Process Note #58 : Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong : for the department of peace

The 'process notes' pieces were originally solicited by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry collections for various workshops and classes. This process note and poems by Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong are part of her curriculum for Maker, Mentor, Muse and her poetry classes at the University of San Francisco and Dominican University. Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

The department of peace is in many ways a continuation of my first two books, ravel and The Quenching.  The personal, the political, the historical and nature have been a continuous space where I explore a spectrum of emotions.  I have been gravitating towards collaborations and performance.  I relish the connection with my collaborators and immediate feedback from the audience.

I performed the poem “Contraband” and read a few others from my first book ravel in the Poetry Flash series, where I met Penny Edwards, a Professor at UC Berkeley.  Penny invited me and Maw Shein Win to collaborate on a poetry project around refugees.  Maw and I met with Nwe Oo, Viet Le, César Rubio and others, who recounted their experiences to us.  We wrote poems collaboratively, drawing from these narratives, from nature, the news and various other forms of movement across borders.  We selected excerpts of recordings in Nwe Oo, Viet Le and César Rubio’s voices.  Julie Zhu composed a sound collage¹ with them.  I wrote a number of poems from narratives others have shared with me.  I am grateful to them for allowing me to enter what I consider a sacred space and open a window.

I began the titular poem the department of peace during the pandemic.  Rebecca Nie and Cecelia Jiayue Wu invited me to perform in Sankofa Concert: Healing, Reflection, and Renewal at Stanford’s Memorial Church in October 2021.  The loss of lives from the coronavirus was happening in parallel with violence from the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.  I had been reading Barbara Lee’s memoir, where she describes “sankofa” as “a [Ghanian] principle that teaches us that we must go back to our roots to move forward.”

I wrote autobiographically about my first boycott as a child:

The poem recalls my birth in Wisconsin, where my parents met the Mennonite couple Dwight and my namesake Bonnie, conscientious objectors in the Vietnam War who chose to teach in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  My father’s defiance of the Hong Kong police during colonial times takes me to Barbara Lee and Dennis Kucinich’s proposal, the Department of Peace, which seeks to promote peace and conflict resolution, and address the root causes of terrorism and other forms of violence.  My hope is for the poem to be a starting point for a deeper quest into the building blocks of peace.  It is aspirational, an invitation to contemplate action and change.  Rebecca Nie has developed a video² from the spoken word and music performance.  

The most difficult decision in this book was to write autobiographically about physical abuse at the hands of my mother and her mental illness:

I have heard anecdotally of many cases of mental illness among Asian and Asian American women.  There is a need to share individual narratives.  I believe to jump high, I need to crouch low.  I have made peace with my mother and gathered the strength to care for her from writing about her.  I have published these poems so others may know they are not alone.

My collaborators’ ideas were integral to many of the poems.  Pam Ybanez asked me to create a performance on gentrification, which resulted in “loiter,” a piece about sex work.  Chris Chafe proposed a collaboration around nuclear weapons, which I titled “absolute zero concerto.”  The new piece converged with the theme of “drowned river,” an intimate portrait of a family whose patriarch was involved in the nuclear weapons program.  Hanneke van Proosdij suggested a piece on wildfires in California, which became “fo² 火 fire.”  “You’re just waking up” was a video³ collaboration I initiated.  I juxtaposed the murder of George Floyd with a sci-fi scenario of moving to the ocean, living and swimming in water which needs to be purified.  Sean Yarborough offered his music, “Plastic Business.”

The text of the poems is dispersed throughout the page.  This represents the way I think.  In some poems like “drowned river”, there is more than one way readers can construct their own sentences.  As we slow down the interpretation of reality and allow time for contemplation, the empty space becomes an invitation for thoughts to coalesce beyond the page.

I wanted this book to speak to the times.  I have personal connections to events unfolding around the world.  I needed time to respond to these events and to rewrite poems until they spoke to me.  The timeline was particularly challenging as I wanted the book to be ready for a reading in Los Angeles with other members of Sixteen Rivers Press, an event we had planned around the AWP Conference.  The collective gave me the flexibility to depart from the schedule and take more time to write.  When the manuscript was ready, the editing and proofreading took place with both quality and velocity.  The book would not have been the same without the collective.

