We lucked out earlier this fall when we snagged a podcast interview with the multi-talented Seattle artist Shin Yu Pai! We hopped onto Zoom late one evening in September to chat with Shin Yu about poetry, motherhood, the artistic process, and publishing and activism during pandemic times. We also chatted about Shin Yu’s newly released, hybrid book of poetry and art, Ensō, which was published by Entre Rios Books earlier this year. This episode of The Prickly Pear Podcast is the delightful result of that conversation. Enjoy!
SUPPORT Shin Yu Pai and her art by donating to her directly on Venmo @ShinYu-Pai.
BONUS: Shin Yu Pai performs two poems in this podcast episode. She reads “The Same Cloth” at 41:50, and “Chibi” at 48:47. We encourage you to listen to both, as well as the conversation surrounding them.
About Shin Yu Pai
Shin Yu Pai is the author of several books including Ensō (Entre Rios Books, 2020), Aux Arcs (La Alameda, 2013), Adamantine (White Pine, 2010), Sightings (1913 Press, 2007), and Equivalence (La Alameda, 2003). From 2015 to 2017, she served as the fourth Poet Laureate of The City of Redmond, Washington. Her personal essays have appeared in CityArts, Tricycle, Seattle’s Child, and YES! Magazine. She’s been a Stranger Genius Award nominee in Literature and lives and works in Bitter Lake, Seattle. For more info, visit www.shinyupai.com.
Podcast Notes
Shin Yu Pai’s Newest Book, Ensō
Find a copy of Ensō (Entre Rios Books, 2020) here, as well as engage with multimedia content – including spoken poems – by the author! Here’s what Entre Rios Books has to say about the book:
It is fitting that we’d present a hybrid book and digital experience for Shin Yu Pai, a poet known for her wide-ranging collaborations and creative practice engaged as much in physical space as a moment on the page. With its blend of personal essays reflecting on the development of her poetics, Ensō places new work next to old, to create not only a mid-career retrospective but a guidebook for poets interested in moving their practice off the page and into the community.
From her early work in place-based and ekphrastic poetry and her explorations of bookmaking to her current experimentation with installation and projection, this book highlights the creative process of her poetry. The reader learns more about Ms. Pai’s influences— the identities that resonate for her— and her thoughts on cultural hybridity, exchange, and appropriation. She speaks deeply about how motherhood transformed her views of what is possible in poetry, reconnecting to her immigrant mother’s creative legacy, and how that pushed her ideas to better inhabit the world around us. She gives moving examples of how personal and systematic racism and misogyny have shaped her practice while inviting the reader into a deeper conversation about how a poet writes with and about their community.
– Entre Rios Books
Artists to Know
Toward the end of the podcast, Shin Yu mentions a few artists she respects and wants listeners to know about. In no particular order, they are:
