Phoebe Wang writes and teaches in Toronto. She recently edited a supplement issue on the theme of inheritances for The Puritan, and her chapbook, Hanging Exhibits appeared with The Emergency Respon…

Source: BWS 14.09.16: Phoebe Wang

Jael Richardson, author and artistic director of The Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), wrote a valuable list a few days ago for Open Book:Toronto on the difference between tokenism and inclusion. I urge everyone who is a part of a literary community in Canada to read and to absorb it. It’s an extremely meaningful resource for me, because now I can pass it along to well-meaning editors, publishers, hosts, festival organizers, etc. and say, “this is why your request for my participation is tokenism, and not inclusion. This is why I’m saying ‘no’, even though it means more exposure and greater opportunities for me.”

I would like to add to this discussion with a few additional strategies on how to improve diversity in literary organizations and publications from the bottom up. I’m often asked by organizers, editors and writers about how they can become more diverse. Their tone is generally abashed, worried and attentive. As a result, I usually praise them for their ability to recognize that there’s a problem. However, they don’t seem to realize that essentially asking me to do a part of their job. If they have failed to grow their audience, or they are coming under attack for their cultural and racial homogeneity, then their original vision wasn’t well-thought out or reflective of their communities’ needs in the first place.

Very carefully, I ask these worried people to look closely at their social circles. At their staff, their peers, the writers they met in university, etc. How many women, queer or trans writers or writers of colour are in their immediate networks? It’s important to phrase these questions with caution because once I told a friend and fellow writer that he didn’t, as far as I could tell, have any friends who were people of colour and perhaps that was the reason why he was having trouble coming up with non-white writers for his event. He was horrified, and asked if I was accusing him of being racist. Defensiveness ensued. Again and again, writers I know of Egyptian, Indian, Japanese, Singaporean and First Nations descent are reporting the same thing–there is so much fear and defensiveness around discussions of race and diversity that it’s undermining real change. Everyone is so afraid of accusations of racism and of saying the wrong thing that the lessons we can learn from acknowledging systemic power imbalances aren’t being learnt. Like all learning processes, there is some discomfort and misery before their can be renewal and fulfillment.

What to do if you see that the writing program, chapbook press or conference you have worked so hard to build and promote has an absolutely dismal ratio of gender balance or diverse writers? As you work to overcome feelings of discouragement and to look for solutions, you may see there are larger forces at work operating in an extremely effective way to maintain the status quo. In my experience, minorities are both visible and invisible, that is, when we’re in the room and our names are on a masthead, we are very noticeable but when those faces and names are absent, it’s difficult to see we’re not there. The presence of women and minorities confirm the dominant culture’s self-image as inclusive and diverse; however, if they’re missing from the conversation, the discourse switches channels and becomes about ‘artistry/maintaining artistic integrity’ (implying that the lack of minority writers is due to the fact that they failed to meet arbitrarily-set standards), being ‘thought-provoking’, ‘international’ (!) or ‘stylish’. I find it fascinating to watch these convenient cover-ups, these maneuvers of rhetoric that separate writers into different categories but that still ensure the organization and institution is viewed in the least critical light. Do founders and publishers not realize that publically admitting one’s shortcomings (i.e. Tin House,  Taddle Creek, and Invisible Press) is both refreshing and instructive?

I know I will never stop wondering about whether I am being included or tokenized. I wonder this even when I get a Facebook invite to a launch or reading, which brings me both joy and anxiety. I scroll recklessly through the guest list, wondering if I’ll be the one of the few visible minorities in the room. I weigh the variables– I’ll be troubled if the room is entirely ‘white’ even if it contains friends, but if I don’t attend, the event will have one less Asian-Canadian woman in the room, and it’s always important we’re in the room because no one will notice if we’re not. I look at the track record of previous events. Have the organizers been inclusive before? Are they active in diverse communities? Have I seen them at events outside their own demographic? Have I seen them at events like Writing Thru Race or The Fold or Toronto Poetry Talks or on the #diversecanlit Tweetchats? Have I seen them speak up on behalf of diverse writers? These relentless questions are a tad unforgiving, but I’m aware that other writers of colour also keep very close tabs on the public statements, personas and activities of organizers, editors, publishers and other ‘gatekeepers’. It’s how we determine who is benefiting whom. Whereas tokenism benefits those who are maintaining or reifying their position of privilege, inclusiveness benefits everyone.

Thanks to the pervasive individualism of North American culture, the trope of the ‘personal journey’ often pervades conversations I have with editors and organisors about diversity. Of course, it’s vital to grow and learn, but editing the work of a female, queer or trans or minority writer shouldn’t turn into a story of that editor’s personal development. Similarly, organizations and festivals that point to their inclusive practices in a self-congratulatory and shallow way are mainly interested in their image, satisfying granting requirements, or appeasing public opinion. This can happen when the writer in question is approached for the first time only when their work or their body is viewed as a benefit to the organization or publication, nor have they been included in a wider conversation. There’s been little to no effort to see if the writer’s pursuits or projects align with the person who is making the request. This way of approaching writers is antithetical to collaboration and productive networks.

