you learn slang from like social media, or i don't know if you have children, maybe you learn it from your children, but you know, like slang and then different influences, like, you know, that aren't just all reading other old poems from the past or whatever, or like, you know, old novels or things like that.
00:10:42
Speaker
Right. No, but I don't think, I'm not sure every contemporary poet does do that, right? Like I think there are some people like stick with voice so trenchantly, that like a deviation from the sense of or the sound of their voice feels like a feels like a friction. Whereas I think you lean into the the friction of language quite excitingly.
00:11:01
Speaker
I'm also interested the full stops, right, in these first four, five lines that, you know, we talked from like the end of the line. We talked about the run on from the title into the first line, but then you get washed over me, full stop, not edema, full stop, Morse code, full stop, contraption, full stop.
00:11:17
Speaker
last week and how the the line and the sentence kind of align for a little while. But then even the unfriendly cat, and then we start to like unspool a bit, right? And you don't get many other end stops there. And I wonder, is there like a building of like those sensory details at the beginning, right? Like,
00:11:35
Speaker
that this morning is the real rooting gesture, right? Like we're in this particular place and time. Don't get twisted, right? we're not We're not happy all the time. Like, is this very contained area? and how you And how you thought about those full stops, I guess.
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I guess um in this collection, maybe it was the first time that I used quite a lot of full stops at the ends of lines. Because before that, I guess I was kind of obsessed in a way with, um you know, what is called enjambment, where, you know, one line runs into the next, instead of being what is called end stopped.
00:12:10
Speaker
So it felt really radical to me to like, even just write a line that ended with a full stop. And then to put a whole bunch of them together in a row, even. So that was something I was playing with kind of technically, I guess you could say, formally.
00:12:24
Speaker
But, you know, i wouldn't say that I had like a theory behind it, you know what I mean? Or like some underlying principle. It just sort of felt right to me. Or it's interesting to think of each line as just a separate self-contained sentence, like a unit. And then also because that kind of means in a way that when you're editing or revising, you can just move them around in different orders because they're they're like self-contained or discrete.
00:12:50
Speaker
Do you know what They're like units that you can move around like kind of modularly. Yeah, no, because this is something I talked about with Richie Hoffman, like the poem of his we talked about. He also like does quite a lot of like hard stopped end lines. And I'm like, you know, because I think we're used to in poetry or like at least in school talking about the line is the unit, right? In poetry, like the line is the unit that we think about.
00:13:11
Speaker
But to align that unit with the sentence, the grammatical sentence feels like an interesting coalition, if you like. And it has a certain effect on the reading of it as well. The other thing before I get into the next bit that I was thinking about is that you've got, the set of for those people that listening, the stanzas are like three lines, four lines, three lines, four lines, three lines, four lines, this kind of back and forth.
00:13:31
Speaker
And again, this may not have been conscious in any way, but like it really feels like this like breath to me, like an in, out, in, out kind of gesture. Right. Or at least a kind of soft gesture. movement i don't know i'm still stuck on the the world washed over me right like that kind of that watery kind of feeling at the beginning you know it's not it's not standardized they could easily all be four lines each right the standards but instead you've got this kind of back and forth motion which to me feels like it just feels like movement in some kind of way yeah yeah that's really cool actually i mean it definitely wasn't intentional when i was doing it but i like that yeah
00:14:06
Speaker
How intentional are your stanza breaks when you're writing a poem? is it Again, is it feeling-based or vibe-based, as you said earlier? Yeah, I mean, it is just, well, also, though, I do feel like one of the things that I don't like about myself as a writer is that I feel like I tend to fall into kind of just standard forms. Like I write a lot of poems that are in couplets.
00:14:29
Speaker
Obviously, it's free verse, so they're not rhyming couplets, but they're, you know, two line stanzas. And then or sometimes I'll do three line stanzas or four line stanzas. ah train And like, I kind of i kind of feel like I just do it almost like automatically or just because like, it seems the right thing to do. But you know the whole point of free verse is that you can do anything you could, the you know, like, I sort of feel like I should be doing more with these stanza forms or line, the numbers of lines in a stanza and things like that, whereas I kind of just fall back on regular type stanza breaks, I guess.
