CONCRETE & RIVER

Photo of Gillian Sze by Sofia Bohdanowicz Sound, scent and the physical act of writing. That sensibility moving through the world, both exploratory and determined. Meet Gillian Sze. SUSAN GILLIS: How did you first come to poetry? GILLIAN SZE: Probably by accident, chance, and good timing. I think much of what I do now originates from a number of things: nursery rhymes, wisdom spouted by my parents in Chinese idioms, the sound of flipping pages, the smell of winter in my backyard, good penmanship, letter-writing, journaling, and reading. SG: Is it fair to think of your work in terms of appetite and persistence? What role do these play in your work? GS: Appetite, for sure – and quite literally in my last book where there’s an intense focus on food and eating. More broadly, I think appetite and persistence is a productive way of thinking about art, poetry, and creation. The appetite to understand, to express, to communicate and the dogged persistence to get it right, and to g

"Oriental Market" by sjtoh Gillian Sze EATING FRUIT While you are writing to me about the first snow, I am in a van bumping along the backbone of Malaysia, stopping only at roadside stands to buy durian, soursop, dragon fruit. In my mother’s language, if one does not have a taste for a food, one does not know it, as in to comprehend, or have the knowledge of how to eat. Eating has become a test of intimacy, to gauge the extent a mouth can work around a seed. In the evenings, after dinner, we eat fruits, and with each newly encountered fruit, my family watches, waits for my reaction. At first, the spikes of the rambutans warned me not to touch, but I did, and they slackened beneath my fingers, turned lissom like new grass. And dragon fruit, chemical-pink, shone with tiny black seeds. But a brailled slice tasted subtle as melon, as if its flavour dimmed at the close of my lips. So while you are writing to me about snow, I am driving to Bahau, past streaming fiel