|
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
Powered by
Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Create your own unique website with customizable templates.