00:15:04
Speaker
So like with this poem, I kind of, I don't really remember, but in this collection, a lot of the poems are just all in quatrains, like four line stanzas. And so in this one, there's like a couple stanzas, there are only three, but they could easily have been sort of padded out to be four lines, to be honest. I don't know.
00:15:24
Speaker
um Yeah, I didn't really have any concrete thoughts on that when I was. No, no, it's fine. I'm just, I'm always just interested in the thing that we see and how it looks and how it feels, right? And like, wherever that comes from, it doesn't really matter. I'm just interested in what it does.
00:15:38
Speaker
Because it then continues, i love, a curious pigeon molested my bird-feeling contraption. Again, like funny, right? Like I pined longingly for my absent biscuits, which would be like, it also made me think of um the Elizabeth Bishop poem, like where she loses. Oh, One Art?
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, one art. You know, this idea of like the small and the big things that one pines for and loses. Like I pine only for my abs and biscuits, which had been eaten last week. I feel like that's something like she would say in a different register. But I just like the movement from the small to the big, I guess, in this poem.
00:16:09
Speaker
Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. even the unfriendly cat sense the fragility of the moment and refrain from licking its bits. The eye assonance there is so pleasurable of licking its bits.
00:16:21
Speaker
But also the unfriendly cat, right? I'm like, it's a very specific cat. I guess we know who in you know like who is this cat that you see in your mornings. But ah I just love that it's the unfriendly cat, not an unfriendly cat, right? Like the specificity of that cat.
00:16:34
Speaker
It's like, we know you know we know we know it as a reader, right? I mean, obviously it's my cat. So I could have said even my unfriendly cat, but I sort of feel like already had like my, in the previous two lines, like,
00:16:48
Speaker
feeding contraption by the absent biscuits so it just sort of felt a bit too much maybe no but it but it does have a different kind of like feel and punch to it like the the definitive article of the cat i'm like yeah i know that cat it doesn't matter which cat right and then which i think is a thing that i talk about with my students a lot right like and refrain from licking its bits how sweet not just line break, but then stanza break, it was to breathe the sausage-scented air, that how sweet can, like, point in both directions, right? Both the cat and at the sausage-scented air, and yeah how the break allows meaning to move in different directions, which is, like, the first time you really do right? As we're talking about those, like, really hard ends, that it but it feels like a change, maybe, in the poem, or least, like, a shift in tone or or direction.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. No, you're totally right. I mean, like, that again, that's when I... kind of met when I was saying before that i was always obsessed with line breaks or enjambment. And like you say, it's that way that the meaning points both before and then after it, or like you can kind of think, I think of it sometimes as like a hinge, you know, the that a door can swing one way or the other.
00:17:57
Speaker
and like you said, obviously, if you just stop at the end of the line, then it's like the refraining from licking its bits is sweet. But obviously like grammatically, because how sweet is part of a new sentence, it goes on into the next line.
00:18:10
Speaker
line so yeah I always really like that effect in poems. No no I think and I like that's the one thing that poems can do that other literary forms can't right you can't do that in prose and yes you repeat the phrase and then it's something else entirely but also to breathe a sausage scented air again like the unexpected is what like the poem that leans into the positive and the optimistic you give us so many sensory details that aren't ones that you might expect and I think that's where part the pleasure that the speaker is experiencing then becomes our pleasure too, right? Because it's the detail you don't quite, I wasn't expecting the air smell like sausages, right? you It's going to smell like magnolias or like flowers or, you know what I mean?
00:18:50
Speaker
And feel the throb of the washing machine, like a second heart keeping me true. And that then to me made me think of, again, this is like my sense of like the beat of the poem. Right. Like when when someone says like keeping me true to like the rhythm almost or like keeping me true to the to the image or the line.
00:19:07
Speaker
There's something about like the heartbeat and the throb of the washing machine. i was like, huh, is this poem about writing actually? oh wow. I mean, I can totally see what you mean. Like, I feel like if I were trying to analyze someone else's poem.
00:19:19
Speaker
I might say that, but it definitely wasn't what I was thinking of at all. Like I almost never, I've almost never written anything that is meant to be like, you know, about writing or like an art or whatever like that. So it's interesting that you thought of that.
