#lisabelle tay

[mercuriopoetry]

Interview with Lisabelle Tay

She starts answering the typical question about her writing process and she says two really cool things:

I’ve been stewing on images lately, trying to find the language to make them real.

I suppose I write to make my life more legible to myself. Each poem is like building a lattice of words that clarifies the muck of experience into something that can be, if not understood, at least felt more clearly — writing feels to me like a desludging, an unfogging, sometimes an unclogging.

The interviewer, Karan, asks her about the short lines of Passiontide and I'm very proud to have thought about them too:

I’m intrigued by the short lines in “Passiontide” — usually short lines intensifies the pace but here it somehow, almost magically, seems to be slowing the lines down, making them sound wise and dark.

I really like her answer because I feel a little bit like that with my poetry, too, although I have not yet found a satisfactory way to be intentional with form:

I’m experimenting with being more intentional with form. Now, because I mostly make the poems in my head before vomiting them out onto the page, form usually emerges at the same time, surprising me a little — like, oh! I didn’t think you’d look like this, but of course you do.

Then something beautiful happens, because he says "In a way, loss makes for most of poetry’s heart — all poems are about loss of childhood, innocence, love, beauty, etc." and she answers "all poems, even happy ones, are about loss"

Finally, her poem prompt is really cool and I wanna try it out sometime:

What are you most afraid of losing? Start with this line: Today I lost [this thing].

[mercuriopoetry]

Poetry by Lisabelle Tay

Imagine: to ask and to be answered. Even the son of god knows what it is to beg and be met with silence.

Her poem Passiontide starts like this and I'm already hooked. I really like her short verses, and the way sometimes they force you to cut "unnecessary" words, like here:

while everywhere  so much beauty.

She starts some poems with a little anecdote, which is me fav way to start a poem, and finishes not with a personal story related to the anecdote, but with a little reflection, and I do love that too, look:

Octopuses live alone and do not like to be touched.

Back then I asked god questions.

The next part of the poem weaves those two other sections so beautifully that I can only add:

Perhaps it is bearable after all to ask without answer.

Later on her poem Renounciations she says:

It is simple enough now to say No I don’t know. Yes I want. Yes  yes I really do want. Despite. Because.  Yes.

And, most importantly, she says:

Kindness must be the last to go.

Later on Skin hunger the poem goes:

My first mistake was believing what I did not want could not destroy me.

And I really like the point of view, how superficial yet personal her first person goes. Finally, one of my fav metaphors so far:

And the sun continues  to pass over us like a mother’s hand.