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Every Word Earns Its Place:
L'Amour Lisik interviews Lillian Au

In “Lucky Lions,” the titular lions guard a classic Vancouver Special, a house style popularized for its large square footage and now known for its utilitarian look. Throughout the poem, the lions’ appearance degrades, and with it, our perspective on the home. First, they’re “slapped with decorator’s white paint,” then they’re “sporting five o’clock shadows of moss,” and finally they’re “[tagged] with red teardrops” by vandals. Did the lions function as a jumping off point for this poem, or did they emerge naturally as you circled the other imagery of a family living in this house?

The lions were the starting point for the poem. I was never a big fan of them. They were the first thing visitors saw, and I was embarrassed by how they made my parents' modest house look grander than it really was, like it was trying to impress. It was easy to make assumptions about the type of people who lived there. My family were working-class Chinese immigrants who bought a Vancouver Special, and the lions simply came with it. They were part of how many builders finished these homes. The lions seemed to cast their own spell, always present, always frowning, quietly judging. I became interested in turning the lens around and imagining the house, and the family inside it, from the lions' point of view.

There’s a sheen of dark nostalgia and an underlying tension in both “Lucky Lions” and “Chinese Red Wedding Cards.” Can you talk about how you create atmosphere in your work? Do the characters come first, or the settings?

I think the setting often comes first for me. I’m drawn to a particular emotional landscape before I fully understand who the characters are. The settings in those poems seemed to emerge naturally and the characters and tensions grew out of them. My parents' printing shop and the lions guarding our Vancouver Special are places loaded with both good and difficult memories. They're ordinary spaces, but they carried the weight of my family’s hopes, sacrifices and wanting to fit in. In Chinese culture, saving face is important, and I'm interested in the contrast between the public face a family presents and the private life hidden behind closed doors. My parents struggled to build a life in their adopted country. They were paying off family debts to relatives, sending remittances home, and trying to find their footing in a place that was foreign and, at times, unwelcoming. That pressure shaped the atmosphere of our home and at work, and it's something I find myself returning to in my writing.

You’ve also written short stories and creative nonfiction set in northern Canada. How does sense of place—geography, people—affect your writing?

When I worked as a reporter, I was fortunate to live and cover stories in Yellowknife and small communities in Nunavut. Being immersed in an unfamiliar environment allowed me to see the world at a slant and meet people whose lives were very different from my own. It made me pay attention to details I might otherwise have overlooked. I didn't want to forget those experiences. Writing became a way of documenting them and making sense of what I had seen and felt.

As a writer who works in many genres, does poetry demand something different than prose? Does your previous work as a broadcast journalist influence your creative writing?

Working in TV and radio taught me to observe closely and listen carefully. It was a privilege to tell other people’s stories, but my own voice always had to take a back seat and remain objective. I was living vicariously through the experiences of the people I interviewed. Creative writing gave me the freedom to tap into my imagination without a 6 p.m. deadline or an editor trimming a script down to forty seconds. Poetry demands something different from prose. Every word has to earn its place. A short story can wander and discover itself along the way; a poem demands precision and compression. I enjoy both, but poetry has made me a more attentive prose writer, while journalism taught me to cut to the heart of a story.

What new projects are you working on right now? Which writers or artists are inspiring you?

I’m working on a series of short stories about my parents’ old house in the heart of Chinatown, which they rented out. My father was one of the protestors who helped stop a freeway that would have split Chinatown apart in the late 1960s. I want to explore what belonging means in a neighbourhood that is both gentrifying and stigmatized. I’m inspired by Frances Peck’s writing for its intelligence and wit. I admire the way she brings people and places vividly to life, and I’m especially looking forward to reading her upcoming book set in Cape Breton. Evelyn Lau and Fiona Tinwei Lam’s poetry has been an important influence on me. I admire Lau’s emotional intensity and rawness, and Lam’s thoughtful exploration of cultural memory and history. Their command of language and creative use of wordplay continue to inspire my own writing.

 

 

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