00:19:34
Speaker
I mean, I guess the obvious thing that people always say and in like a poem or whatever is that that, you know, how like, you know, you're always taught this but when you do Shakespeare in school, how I and the tambour are supposed to be like a heartbeat.
00:19:47
Speaker
I see what you mean. That's so funny. I would never have thought of that in a million years though. Yeah. Like the heartbeat is always like meter, right? Like, or at least the rhythm, but also like in terms of like writing about writing, like so many of your poems are about other cultural texts, right? Like you use other texts quite a lot, whether it's other literary ones or TV texts or films.
00:20:05
Speaker
I feel like you're always skirting around the idea of other art objects, if you like. So even if even if they're not like art poeticas, I feel like you're always playing with the boundaries of that. that's interesting yeah i mean just that's how yeah that's how i read them in the garden a host of petunias dangled and waved their skinny limbs oh darlings some days are painted again like another little another little change in like linguistic register it's not the same from how sweet and it's not the same from i love you in morse code and it's not the same as the romance of the world again this like like the poem is like turning around in different kinds of language which is
00:20:41
Speaker
which is what I take away, which is why, again, it's why i like the poem feels to be about language as much as it is about the the idea of being happy in the world for for once. Yeah, yeah. It's funny because, um you know, like, oh darlings, the way that it's... um I guess, direct address and, you know, and like, oh, oh, H, or sometimes, you know like in old fashioned times, just a single capital O, like that kind of sort of exclamation, I guess.
00:21:08
Speaker
I think this was the first and maybe only time I've done it in a poem. Like, I don't normally do that at all. So yeah, it is a very different register or tone kind of at that point.
00:21:18
Speaker
it felt strange, but kind of maybe exciting because I hadn't done it before. And because, you know, like, I guess I would say that kind of traditionally it feels old fashioned, you know, because like it's sort of a stylistic tick that people used in like the 19th century or the 18th century whatever, but that, you know, has fallen out of use mostly today.
00:21:41
Speaker
So, and like the type of poems it was used in, in the past centuries are actually not the old poems that I like either. so i am would kind of I would definitely like normally scorn or avoid being like oh blah blah blah in a poem.
00:21:56
Speaker
So when I decided to do it I guess it felt like to me just in my own head it felt like um I was like breaking a rule or like it just felt like this transgressive thing weirdly.
00:22:07
Speaker
I don't know. No I mean only other person I can think of who's doing it like now is like Richard Scott right like so many oh's. And like and it yes because he's again, he's interested in those different registers, right?
Whimsical Elements and Cultural References in Poetry
00:22:17
Speaker
We're like swerving between kinds of language that I really love.
00:22:21
Speaker
And when you then do, oh, darlings, some days are painted with high saturation pigment. Some are faint as a blueprint seen from space. Again, like the scale question, right, of the small to the large that you're again doing throughout the poem.
00:22:35
Speaker
But high saturation pigment, again, it's like I'm seeing the world in like bright colours, but it's also making me think of other art forms of painting, of cinema, of photography and the blueprint as well.
00:22:47
Speaker
And but then seen from space and you get this sudden like drift upwards to be like perspective is everything. Right. And for a poem that is so light, I imagine it must be hard to kind of weigh those like quite big ideas with the lightness of a poem that has bees saying bonjourné right in the next line. So I don't, yeah, what I'm saying is I don't know how you did it and I'm appreciative of it.
00:23:08
Speaker
Today the bees are droning a hosanna to wish me bonjourné, which is such like a lovely line, but it's also funny. and it is, as you, the next slide, it's ridiculous to be so full of honey for a living.
00:23:20
Speaker
It's ridiculous how ardently the washing machine sings. We can talk about the anaphora in a minute, but like the line droning Hosanna to wish me a bonjournée is ridiculous, but in a pleasurable way. Oh, good.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, obviously it's like kind of, like guess, well, I guess it's like personification or anthropomorphizing a bunch of these or,
00:23:43
Speaker
Talking about this stuff is totally reminding me of, you know, all this stuff that we were taught in like secondary school or uni, but I guess a pathetic fallacy, although maybe that's not for animals, maybe that's just for like the weather.
