Author(s): Miriam Wei Wei Lo

Poetry

These poems are the work of thirty years. When I was raising children, poetry was my furtive "sometimes" habit. It seems a miracle to me that I wrote anything at all during that time, but something kept drawing me back to words. It was a way of stopping to take notice of the beauty around me. It was a way to process what was happening: the surprise of loss, and grief. It was a way to keep things, to make them mine. It was a way to share things, to give them to others. Poetry is a kind of work, but it is also a kind of play: a playful work, a working play. I have learned to "let myself" play (as Julia Cameron puts it). Part of the play is dress-ups, trying on different poetic forms: here's the hair-lacquered-into-place-immaculately-ball-gowned villanelle, here's the smart-casual-dressed-for-inner-city-café free verse, here's the so-laid-back-I'm-practically-horizontal prose poem. I am inspired in my play by watching other poets do it. To playfully quote Alvin Pang from "What Happened": "It was vehement. It was egregious. It was somehow / necessary. Accessory."