photo credit: Charissa Uemura
Bao Phi has been a performance poet since 1991 and has won numerous awards. His first full-length collection,
Sông I Sing, is out from Coffee House Press. He runs the popular Equilibrium: Spoken Word at the Loft series. More can be found on his website.
Tell us about your
relationship to your art.
I'm a poet, and I work on both sides
of the desk. Meaning, I both manage my own poetry career, and also work
as a community organizer and arts administrator.
What's a project that has been
exciting you lately?
I've been working on a Vietnamese
American post-apocalyptic revolutionary zombie novel. It's really
difficult, but it's also cathartic and a great deal of fun.
Tell us a little of your
fatherhood journey.
My partner and I decided to try and
have a child together about three years ago, and we were immediately
successful! She being a grad student and me being a nonprofit worker, we
had a lot of discussions and processing. We're both older, so we had no
illusions: we knew it would be really difficult.
What are some crucial elements
of your process? How has that changed since having children?
Well, there's just no time. I
used to be open to a lot more experimentation. Now that I'm a father, I
barely have time and energy to write poetry, let alone branch out into theater
and multimedia, etc. I have to sacrifice more, or focus more, I guess.
What are some of the ways your family and your art interact?
My partner is also a spoken word artist and performance artist. We try to go and support by seeing other shows, reading a lot, and exposing our daughter to a lot of different art forms at an early age. I sometimes find myself cartooning for my daughter, which is an art form I gave up a long time ago.
Do you find your attitude
towards your art might be different because of your parenting / has it changed
since you became a parent?
It has, but I don't know if it's
because of my daughter. My first collection of poems was published last
year, and in a way, that's like giving birth and watching the old poems grow. It
allows me to work on new poems, with new voices and a new tone - I think having
a book out may have influenced that, more.
Are your children ever
subjects in your art?
I'm not the type of person who is
writing a ton of poems for my kid - at least not publicly. I have
nothing against it, but it has to be right. Part of it is intuition. Like
I feel like it'd be too easy for me to write overly sentimental poems about my
kid, and I wouldn't be honest with myself about the quality of the poems
because, well, they're about my kid. So I need some distance, and some
confidence, before that happens.
How does travel figure into
your art? Do/did your children come along? How has that worked out?
I've cut down on traveling. We've
traveled before as a family - it's definitely a challenge. I've done
shows where she's run out from the audience and clung to my knees, or shouted
out "daddy, daddy!" when I get introduced. Luckily I think this
is very cute, and anyone else with a heart thinks it is, too.
What about promoting the arts
with your own children--any fun projects to share?
We're not the type to push anything
onto her, besides maybe vegetables and a consistent sleep schedule. She
seems to enjoy dance, books, and music a great deal - and though we try to
expose her to all of those things, we don't push. She seems to gravitate
towards that stuff on her own.
How do you escape?
I try to find at least a few minutes
to myself every day, here and there. Sometimes its writing, sometimes
it's Facebook, sometimes it's reading.
What advice do you have for
expectant fathers in your field?
Get ready to honestly access what is
important and necessary to you and your art, and be prepared for a great deal
of sacrifice. But also be prepared for a lot of joy.
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