It disturbs me to see younger writers and peers my own age fail to build these kinds of long-term relationships and to get writers from less privileged backgrounds involved in higher levels of planning and decision-making. Politeness and my own passivity keeps me from saying, you have barely spoken to this queer/trans/female/minority/first nations writer before now. You haven’t attended any of their readings and you are barely familiar with their work. You heard about them because they won a prize. You’re only inviting this person because you’re concerned that you only have ‘white’ male writers putting themselves forward, mainly because you didn’t have a clear mission or vision to begin with. You’re also concerned about the quality of the work you present, though you would never call yourself canonical or a formalist. When the writer in question says no, you tell everyone you ‘tried.’ You still don’t attend this writer’s readings or read their work because you feel you have already done your job. You’re barely being paid to do this job anyway. How much can people expect you to do? You don’t ask again. You don’t think that maybe it’s how you’re asking that has something to do with their inexplicable refusal. 

I don’t want to be asked for my work only because someone feels guilty and wants to pass another signpost on their road to enlightenment. I want to be the greater part of a seismic change.  This changes comes from the shift in thinking about how we can benefit writers who have been underrepresented. Many writers don’t believe that they have anything material to offer. Yes, writers in Canada are struggling financially, emotionally and mentally just to write everyday, sometimes just to get dressed. But writers benefit from knowledge, support and dialogue. Writers whose parents didn’t speak English at home and whose parents opposed or weren’t able to support their children’s hunger to write often don’t even know how to go about writing or starting to write. They don’t know the resources available to them or how to apply, the steps in preparing a submission, the mindset necessary for seeing themselves as professional, or know-how and networking skills on how to approach an editor in a bar, because they or their families don’t drink and don’t belong to social circles where cocktails were served.

The longer I spend in Toronto, the more I realize that everyone is an outsider in some way- an outsider to the city, to middle-class stability, to the coteries that spring up around MFAs and writing programs. But if no one admits to their insider-ness, then what we will end up with is a disconnected and discrete assemblage of writers, each of them scrambling for fingerholds in an unsustainable industry that could support everyone if we actively think about how we’re benefiting others. When I think of all that my friends do— designing and editing chapbooks, organizing reading series, writing reviews, making podcasts, hand-stitching books, showing up night and night at events, shouting-out writers online at all hours like sleepless owls, I’m speechless with astonishment. To say they aren’t doing enough feels like I’m slowly pushing a penknife through their never-still hands.

I have already benefited in enormous ways from the writing industry’s shift towards inclusivity. In some cases I have been afforded opportunities that male writers and Caucasian writers have not because of my gender and background, and I’ve felt very self-conscious about being given more than my allocation of limelight. While my parents adapted to Canadian culture more easily than the Chinese parents of my friends, they imparted the values of modesty and lack of vanity by example and without conscious effort. While they believed that both my sister and I would storm the world, they were painfully humble about their own talents. I balk at submitting my work to programs and prizes, but I remind myself that my parents didn’t come to Canada for me to squirm with misplaced modesty. If anything, they wanted their children to have the sense of entitlement that they never did. The small boosts that my racialized body has given me doesn’t change the fact that my parents own no property, that they couldn’t afford my university tuition, that I didn’t believe for an inordinate amount of time that I could ever presume to teach English, or that I feel the constant fear that my Asian features and olive skin are off-putting, disruptive, unwanted. To work towards inclusion, then, means also overcoming the prevailing suspicion many underrepresented and minority writers have that we should be grateful and keep to our place. But what place is that? It’s the greater part.

After several years of piecemeal existence in Toronto, I’ve a rough grasp of how the year of a writer’s work cycles through the seasons. It’s less like the migratory arc of a Canada goose and more like a crocus bulb that sits cold and incubating nearly half the year. Similarly, in the winter months after the holidays, I hole up in my giant fisherman sweaters and corresponding fish stews, and stew over new work. In spring, writers flower forth in bars and bookstores to celebrate their offerings. Summer is another fecund time, though now reading, revising, meditating and drinking can be done out of doors, and if you’re fortunate enough, to go away on a retreat or residency. It’s the time of year I try to earn a much income as possible, writing grants and teaching the influx of international ESL students that alight in our cities. Fall becomes a kind of long writers’ reunion party with festivals and events, after that the hiatus of family and the new year.