00:23:54
Speaker
But you know, it's like this idea where like you describe stuff in this way that it like reflects the speaker's mindset or feelings whatever so i guess in a way it's basically just kind of like that i mean it sounds funny when you say it i guess i mean when i say no but like pulling in all those different kinds of ways of describing is is the exciting part right like if you can't do it poem where can you do it right if you can't have bees droning ah hosanna like you know you can't do it any other way so smuggle it in if you can it's ridiculous to be so full of honey for a living like this is the thing they do right like this is what they're for again just funny and how ardently the washing machine sings like the these things that just do their thing right these washing machines they just do their thing and they're happy about it
00:24:43
Speaker
It's like, why can't we be that? Why can't we be that as we go out into the world? And I think that is ridiculous, but that is actually more profound than it seems. I feel like you're smuggling in profound questions under the guise of like, this is a fun poem.
00:24:56
Speaker
Well, that's nice of you to say. It's funny because, well, just thinking about it now, because both of the lines about the washing machine, like the throb and the singing of it, I mean, it's literally like true, you know, at least of every washing machine I've had in like flats in London, those small...
00:25:16
Speaker
kind of under the counter kind that you have in the kitchen. Cause like they, when they're doing like spin cycle or whatever, they're so loud and like they literally make things in your kitchen vibrate and they this high pitched wine kind of, and like, I can hear like upstairs flats one when it's, you know, on and doing that.
00:25:34
Speaker
So like, I guess that's just something that to me is so like central to the experience of washing machine. In the UK or whatever, or in London? But my neighbours upstairs have theirs running right now. And I was like, oh no, it's going to really interfere in the sound, but I'm hoping it doesn't get picked up.
00:25:49
Speaker
and But again, is it is loud, but that, yeah, it's interesting to think about an inanimate object or these bees. Like, what are we as people in relation to these very random, discrete things?
00:26:00
Speaker
But then you give us another address, right? We've had O darlings and now we have deer pigeon. i'm like, we have a different direction of the address. dear pigeon i used to be a heretic from the world again and interesting and then you've got a another dash there's a couple of dashes in the poem not many we could talk about m dashes i talked to amy key about n versus m lines for a good 10 minutes um on the episode with her so i won't get into that now but um we had a really fun chat about what those dashes mean then romance washed over me so you really um you've brought us back to that first line right like really nice to kind of self-contained turn back I think I might believe interesting to end on the I think I might I think I might believe i don't whether it's sometimes I read that in a positive way like there's something like quite affirming about it and then other times I'm like wait is this a moment of doubt at the very end like we've just gone through all of this positivity and now are we like questioning I don't know whether how how you feel when you read it back no I think you've picked up on exactly
00:26:59
Speaker
What I would hope people would pick up on maybe. i Like, yeah, I think it is meant to be ambiguous. It's not saying I believe or i do believe.
00:27:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, so it's very, it's like doubly qualified. You know, it's I believe and then it's also I think. So there's like two ways in which it's been quote the idea has been has been qualified, or you could say.
00:27:24
Speaker
Although I guess I will say on a side note, yes I've never told anyone this before, but that what I was actually thinking there, again, this is very like the random associations I have when I'm writing, but I was actually thinking it's like this famous kind of tagline from the X-Files. that knew you were going to say that.
00:27:41
Speaker
Really? Okay. Because no, I don't think anyone, no one has ever at least told me that they get that, but like, you know, the famous line is I want to believe. So actually, I think at one point in a draft, I did just write I want to believe.
Jane Yeh's Writing Process and Habits
00:27:55
Speaker
But then I didn't want everyone to be like, oh, this poem is about the X-Files and being abducted by an alien or whatever. So yeah, i changed it. That's really funny. No, I've got a print. them I need to find somewhere to put it on my wall. It's from an artist up near Manchester. And it's like a gorgeous, like, watercolour-y print of Muldron Scully standing in front of the poster. Oh my God, really?
00:28:15
Speaker
I mean, I love the show, so I'm like into it. Oh, didn't know that. Okay, yeah. But again, like, yeah, I mean, I wasn't going to be like, I think I might believe I was like X-Files in my head, but I was like, I'm not going to say that to Jane Yeh. I just sound like a moron. But I'm i'm glad that's interesting. that thing to me I don't know, like a thousand percent.
00:28:30
Speaker
That's purely where it came from. But again, that's like the, like so many of your poems are interested in that. Like, I don't know, like Bart would call it intertextuality or whatever, right? Like we're made up of the tissue of stuff that we consume. Yeah, yeah.
00:28:41
Speaker
And the way that filters into our language or our languages, if you like, is one of the ways this poem is working and thinking, I guess. Do I have ways to describe what it feels like to maybe be optimistic for once in the morning or like when a morning actually hits kind of in the right way? Like what ways can I write about that without it either becoming cliche or trite or simplistic or, you know, one directional maybe?
00:29:05
Speaker
I love this poem. i I appreciate reading it with you. i want to ask you about how you write anyway, in more general terms. Do you have like a like a practice a writing practice?
00:29:17
Speaker
Do you write in one place? Do you write ah by hand on your phone, on computers? Like what is your, do you have talismans? Yeah, so basically I always write in cafes or sometimes libraries because if I'm at home I basically can't concentrate at all like I'll just be like oh look there's the it's dusty over there so I should probably vacuum or you know like you can find a million excuses not to write because like writing is the hardest thing kind of so I basically it took me years to figure this out but like I just can't get any writing done at home practically I mean sometimes I can do revising at home like if I have a draft already you know but otherwise so yeah like I guess I feel like
00:29:56
Speaker
And so because I'm always in a kind of semi-public place when I'm writing, actually always ah wear earplugs, you know, to drown out like other people talking and music and stuff like that. And I think it just puts me into this mindset where I'm like totally focusing on something.
00:30:12
Speaker
And I pretty much always need coffee because it's in the morning. But I'm not at all precious about like rituals or materials or whatever. Like I just write literally with cheap ballpoint pens and on loose sheets of paper, like printer paper that you buy in bulk.
00:30:27
Speaker
Because I guess I just don't really, i don't know, I don't care about like having a notebook or like a special folder or things like that. And also because I think for a long, long time in my life, I couldn't really afford to have like things like that or It just seemed like a waste of money um because I was worried about money, i guess, in terms of hand versus computer, because people always want to know about that.
00:30:49
Speaker
I always write by hand initially because um I actually developed like repetitive strain injury in my hands a long time ago. So I can't really type on a computer too much.
00:31:00
Speaker
So I write by longhand, like on paper, like I said, in cafes and stuff. And then when i get home, I use like voice recognition software to dictate it into Word.
00:31:11
Speaker
And then I print it out. So then like the next day, I'll have like a printout of what I've written so far. And then I'll just continue writing on it by hand and so on and so on. I guess, it ah like before that, though, I just always wrote straight on my computer. Like I really enjoyed it.
00:31:26
Speaker
Anyway, so I do miss being able to do that. But I guess the silver lining is that I don't need to bring my computer everywhere with me to do writing. So um it's quite good when traveling or whatever. So I guess probably because I'm too old to be of that generation, i don't write on my phone.
00:31:42
Speaker
I mean, occasionally, if I'm out somewhere, and I can't sit down with a piece of paper and a pen, i might jot like a phrase down on my phone that I thought of suddenly, but that doesn't really happen too often, I would have to say, to be honest.
00:31:55
Speaker
And I guess like in terms of routine or practice, I do try to write every day. And I know that doesn't work for a lot of people for various reasons. I mean, like creatively, it doesn't work for them. And I know also practically for a lot of people, it seems kind of impossible to have time to write every day.
00:32:11
Speaker
So I know I'm lucky in that, like my life and my work schedule pretty much allow me to most days. So I guess for me, like the reason I do like it is because I feel like it takes the pressure off when you sit down to write, because you know, you're going to do it again the next day, even if it's not for very long each day.
00:32:28
Speaker
So it's like, you know, if the session goes well, that's good. But if it doesn't, you know, you go again the next day. So, you know, to me, it's like, I got to the point before I started doing like kind of daily writing as a practice, I got to the point where I would be so blocked, like,
00:32:44
Speaker
the times that I would actually try to sit down and write something. So I guess I just, it became this way to like, you know, take away writer's block maybe, or the pressure on yourself when you're writing.
00:32:57
Speaker
And then also I think the way they, like, you know, writing a bit one day and then printing it out and then going back the next day, it's like, you feel kind of like you're starting afresh a little bit again each Or like the part for the piece that you're working on, it's almost like you're starting afresh again, but you have like this part that you've written already. So don't know, it just helps me keep going, I guess.
