MCLC: poet Fiona Sze-Lorrain

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: poet Fiona Sze-Lorrain
***********************************************************

Here's a China Daily article about list member Fiona Sze-Lorrain.

Kirk 

===========================================================

Source: China Daily (8/9/13):
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2013-08/09/content_16883031.htm

Solving a riddle with a harp and the magic of words
By Kelly Chung Dawson in New York (China Daily)

As the daughter of diasporic Chinese parents in Singapore, Fiona
Sze-Lorrain spoke both Chinese and English at home. From a young age, her
Chinese heritage signaled discipline and tradition. In accordance with her
parents' wishes, she studied the guzheng, a classical Chinese instrument,
and at age 9 made her performance debut at Singapore's Victoria Concert
Hall. Later, she went on to perform at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center
for audiences that included Bill Clinton and Princess Diana. But at the
time, she was simply following the rules.

At school, her composition assignments were in Chinese, and while she very
early on demonstrated a knack for the written word, she didn't fully
appreciate the freedom writing could allow until she began to write in
English as a young adult.

For Sze-Lorrain, who recently released a book of poetry called My Funeral
Gondola, creative inspiration only came with distance.

"When I was a kid, anything that had to do with Chinese culture - the
guzheng, my schooling - had to be done exactly right," she told China
Daily. "Later, when I began writing in English, I found myself exploring
Asian themes, but from a distance that felt incredibly freeing."

As a student at Columbia University, she dabbled in theater, writing and
East Asian studies, and came to realize that there was more to be
understood in the space between words and cultures, she said. Studying her
own heritage from an intellectual perspective allowed for an ambivalence
she had never indulged, and poetry provided an outlet for evolving views.

"The guzheng is a tradition, and you are always the carrier; you cannot
disobey the instrument," she said. "In theater, I realized that another
form of communication was through the physical body. And in poetry, I saw
that I could approach the language on my own terms, with my own
imagination as a tool."

When she struggled with writing, she found solace in source material and
the writing of other poets; from there, she discovered the pleasure of
translating Chinese works. She has since translated books by the poets Yu
Xiang, Bai Hua and Yi Liu, among others.

Translation has also provided room for creative expression, and
Sze-Lorrain does not undertake a translation project unless there's the
possibility for exploration, she said. Although it's almost impossible to
fully translate a poem with cadence and meaning intact, she finds the
challenge exciting.

"Silence is the common language, even when the words are not the same,"
she said. "If you commit to that path, your whole perspective of language
and life is different. It's no longer a linguistic puzzle; it's something
spiritual. You begin with an act of failure, in humbling yourself to the
fact that you will never fully be able to translate the words - but as you
travel backwards from that realization, images unravel themselves faster
than you can chase them. I find it to be a more poetic way of approaching
poetry, translation and the cultural differences we all encounter."

Her Chinese heritage is evident throughout her work. In one poem, she
writes: "Wandering in cloisters that breathe with trap/ doors, I am moving
in a subjective time. Tea egg vendors fan their/ stoves, they count their
coins in long gowns of smoke."

Frank Stewart, editor-in-chief of MANOA: A Pacific Journal of
International Writing and a professor at the University of Hawaii,
believes that Sze-Lorrain's grasp of languages is essential to her work as
a poet.

"The mixture of language backgrounds in her work is haunting and melodic,
and is part of something new that's going on in poetry," he told China
Daily. "She exhibits a restraint in her language and a respectfulness of
Chinese literature and history, and great poetic intelligence. Also in
that mix is her music training, which you see in her precise striking of
notes, and in the deliberate choice of her words."

Sze-Lorrain still performs as a guzheng soloist, exploring both classical
and contemporary music. Her inspirations include cultural experience and
what she calls "an inner listening".

She describes playing a traditional Zhejiang composition on the "zheng",
punctuated with Bach's counterpoint. The instrument has always been a
window into her heritage, a means to "solve a riddle with a harp", to
quote a Bible verse. Her understanding of Chinese culture is linked to the
history of the instrument itself, she said.

While she has visited China frequently, her experience of the culture is
rooted in her understanding of its music and its literature. But that
distance is what defines her, she said.

"I am surrounded by different cultural forces, and I occasionally
experience a conflicted state," she said. "It's always tempting to push
away that Asian heritage, and say that it's just your parents and not you.
But I've realized that I write about Chinese traditions and people because
I think I have to get over it in writing. Otherwise I wouldn't feel honest
as a writer."

Sze-Lorrain is currently working on a book of short stories, and music
featuring French music on the guzheng, she said. She lives in Paris, and
when she feels the weight of her busy life, she sets aside time for
Chinese calligraphy to moderate her breathing.

kdawson at chinadailyusa.com