Midway through January of this year, I found myself out of work, but a fortuitous combination of severance pay, accumulated vacation pay and a small grant meant that I could spend a few months writing (while still doing a few odd jobs.) I haven’t been able to have a long stretch to produce new work since starting my TESL training last February, and was pretty abashed at how immediately I devolved into rolling out of bed at eleven and falling asleep at 4am amidst printouts and empty, chili-ringed cup noodles. I worsened my prescription reading A.V. Club, Slate, Hitfix and Vulture TV reviews and took to leaving bottles of water around the apartment to remind myself to stay hydrated. I had done it all before, and I will probably do it again. Because in the end, I’m overjoyed to be able to brag about:

1. Editing my first The Puritan supplement on the theme of legacies and inheritances. I have been so happy to meet and work with the writers on their pieces, and in many cases emails and pitches turned into Skype meetings and coffee dates. Poets, fiction writers, a graphic essay, two interviews, a play/family story excerpt and a critical essay on transgendered literature are just some of the things to look forward when The Puritan goes live in May. I’m also in the beginning stages of planning an evening to celebrate the contributions of the writers, editors and staff.
2. With the help of the fantastic Andrew Faulkner and Leigh Nash, I have finished the draft of a new chapbook MS currently titled “Permanent Exhibits.” It’s another batch of ekphrastic poems, this time about my mother who has been a watercolour painter almost all her life. Through the course of writing these poems, I discovered she’d met with many overseas Hong Kong artists as well as local Ottawa artists, collecting their books and catalogues, as well as a few pieces. The chapbook is appearing with the reinstated Emergency Response Unit Press, and will be launched with a joint party with Desert Pets Press in mid-May. A broadside will be available on April 28th, at the Invisible Press launch, alongside Andrew Forbes and Brent van Staalduinen.
3. My debut poetry collection, Admission Requirements has been accepted for publication for Spring 2017. That is all I’m going to say for now.
4. I watched all of season one of Outlander and read the first five of the novels too. It’s been a long winter.

So tell me, what have you been working on?

“Persistence matters, ” I heard myself saying, like some kind of jerky puppet. “Keep trying and eventually it’ll happen.” The exact phrases I heard from published writers 15 years ago were now gushing out of my mouth and I couldn’t stop them. I looked over at Kateri Lanthier, who was letting me ramble to her third-year creative writing students at UTM about publishing. Kateri nodded and supportively wove in anecdotes and experiences of her own. I reminded myself to make eye-contact with the 15 students scattered around the room, who were listening politely, barely moving. I saw small sparks going off in the quiet eyes, and in a strange way, I could feel them listening harder when I talked about self-validation and creating opportunities for themselves.

It’s easy for a published writer to say, “Persevere and you’ll topple the mountains of indifference towards you and your writing,” but I’d forgotten until this week the huge challenge of submitting work to a magazine as a young, unknown writer. The act is more than just slipping an envelope into the mail. There are many tips and guidelines detailing how to submit work, including Doretta Lau’s excellent presentation, How to Submit to Literary Magazines, with her submissions spreadsheet and details about how she finally found a publisher for her short story collection, How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? (Nightwood, 2014.)

I want to focus more on the mindset of seeking to publish. When writers decide to send out their work, it’s more than a physical act, it’s adopting an attitude of taking your work seriously and seeing yourself as a professional. It’s an opportunity to find out if your mere words can reach and affect an editor, someone who has no ties to you and cannot be biased by a relationship with you. There is something very pure about this, even when you take into account an editor’s inevitable bias and subjective tastes.

The unpublished writer also must learn to develop their own instincts about when a piece is ready for submission. I recognize the feeling now— when I read a poem that has been redrafted many times, that has been read by my trusted fellow poets and revised again until every word and line of it is as meaningful as I can make, when I get a little feeling of pride and excitement about the creative leaps I’ve made with the piece, then I know it is ready, though doubts can still overtake me like a bad smell.

If I can dispel them, I look for a place to submit it to and take into account the style of the publication or the tastes of the judge, whether it’s promising enough for a national prize or better suited for an online journal. I make many mistakes and through long trial and error until miraculously, my writing finds its proper home.

Rejection slips from Prism, Arc, The Fiddlehead and Malahat Review.

A handwritten note from John Barton, then editor at Arc Poetry Magazine

A kind note from editor Ian LeTourneau in 2001.

Or not. Before the digitization of everything, rejection slips would arrive via postman months later, sometimes with a handwritten note to soften the harshness of we regret we cannot accept your work for publication at this time. A rejection was the worst that could happen and the worst that could happen is a piece of paper. It’s not dreams crushed under 200lb weights, it’s not losing right hand. No one is saying you can’t be a writer. The rejection becomes an emblem of having tried, not one of failure. Knowing you are strong enough to brush it aside, go back to your now months-old piece, rethink, revise and resend.

