Piera (www.pierachen.com; @pierachen) is an anglophone writer from Hong Kong. She has (co-)authored some 20 travel guides for Lonely Planet, and published poems in Sky Island Journal, Anthropocene, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Voice & Verse, Canto Cutie, and elsewhere. Her translation of Hong Kong poet Leung Ping-kwan’s 「中午在鰂魚涌」(Midday, Quarry Bay) was one of three high commended entries of the UK-based Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation. Piera has a BA in literature from Pomona College and an MA in literary and cultural studies from the University of Hong Kong. She believes that if writing is the most disembodied of the arts, travel writing and poetry are the genres that make it less so. This is why she loves both.
You can read Primal Cadence or Looking for Ju Jai in the January 2025 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?
The urge for this poem came at a workshop with British poet, Anthony Anaxagorou. I had long wanted to capture a recurring dream about a dog that passed and the village where I had met him, but I didn’t want a straightforward nostalgic approach. At that workshop, we were given a prompt to describe having a dream. Not writing exactly to prompt, I ended up with a few lines describing a psychedelic experience involving animals and a scrapyard.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
I used spaces in place of punctuation and run-ons to enhance the poem’s weird and meandering dream-like quality.
Is there a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone for you?
There are poets I keep going back to since my days as a literature major, such as the Imagist poets, Emily Dickinson, Ted Kooser, Kathleen Graber, and Philip Larkin. More recently, I’ve been rereading Rick Barot, Wayne Holloway-Smith, and Yu Xiuhua.
How do you revise your work?
I reread my poems, workshop when I can, and revise constantly. I don’t submit a lot, nowhere as much as I should. I believe you know when a poem is ready to take off – it’ll feel ready or you’ll be sick of it, or both. There’s usually no runup – apparently poems are birds, not planes.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
Most of my poems begin with an image or a turn of phrase evoking an image that I want to put at the service of a poem. Sometimes it happens relatively smoothly; oftentimes it doesn’t. Whichever way it goes, the resulting poem is always unexpected.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
I read poetry daily on Kindle and listen to poetry podcasts at the gym. I write on my phone sometimes when on the road. I am constantly thinking about writing poetry but not writing enough.
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
Paintings, photography, cinema. I’m drawn to images.