Ellen Zhang is physician-writer who has studied under Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham and poet Rosebud Ben-Oni. She has been recognized by the DeBakey Poetry Prize, Dibase Poetry Contest, and as a National Student Poet semifinalist. Her works appear or are forthcoming in Chestnut Review, The Shore Poetry, Hekton International, and elsewhere.
You can read Winter’s Coming in the October 2023 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
When I first wrote this poem, it took a very different form. For me, I wanted to use very strong imagery that is beautiful to talk about a topic that can be tragic. In some ways, I wanted to contrast the beauty and darkness of life that comes with each passing day.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
I love writing poetry, but most of my time is spent doing something else I also find deeply fulfilling in a different way. I work as a physician talking and taking care of patients. In many ways, in the hospitals, I am able to reflect and draw inspiration for my poetry. Of course, as seen in this poem here, not all of my poems centre upon medicine. However, writing and medicine are core to what it means to be human and connect with others.
How do you revise your work?
The biggest challenge for me is sitting down and making time to write and edit my work. However, I really enjoy playing with wording and phrasing of poetry—in fact, it is probably the most fulfilling part of writing poetry for me in many ways.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
Anything! Sometimes an image such as apricot trees, phrases such as ‘encapsulating agony,’ or even words such as ‘crack.’ Living is poetry, even if you do not write it down.
Have you ever received advice (or has there been something you’ve learned on your own) about writing or revising poems that has made you a better poet? What was it?
My best piece of advice was that if a poem does not work then try changing its structure or taking parts of what works into another piece of writing. Revision can take many different forms, and the results might surprise me. However, it truly is a journey and adventure. The poem I have shared in Pinhole looked very different from the start when I wrote it to the end.