If only there was a faster way, an easier way than this long tricky process of revising, waiting, waiting some more and feeling your youth slip away with sleepless nights of editing. I remember a stretch when I couldn’t get anything published for a year. Then the next year, I had four poems accepted, I made it onto the CBC poetry prize longlist and got an arts grant that paid for 4 months of living expenses. Writing successes only feel rewarding because they are so tough to reach, by the time you reach them, you were on the brink of giving up several times and you can only blink like a car crash survivor at the kindness of friends and strangers who praise and congratulate you.

One of my first earnings

My first acceptance letter from a quality literary journal, Descant, in 2000

Success of your own doesn’t stop the feelings of envy towards your fellow writers who are publishing in top-tier magazines that keep rejecting you, getting into prestigious MFA programs, winning grants and prizes and/or working on impressive projects. I tend to be envious of younger writers who published books earlier than me. While I published early, at 19, I didn’t publish again until I was 28, and couldn’t finish a poem between the ages of 20-28. I was 29 when I started my MA in Creative Writing, and at that age, I had rubbed away most of my petrifying shyness and had enough maturity to know how to handle my career.  Success looks different for everyone and the clichés are ringingly true. Everyone has their own journey, yadda yadda yadda. Which basically means, some things will happen faster for you, some things will take longer.

Envy is both a spur and a wound. The success of others doesn’t take anything away from you, and it’s unproductive to think that there is a finite amount of success. Feelings of awe and admiration spur writers to their desks, but while there, they’re facing battles on their own, and envy is the wound that leaks creativity.

Descant 109 listing my name

Seeing my poems in print and feeling like they could’ve used more work…

At the age of 20, I was mortified and elated to appear beside Deanna Young and Stephanie Bolster

There will also be a time when writers confront the spectres of previous successes. I look back at poems of mine that did well, and feel as if they were written by a stranger. In print form, I don’t recognize them and they are divorced from me, as is the person who wrote it. The finished, successful piece of writing is a screenshot of a moment in time and of my obsessions then, and I cannot recreate it. This is one reason why a writer forgets their successes so fast and appears almost embarrassed by them. Success isn’t as addictive as the rush of getting it right. There’s always the next thing. And the thing after that.

The handout I gave out of my talk, including my submissions spreadsheet from 2010-2012, a non-exhaustive list of print, online and chapbook presses in Canada, and a shortlist of resources: Why Publish Handout PDF.

I would love to hear stories from writers of your first publication in the comments below, on Twitter or emailed to me at phoebe@alittleprint.com

When you have momentum, things feel weightless, or at least, less weighty. This year, I have felt the help of some strange shifts in the air—I submit less and am asked for work more, I can sail a little on the strength of relationships built and fed with the tinder of common interests. To gain momentum as a writer means gathering strength from the slow accumulations and conversations and work and blind efforts of the past. So here are some of the things I’ve gathered in the past few months:

1. An online interview with Prism Magazine‘s Poetry editor, Dominique Bernier-Cormier, last summer (read in full here)
2. A brief paragraph in response to Blair Trewartha, who’s currently poet-in-residence at Open Book: Toronto and a poem from my MS, Admission Requirements, as a part of his ‘Poet in Preview‘ series (check out his whole series as it includes profiles on many of the Toronto poets I feign as friends)
3.  New work in Project 40’s magazine, Looseleaf Magazine, edited by a stunningly hardworking and ambitious collective of young Asian Canadian artists and writers. I had a wonderful time at the launch at Beit Zatoun in early December, and was it felt both historic and extremely meaningful to read alongside several other female Asian Canadian poets and writers. Issues of the Volume 1 can be purchased here. My work in the magazine is a series of ‘annotations’ on each of the pieces of art throughout the issue.
4.  A new poem, “Sunrise with Sea Monsters” on Paul Vermeersch’s ekphrastic online blog, where every poem responds to Turner’s 1845 painting of the same name. The blog has 14 poems so far from Canadian poets such as Susan Glickman, Stevie Howell, Sylvia Legris, Tanis MacDonald, Pearl Pirie and others who seem to find the golden-hued oil work a rich mine of suggestiveness. I came across this wonderful 2012 short film, “The Last Fisherman,” which is based in Margate, the same coastal town where Turner created the painting. You can see the early dawn lights, it hasn’t changed at all.
5.  My 2016 is already promising: I will have a cache of new poems in the Winter issue of Ricepaper Magazine, in Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Literary Studies, and BookThug Press’s newest volume of BafterC. As well, reviews of Raoul Fernandes’ Transmitter and Receiver, Soraya Peerbaye’s Tell, Lee Maracle’s Talking to the Diaspora and I just successfully pitched a long essay on how poetry can help newcomers to Canada to Arc Magazine; I only hope that I can write the piece that’s still hanging in cloud bubble form somewhere in the ether.

Let us wish for the good fortune to carry out the work we are meant to do and the courage to fulfill the beliefs that others have for us.