00:33:20
Speaker
I mean, I love hearing about how people write. This is excites me so much. Can you feel a difference between moving from writing like typing the first draft to writing by hand? can you Can you see a qualitative shift in your work?
00:33:33
Speaker
oh I don't know exactly. It's kind of hard for me to remember in a way because it was so long ago that I was forced to sort of stop using the computer in a regular way. Because I feel like my brain and my hand aren't working at the same pace.
00:33:49
Speaker
So like i I always prefer to type. I always type because as soon as I write by hand, I feel like I'm going so slowly that I then get tripped up over the words I'm then writing. No, I definitely see what you mean because I was like a really fast typist. So I did enjoy being able to like type quickly and like you said, kind of at the pace that you're thinking.
00:34:06
Speaker
So it definitely was a change to switch to having to write longhand all the time. I guess, though, in a way, i kind of grew to like it because it felt like, I think they, supposedly, there are, like, studies about this as well, that, like, when you write, like, you know, that students taking notes in longhand or whatever, are like, it almost is, like, more ingrained in your mind because you're embodying it at the same time or something.
00:34:29
Speaker
So I kind of enjoy that feeling as well. But no, I mean, I definitely loved writing on a computer all the time, which I used to do, so... And when you like, so you write by hand one day, you print off, you, and ah you know, you edit the next day.
00:34:42
Speaker
How long are you sitting with a poem? How long are you then like, I'm going to write a new one? Sorry, I'm like really in the weeds here, but I'm like fascinated. Oh, no, no, it's okay. I'm just laughing because it's kind of embarrassing, like how long it does usually take me to write a poem. So like, even though I'm writing every day, like each day, i might sometimes, if I'm pretty stuck. Like I'll really only come up with like sentence, like one new sentence to add on to this poem that I'm working on so far. Like it really can be incredibly slow. Like there's plenty of poems where I was basically writing every day. when I say every day, I don't mean like the whole day. it's like maybe a couple hours in the morning before I do the rest of my work for the day.
00:35:23
Speaker
So but like, you know, where I'd be working away every day and it would literally take about a month. and So that's like almost 28 days of doing like this bit of writing every day, like to accumulate like a poem. And my poems are not even that long.
00:35:37
Speaker
So it's quite it's kind of painstaking and it's actually not very good practice. Like, you know, it's literally the opposite of what we tell students to do. which is to like come out with a draft pretty fast and then worry about refining it and stuff.
00:35:51
Speaker
So I don't even know how I ended up with this process. Cause like I say, it's not actually recommended for good reasons, but that is how I've kind of ended up working over the years.
00:36:03
Speaker
I mean, it seems to be working for you. Your poems are great. So I think you're clearly doing something that works for you, right? I think it's one has to find the way that one writes. ah You know, there can be models, there can be good practice, but like if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you, right? You've got to do the thing that does work in that moment. and But no, it's helpful for me to hear because i I'm always stuck with writing. So I'm go to um going to try this out.
00:36:24
Speaker
I'm going to see if I can... That's okay. Well, the very annoying thing about it is that unless you do the library all the time, going to cafes gets kind of expensive. Yeah. I don't mind working at home. Like, I can get work done at home, but I can, do you know, even just, like, printing it out and just sitting with a pen and just sitting with it for little while.
00:36:42
Speaker
i mean, actually, to be honest, even when I did write on computers all the time, um for editing or advising, I always liked print out because, you know, the text just reads differently when you're reading a printout somehow.
00:36:54
Speaker
yeah rather than on the computer screen. So, and I always recommend to students as well, like, especially, well, now we're going off topic, but like for essays or like, you know, non-creative writing, like when you, you know, like for proofreading and copy editing, like it actually is really valuable to print stuff out.
00:37:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, I don't think it's off. I like this podcast is about writing and how you do it. So I'm, it's exciting whatever we talk about. Do you remember when you first started writing? Do you know, where were you an early writer or an early reader?
00:37:25
Speaker
do you remember those details? Somewhat. Like I definitely was a super early reader because I mean, i look at me and my sister, I guess somehow sort of by osmosis, I guess, learned to read before we went to actual school.