Footnotes:

1.     Sound collage: https://redshadowtree.earth/file/running_working

2.     Video: https://redshadowtree.earth/file/department_of_peace

3.     Video: https://redshadowtree.earth/file/just_waking_up

 

 

 

 

Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong works in many mediums: poetry, music, theater, performance, video and software. Born in Wisconsin and raised in Hong Kong, she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for two decades before returning to Hong Kong to care for her mother. She can still be spotted in California from time to time. The department of peace is her third book of poetry, following The Quenching (Finishing Line Press) and ravel (Neopoesis Press). She has staged two plays: Liriope and There's No Stopping to My Thoughts. Renku.earth, an Elixir application she built for writing poetry collaboratively, was a runner-up for the 2024 Elixir Consultancy Prize from the consultancy firm Erlang Solutions.

Maw Shein Win's latest full-length poetry collection is Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn, 2024). Her previous full-length collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020) was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry and shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. Her work has recently been published in The American Poetry Review, The Margins, The Bangalore Review, and other literary journals. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA, and the 2025 Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Awardee. Win's previous collections include Invisible Gifts and two chapbooks, Ruins of a glittering palace and Score and Bone. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco and in the Low Residency MFA Program at Dominican University. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a literary community. mawsheinwin.com

Indran Amirthanayagam : Process Note #50 : A Note From The Poet

The 'process notes' pieces were originally solicited by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry collections for various workshops and classes. This process note and poems by Indran Amirthanayagam is part of her curriculum for Maker, Mentor, Muse and her poetry classes in the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco. Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

When the pandemic cast its massive and penetrating eye on the earth, I began to write poems about living under its gaze. I wrote daily and in various languages, and I wanted to document the pandemic. In doing so, I began to write about whom and what we were losing, and I looked closely and listened to my mother who was under my care and suffering from a series of ailments, the most serious of which was her losing memory and eventually the ability to walk. I helped to care for her, and while doing so, saw into her needs and wishes, and my own needs and wishes for our human family (hence the title Seer).

I wrote the poems initially under the title The Seared Eye–for the Covid eye, for the searing it caused in our lives, in our souls. Seer is accurate and easier on the tongue and eye. I hope it does not presume too much. The poet is just another observer. But the poet looks while listening, creates word music from the ear and eye and mind meeting. I hope these poems, this word music, pleases while it consoles. I hope too that it shows us a way forward, a path through the maze to a world where we too will survive, even thrive.

I write poetry in five languages. I am X years old. I don't know if I will still learn another language and then write poems with its metaphors and meters before the lid is shut on my coffin or if I go up in smoke. I have crossed lots of borders in my life, geographic, spiritual, linguistic. I made a terrible mistake when I arrived in London as a boy of eight. I stopped speaking Tamil, Sinhalese as well. I blocked them out. I must have wanted to be one with other migrants (from Ireland, Italy, the Philippines) and the English boys and girls. I attended a mixed Catholic primary then a boys’ grammar school.

My last name was shortened to Amir, to make it easier for my mates, and Tamil was kicked out of my mind, the wound of departure buried under a thousand pounds of English literature and comedy. Monty Python became my new teacher, along with Larkin, Eliot, and Auden as I later began to discover poetry, reading poems by my father—Guy Amirthanayagam—and those he recommended.

I remember R.S. Thomas's A Song at the Year's Turning and Yeats: “I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree.” I remember Leavis, how my father advocated for deep exploration of the literary matter itself, which led to my belief that I can find the truth in poetry. The big truth, not just information, or a means to live, but the motherlode, discovery of the why at the heart of the other four w's: what, who, when, where. I also learned the five nevers from Lear.

Never stop writing poetry. Never believe that swinging a cricket bat will lead me out of the maze. Never become an accountant. Or a political leader, the prime minister of a country Eelam dreamed by my people. None of that earthly ambition although we are unacknowledged legislators. And never say no to the Muse. There you have them: five nevers. So go preach them on the moors and dales, in city centers, everywhere.

