On the warm summer night of Lisa Low’s recent chapbook release, I trekked on foot from Pilsen to Taylor Street’s Living Water Tea House, where many poets from Chicago and beyond came together to drink tea and celebrate the release of Crown for the Girl Inside. The Chicago-based writer’s poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, and The Southern Review, and her prose was awarded the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize. She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize and has an MFA from Indiana University and a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. After the release, I had the chance to chat with Low about living in the midwest as transplants from different coasts of the U.S., writing about whiteness, and the decision to pick up a pen . . . or not.
Luz Magdaleno Flores: Who is Lisa Low?
Lisa Low: Oh, good question. So I’m a poet primarily. I also write essays. I grew up in Maryland. But I’ve been in the midwest for a really long time. So hopefully, I can consider myself an honorary midwesterner. I came here after college, to Chicago, but then went to Bloomington, Indiana, for my MFA and then Cincinnati and then came back here. And yeah, I know you through C.P.C. [Chicago Poetry Center]. It’s been really cool to get to know poetry in Chicago through there.
The first place in the midwest I arrived at was Bloomington, Indiana, where my brother was doing his Ph.D. program. And every summer, I try to go to Lake Monroe. I feel like it’s a good place for a poet, right? Were you doing your MFA in writing there?
Yeah, it was really different. It was hard to get used to, but nature was really beautiful. And yeah, it was a great place to write and get to know other writers.
You got your doctorate recently, right? Tell me about that.
Yeah, just finished.
And then you chose to return back to Chicago? Why Chicago?
When I first came here, my brother was here with my sister-in-law; they had just gotten married. So I was like, “I’ll just like to go somewhere where I know my family.” When I came here, I had a hard time adjusting to a Teach for America-like program right after undergrad. But I think I grew to really like the city a lot. And when I went away for grad school, I had been dreaming about coming back here. I feel like a lot of people who are finishing their doctorate are looking to find their academic jobs in different places. And I was like, “Oh, I really want to live in a place that I want to live in.” And since my family was here, I was like, “Oh, we should just move back. And then kind of figure out life from there.”
So let’s talk about Crown for the Girl Inside; when did this pour out of you? I know that it was part of a competition for a prize, right? And it got published. Talk to me about that process.
I started writing these poems around 2019. I think the earliest poem is probably, maybe, 2018. But most of it was written 2019, 2020, and maybe a little bit of 2021. It was during an early part of my Ph.D. program when I wrote the bulk of it. I was around a lot of other writers. I had been writing about race and identity. And then I got to this point where I was like, “I’m really interested in writing about whiteness, and really directly, and seeing what happens there.”
Crown for the Girl Inside by Lisa Low
YesYes Books, paperback chapbook, $12
yesyesbooks.com
What did you do your Ph.D. research in? What was your focus?
Poetry. I looked at Asian American literature, specifically thinking about race and performativity. I am really interested in ars poetica, like when poems talk about poetry or like when writers reference poems in poetry and the writing process. All of that is really interesting to me.
Yes, me too! I love books that explore identity. Have you read Something to Declare by Julia Alvarez? It’s about how she has gone through her life as a writer. I learned a lot from that book; I highly recommend it. Who are some of your favorite writers or favorite books that influenced your work?
I feel like I’m never never quite prepared for this question. Do you feel like you have your go-to people that you always talk about when people ask you?
Oh, yeah. And I want to branch out like I want to definitely bring in more people that are not Latinx. I feel like because I have grown up looking for voices like mine. Those are my favorite, you know. So like, obviously, some Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldua, not necessarily for her poetry but for her essays and feminist theory. She writes those essays in a way that is poetic to me. Julia Alvarez, like I mentioned, Ana Castillo, and Jose Olivarez.
Super dope. I really need to read his new book.
You know what? It reminded me of yours! That’s something I wanted to explore with you too—the fact that he writes about whiteness but by speaking about his Mexican identity. He brought to life so many poems about Mexican identity and being in love with someone who is Black. And he talks his shit towards white people. I think the difference between both of your works is that a white person might not pick up his book because it is so focused on Mexican identity. And yours is very white-centered, you know, you are speaking so much about whiteness. And I wonder what those reactions are like from the white people who resonate with what you say about them or who think they aren’t like that. How do you feel about that?
I went to read that poem on my top five favorite white people in the spring. And a white person came up after saying to me, “I was gonna make a joke about the white people poem, but I actually wasn’t offended.” I was like, “Oh, that’s an interesting tidbit that you felt like you should share with me.” I’m really interested in things like comfort and discomfort and the writer-reader relationship. Because I think a lot of us who are writers of color and [from] other marginalized backgrounds have this voice in our heads, like, “Oh, what will my audience think about this?” Or even like thinking about bringing a poem to a workshop, certain people will get it, but like, will it work? But more and more as I was thinking about writing about race differently, not just like, writing about my experience, but thinking about, “What are some of those ways to destabilize that relationship between myself as the writer and the white person who’s a reader?” Because like most of our readers in America are white people. Presumably, I mean, we won’t actually know. But, yeah, I look up to a lot of comedians. And I really think that there’s like a strong connection between poetry and comedy and standup comedy in particular, like thinking about punch lines, being able to say more riskier things as time goes on, like in a comedy special. And I’m really kind of fascinated about how can I, as a poet, learn from the way that jokes are constructed?
Would you consider doing standup comedy?
Oh, no. I would be way too nervous for that!
I wanted to also hear more about your poem based on tweets from the problematic comedian Shane Gillis. It’s important to archive stuff like this, to kind of give it somewhere to live, that shows the world, the times we’re living in, and how this shit still happens. Can you talk to me about the form of this poem? And why did you decide to include it?
I really like how you brought up the word archive and archiving things, just because in our digital age, with social media and Twitter and stuff, things can disappear; there’s actually the action of archiving stuff that you don’t want public anymore. In this case, he deleted tweet after tweet. And I found that really interesting.
Since the tweet was so short, I was like, “Oh, what are the other ways that the text could be erased?” And I had this vision of having it look like there was more text and then less text and kind of seeing the words drop away. Kind of like mimicking what can be revealed underneath. I feel like non-apologies, in general, are really similar to each other. Like whenever a celebrity posts something, they all sort of sound alike. And I thought by doing like several of them in a row, I could kind of play into that idea of this is the same thing. Over and over.
Which kind of speaks on the act of racist comedy too, right? Like the same harmful stereotypes being told again and again throughout different times.
Yeah. Good point.
Are you one of those poets that likes to wake up every morning and write?
No, no, no, I’m not. I wish I was.
Are you a writer that writes poetry on your phone, on paper, or on your computer?
Computer.
Let’s talk about Chicago teahouses. Your chapbook debut was the first time I had ever attended a teahouse like that.
Yeah, it was so serendipitous. Grace Wong, the owner, was the person who I connected with. She helped me host the release at Living Water Tea House. They’re really wonderful in terms of tea and the tea gelato. I also really love Gathers Tea Bar. It’s also on Taylor Street; I would say those are my top two favorite places. I feel like when I moved back here, I was like, “I’m gonna go to all the boba places.” Once I went to the Gathers, I was like, “Oh, I don’t think I need to go any other places.”
Thank you so much for talking to me. Last question, is there a tea that you like to drink when you’re writing?
I really like jasmine tea. I feel like I’ve just been on this like jasmine tea kick for a long time. Yeah, that’s the one I choose.
