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The Next Big Thing interview series is a literary game of tag in which writers answer the same ten questions about their new book, work-in-progress or collaboration, then tag more writers to do the same. Thanks to Mariela Griffor, author of The Psychiatrist (Eyewear Publishing Ltd., 2013) for tagging me. |
TNBT: What is the working title of your book?
JT: Red Flower, White Flower
TNBT: What genre does your book fall under?
JT: Poetry
TNBT: Where did the idea come from for the book?
JT: After the birth of my daughter I didn't write for a few years. Then I gave a reading with the lovely poet Lee Herrick & his lines: "...not quite the rose/not quite the roots..." stayed with me. (I never thought I'd write about flowers. If you'd told me then I'd write a "flower book" I'd have laughed or cried.) The next day I discovered a rose called the Hybrid Perpetual, the first rose to combine Asian remontancy with the Old European lineages & with the help of Li-Young Lee (he had written Rose after all, flowers were viable!) I was on my way.
TNBT: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
JT: Tony Leung for the father! There are two famous actors named Tony Leung---a big one & a little one. I prefer the little one. He's far more imposing & his eyes are deeply intelligent. For the mother, Charlotte Gainsbourg as she appeared in Jane Eyre---pure, troubled, often misunderstood. A composite for the sister, some ethereal cross between a young Meg Tilly & a slightly older Keisha Castle-Hughes. Shy, stubbornly devoted, someone at once blessed & cursed with a secret knowledge, with access to a vision no one else has.
TNBT: What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?
JT: Love & death are the same flower.
TNBT: How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
JT: About a year, though it was simmering for sometime before that & many drafts eventually followed that first one.
TNBT: What other books would you compare this to within your genre?
JT: This is a difficult question, one hates to make presumptions of course, but the first two that come to mind are Regan Good's The Atlantic House & Li-Young Lee's Rose.
Like Red Flower, White Flower, The Atlantic House is a book written on the occasion of death & is ultimately a book about difficult loves. The Atlantic House too is furious & questioning, it too appeals to language for help, to music for consolation.
Like my red & white flowers, Lee's rose hovers like a flower-cloud in the sky of his book, over the earth of it. The flower-cloud touches everything, interacts with everything, things in the sky, things on the ground. A flower, & yet not a flower, one color in the afternoon, another at midnight, it is a dynamic image that makes meanings throughout.
TNBT: Will your book be self-published or published by a press?
JT: Red Flower, White Flower will be published by Marick Press in fall of 2013.
TNBT: What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
JT: One of the most exciting things about this book is that it will be a bilingual edition; the original poems in English will appear alongside Chinese translations by Han Mengying & Aaron Crippen.
TNBT: Please share a sample of the writing.
Two Flowers
I loved the wrong flower. Its color
of apples & fire & blood
from a body just opened
by the world's knife.
There was one without color
that waited for me. The one
I should have loved.
I could not see.
**I'm tagging Cathy Linh Che whose fierce, necessary, & beautiful book Split is forthcoming from Alice James!
cathylinhche.com
& Sandra Lim whose mysterious book The Wilderness won the Barnard Women Poets Prize!
Read Sandra Lim's interview HERE
JT: Red Flower, White Flower
TNBT: What genre does your book fall under?
JT: Poetry
TNBT: Where did the idea come from for the book?
JT: After the birth of my daughter I didn't write for a few years. Then I gave a reading with the lovely poet Lee Herrick & his lines: "...not quite the rose/not quite the roots..." stayed with me. (I never thought I'd write about flowers. If you'd told me then I'd write a "flower book" I'd have laughed or cried.) The next day I discovered a rose called the Hybrid Perpetual, the first rose to combine Asian remontancy with the Old European lineages & with the help of Li-Young Lee (he had written Rose after all, flowers were viable!) I was on my way.
TNBT: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
JT: Tony Leung for the father! There are two famous actors named Tony Leung---a big one & a little one. I prefer the little one. He's far more imposing & his eyes are deeply intelligent. For the mother, Charlotte Gainsbourg as she appeared in Jane Eyre---pure, troubled, often misunderstood. A composite for the sister, some ethereal cross between a young Meg Tilly & a slightly older Keisha Castle-Hughes. Shy, stubbornly devoted, someone at once blessed & cursed with a secret knowledge, with access to a vision no one else has.
TNBT: What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?
JT: Love & death are the same flower.
TNBT: How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
JT: About a year, though it was simmering for sometime before that & many drafts eventually followed that first one.
TNBT: What other books would you compare this to within your genre?
JT: This is a difficult question, one hates to make presumptions of course, but the first two that come to mind are Regan Good's The Atlantic House & Li-Young Lee's Rose.
Like Red Flower, White Flower, The Atlantic House is a book written on the occasion of death & is ultimately a book about difficult loves. The Atlantic House too is furious & questioning, it too appeals to language for help, to music for consolation.
Like my red & white flowers, Lee's rose hovers like a flower-cloud in the sky of his book, over the earth of it. The flower-cloud touches everything, interacts with everything, things in the sky, things on the ground. A flower, & yet not a flower, one color in the afternoon, another at midnight, it is a dynamic image that makes meanings throughout.
TNBT: Will your book be self-published or published by a press?
JT: Red Flower, White Flower will be published by Marick Press in fall of 2013.
TNBT: What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
JT: One of the most exciting things about this book is that it will be a bilingual edition; the original poems in English will appear alongside Chinese translations by Han Mengying & Aaron Crippen.
TNBT: Please share a sample of the writing.
Two Flowers
I loved the wrong flower. Its color
of apples & fire & blood
from a body just opened
by the world's knife.
There was one without color
that waited for me. The one
I should have loved.
I could not see.
**I'm tagging Cathy Linh Che whose fierce, necessary, & beautiful book Split is forthcoming from Alice James!
cathylinhche.com
& Sandra Lim whose mysterious book The Wilderness won the Barnard Women Poets Prize!
Read Sandra Lim's interview HERE
