Biography
Y S Lee is the winner of Contemporary Verse 2’s 2022 Foster Prize. Anstruther Press will publish her debut chapbook, Exit Permit, in late 2023, and her poems appear/are forthcoming in EVENT, Rattle, The Malahat Review, and other journals. Ying is also the author of The Agency (Candlewick Press), a young-adult mystery tetralogy about a women's detective agency in Victorian London.
Micro-interview
I adored the metaphysical poets - John Donne, Andrew Marvell. In reading them, I realized that smart, prickly, playful people hadn't changed much over hundreds of years. It was simultaneously reassuring and alarming.
I started writing poetry in 2020, during lockdown. I've been thinking about language and culture for much longer than that – my first novel was published in 2009 - but for some reason, poetry always seemed much more intimidating. I thought of it as something that only extremely serious people did, and didn’t think I had anything to say from up on a pedestal. Then I joined a remarkable writing group and, every single week, the poets in it cracked open my heart and boggled my mind and showed me how wrong I was. It was utterly humbling and inspirational. I was lucky to have my writing group tell me, "You're a poet! Submit your work to journals!" and I believed them. But just the other day, a bookstore clerk asked me, "Are you a poet?" and I fumbled the answer. Maybe one day I'll stop being ambivalent.
Keep listening, keep observing, keep feeling. But really, ideally, this is every artist's - and every person’s - job. It's how we connect with other humans.
WB Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", because of its gorgeous music, and also for how lightly and casually he uses repetition and rhyme. And so I can say "bee-loud glade" over and over again.