00:37:39
Speaker
So i always loved reading and I'm sure I did like some, I probably wrote, tried to write like little stories and things. But I guess the thing that I really remember is sort of around the age of nine in school, we would have like, I think it was one day a week where like for a certain period of time, like it was maybe an hour, it was like writing time. They didn't call creative writing. I guess it was just called like writing. And so you had to, each of us would sit there on our own at our little desks and write whatever you wanted to for that time period.
00:38:08
Speaker
So it could be like, you know They were like, oh, you can write like about your dog or your family or what you did for summer holidays or whatever. like It could just be anything. that like um You kind of had to do it every week, I guess.
00:38:19
Speaker
And then we would have to keep our... And of course, this was before computers anyway. So it was like sheets of paper. And like we each had a special binder that we would put them in. And then all the binders were on this shelf in the classroom and you could go read. And then there were like other periods during the week that were reading period, you know, where they were again, like we were expected to sit there and read like books or other things.
00:38:41
Speaker
And one of the other things you could read was like the other, when other students had written. And so for some reason I could, I decided to write this like serialized story that was like this ridiculous, like fantasy adventure type story.
00:38:54
Speaker
So, you know, I would be writing like a new chapter of it each week or like a new installment of it to put it in my little binder. And then some of the students started reading it and like they seem to enjoy it and they would be like looking forward to the next installment. So that was like a little taste of people actually wanting to read something I wrote, which it took many years for ah to have that feeling again.
00:39:18
Speaker
Many, many, many years, or if at all. But anyway, yeah, I totally forgot about that until you were asking about it. But like the the idea of writing, putting it out into the world, having people want consume it, and then like using that as a spare, like it that just, that feels really formative, right? The idea that that writing is to be read. It doesn't have to be like world changing.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, it is crazy when I think back on it. Like, we didn't think about or question at all. Like, we just did what we were told to. And, like, i guess I was lucky because, you know, it was like a nice group of kids. People weren't like, ah, ha, ha, your piece sucks.
00:39:50
Speaker
To anyone else, like, not just to me. um Like, it was all just, like, really nice. And, like, it was fun to read other people's pieces as well. I don't know. it was crazy. Yeah, I guess, well, I feel like I had quite a lot of really good teachers just at like the state school in my hometown, you know, that created like this nice atmosphere. Yeah, it's really lovely, which might be a segue to, ah because obviously I know you teach creative writing.
Creative Writing Advice and Book Recommendations
00:40:13
Speaker
Are there any creative writing exercises that you might share like listeners now? Is there anything people might do that you would recommend?
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I have kind of like two main thoughts, maybe. So one is more general, but it's kind of this whole idea of trying to be open to discovery or kind of surprising yourself when you're writing. Because I think...
00:40:36
Speaker
In a way, there's like sort of nothing more deadening to writing than when you're trying to come up, like deliver a message in your writing or like stick to some kind of theme that you've decided in advance. So a kind of specific case of that maybe is that so like one of my favorite, I guess, or most prized writing teacher was this U.S. poet called Lucy Brock-Broido.
00:40:59
Speaker
And um she used to tell us, like, you know how you'll be drafting a poem and then, you know, you'll maybe be halfway through it and you'll think of like some line or image where you're like, oh, this would be great for the ending.
00:41:11
Speaker
And what she always said was like, just put it in right away. you know, as you're working on the draft, don't like save it till the end. is inevitably kind of you always end up trying to like sort of contort the poem to fit that ending that you've just thought of.
00:41:26
Speaker
Whereas like if you put it in right away, you have like this, what is supposed, what you think of as like a great, really cool line or image. And then by putting it in there, then what you, it will like be a springboard to what you write next. So that will be something exciting and cool as well, you know, like to continue the poem.
00:41:45
Speaker
And then obviously you'll come up with something in the end for the ending. you know It's kind of this idea, sometimes I think of in baseball terminology in the US, which will mean nothing to British people, obviously, but there's this saying, like you go with the hot hand or you play the hot hand.
00:42:03
Speaker
And basically, it just means that like if a player is on a roll, like you know they're having like a hitting streak or whatever, that you keep putting them in the lineup and having them play every day. And it's kind of like that in writing a poem, I think. Do you know what i mean? Like you go with what's hot as you're writing it. And like, even if that takes you in a totally different direction than what you started out in, or like, you know, you, again, it's just this whole idea of being open to discovering something new that you didn't intend beforehand.
00:42:33
Speaker
Are there any books or essays like on writing as practice that you might recommend also? Yeah. So um a recent one that I think is really good because it's a collection of essays. So, you know, you get all these different voices and there different ideas.
00:42:49
Speaker
It's called The Craft, A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century. It's edited by Rishi Dastadar, um published by Nine Arches.
00:43:00
Speaker
So it's all like UK based poets. And again, like a really diverse selection, people with different styles and ideas. But and again, it's just like a really solid kind of craft, practical guide to poetry, I think. You know, like there's like an essay on how to pick a good title or like what makes a title good, um you know, and other essays about like endings or imagery or things like that. So I find it it's very accessible, like the way that it's written. You know, it's not theoretical or academic something like that. It's just very based on writers own experiences and wisdom. So it's a great book, I think.
00:43:35
Speaker
and then i guess i would also mention sort of two old books that are kind of classics in the us s at least one is called bird by bird by anne lamott and it's these short essays that she wrote about kind of and they're not actually specific to poetry it's like about being a creative writer in general and then also this one is about poetry it's called the triggering town which is a collection of essays by richard hugo And again, it has a lot about kind of craft and sort of philosophy in a way, but really his advice really rings true to me. so
00:44:10
Speaker
Amazing. The chapter in Bird for Bird, what's called? Shitty First Drafts. Yeah, I've attached it to every module that i teach. you know Like it's just on the first page of every module i teach, but I just read it.
00:44:22
Speaker
It will open up space to just be like, it's fine. The first thing you write isn't always good. Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, it it even applies to writing essays, or, you know, like non creative writing, because it's just true, like, and the way that it's like the way, she you know, like I was saying earlier, how, like, the best practice is that you just like pump out a draft, and worry about revising it later. But like, I can say that to someone, and it's just, I'm just saying it, but like, the way she writes about it in this quite short essay makes you really understand and feel it. And like,
00:44:52
Speaker
can kind of convince you to be able to do that, which is what I think is so brilliant. Yeah. And it's funny too, which I appreciate. So yeah. Yeah. No, her style is great. Okay. So the final question is beyond those kind of like craft books, like are there any things you want to recommend to listeners? Like new things, old things, things that are not out yet that you want to recommend? Yeah.
00:45:12
Speaker
Yeah, so I just have three poetry books fairly recent that I would recommend and that I don't feel i feel like in a way don't get enough love maybe. They're all by US s poets. So um one is by Morgan Parker. It's called Magical Negro.
00:45:27
Speaker
It's actually published as well in the UK. So it's quite easy to get hold of. And then another is by Hala Allian it's called The 29th Year. It was her debut collection. I think it's really amazing.
00:45:40
Speaker
And then Terrence Hayes, he's quite well known as a poet, but actually like the last collection he wrote before he sort of became really famous was called Lighthead. And for me, that's like actually my favorite collection of his. So even if people know his later poems, like the American Sonnets and stuff, I would recommend going back to this um previous collection because there's some really amazing poems in it.
00:46:04
Speaker
Those are amazing. Yeah, we love the Morgan Parker book. Yeah, I think she's kind of amazing. And I feel like she did get a lot of press because like, you know, that and her previous book were, at least in the US, s like kind of quite successful by poetry standards.
00:46:17
Speaker
But then she's kind of, she hasn't written a poetry collection since Magical Negroes. yeah. I mean, I think she's focusing on other things, like she has a creative nonfiction book out and stuff, but I miss her powers.
00:46:28
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for those recommendations. We will link them all in the notes so people can find them. And yeah, just again, thank you so much for spending your time with me today, Jane. I really appreciate it. Oh, well, thank you for having me on the podcast. It was really fun.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:46:42
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode. Please subscribe if if you haven't already, leave a review and share with people you know. You can also follow the show and me on Instagram at Books Up Close and on YouTube.
00:46:54
Speaker
And if you can, please do fill out the feedback form linked in the show notes. It's really helpful to us. You can get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the Substack.
00:47:06
Speaker
This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.