Time Present

There will be time, the poet said, to murder

and create, and I grew up thinking I would stop 

the sea as well as bake a few thousand cakes 

that sing and dance on the tongue, and murder

only cockroach and snake. But I cannot sift 

and parse, make concessions and compromise 

for the rest of my days. I must choose a path, 

be true to some plan, show resolve and purpose.

If not I would be deemed mercurial, humored, 

a human folly, not a computer or a stable figure, 

a steady captain on deck to recite O Captain! 

My Captain! over the raging sea. But help

me out, may I still kill the roach while arguing 

for sustainable living, long-term conservation 

of the ecosystem? If they are unseen, insidious, 

what options do I have but to bleach microbes

who wish to invade me? They do not come coated 

with love, flapping wings of turtle doves. But 

perhaps they offer me release, an early exit from 

this stifling, overheating fishbowl, once a gentle

trade-winded cul-de-sac. Claptrap. Remind 

myself of the Big Bang, and later in geologic 

time flaming rocks the size of the Empire State 

destroying the carnivorous, malevolent Tyrannosaurus.

Let me go back to dust with that earlier predator. 

How easy to pull off the calm veneer, especially 

when trafficking in words. Damn this. I am 

going for a walk. The sun is shining and

the winds are calm today. Who knows when 

the first hurricane of the Atlantic season 

will roar through the Covid-infested 

atmosphere. Get communing with nature

when I can. But keep distant from 

neighbors. Not a problem: the grand illusion, 

faith in tomorrow, conserving one's health. 

I must keep that idea circulating for babies

arriving today, kids waiting for treats 

at the next Halloween, and old men 

and women whose fronds were blessed 

yesterday on Palm Sunday with the gift

of memory, during this Covid year 

whose collateral benefits include 

digging into the attic of the mind, finding 

photographs, sharing them with any

household members, and on line.

 

 

 

 

Mother, in Tongues

Mother has gone back to the kitchen

where she needs two pounds of cardamom,

a cup of cloves. She will make love cake

again. This is Christmas in January,

and she is visiting her daughter in California.

Where are you Mummy? In Templeton.

Who am I? Indran. On Tuesday evening,

her body burning, she began to speak

in tongues, to invoke the Holy Spirit,

taklata, taklata, taitata taitata. We called

911. Ambulance and paramedics came,

along with two fire trucks. I have become

expert in friendships between these

groups of first responders in America

where more elements give security,

jack up costs..in America where

we moved to live then die . . .  America,

tak lata tak lata tai tata tai tata.

 

 

 

 

Mother's Wishes

I want six Eden Pure fans, twenty pounds

of cashew nuts, two thousand dollars in cash,

one thousand of which to be given

to the church for its annual appeal. I want

you to write to your brother. Have him

call me. I need money, also a checkbook.

I want to paint the patio, fix the carpet

on the landing. I want to go to Lourdes.

I would like every grandchild to keep

receiving a birthday present every year

from me. I want Bupsy to get a little extra.

I want Cissie to be given shares. I want

Revantha to have chocolates and nuts.

And I want to powder my face at my own pace

and without interruption. Now, tell me, what

can you do besides arguing for the other side?

 

 

 

 

 

Indran Amirthanayagam is a poet, editor, publisher, translator, YouTube host, and diplomat. For thirty years, he worked for his adoptive country, the United States, on diplomatic assignments in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. Amirthanayagam produced a unique record in 2020 publishing three poetry collections written in three different languages. He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He has published twenty-five poetry books In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly; writes; writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento; has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture and the Macdowell Colony. He is the IFLAC Word Poeta Mundial 2022. Amirthanayagam hosts The Poetry Channel. New books include Seer, The Runner’s Almanac,  and Powèt nan po la (Poet of the Port), Indran publishes poetry books at Beltway Editions.  Amirthanayagam’s first collection in Portuguese Música subterranea just appeared from Editora Kotter in Brazil.  

Maw Shein Win's new full-length poetry collection is Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn, 2024). Her previous full-length collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020) was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA. Win's previous collections include Invisible Gifts and two chapbooks, Ruins of a glittering palace and Score and Bone. Win often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers and her Process Note Series features poets on their process. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at USF and is a member of The Writers Grotto. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a literary community. mawsheinwin.com