Shareen K. Murayama : part five

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular poem by an author?

My first crushes occurred when I read Sleeping with Houdini by Anais Nin and Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. I haven’t re-read these in a while because the feelings they evoked, well, I still carry those feelings within my body, if that makes sense. Also, I give away most of poetry books I read  because I feel they need to be out in the world—what good will they do on my shelf? But the few books I have, I keep because I’m studying them, admiring them: Taneum Bambrick’s Vantage, Diannely Antigua’s Ugly Music, and Jill Osier’s The Solace Is Not the Lullaby. Somehow I just can’t seem to part with them yet. I’d rather surrender my favorite comforter than not be able to open these pages as needed. 

Shareen K. Murayama : part four

What are you working on?

I’m working on a novella-in-flash. I committed to Jami Attenburg’s 1,000 Words of Summer, and I just finished the first draft at 41,000 words. It’s about the discrimination of the Okinawan silk factory girl workers in Osaka at the end of the Meiji Period. It’s also about sisterhood, filial piety, superstitions, myths, and dreams—both aspirational and nightmares. In my poetics, I’m working on musicality and colors; I’m studying Rick Barot’s “interrogation of the lyric and what it’s supposed to do;” I’m studying Kevin Prufer’s timestreams, “side by side, collapsing an instant of time into lyric meditation.” I also make it a point to read and support tomorrow’s poets, too. Poets, like Gaia Rajan and Lydia Wei, are magical poetry unicorns! They’ll be writing and shaping the future of poetry and its community for the next thirty, forty years! You should definitely keep your eyes on their art!

Shareen K. Murayama : part three

How does a poem begin?

I fall hardest for poems that have an intriguing first line, then I’m compelled to follow wherever it leads me. I was reading José Olivarez’s “Mexican American Disambugation,” where he’s describing his parents, who are “Mexican who are not to be confused with Mexican Americans/ or Chicanos,” and I’m like, “Yeaaahh.” The narrative of cataloguing diasporic people changes depending on if you’re in-in or in-out or just plain outside. Sometimes it’s the title that gets me as well. Jill Osier’s poem “September” unfolds a tragic farm scene which becomes a temporal marker in the speaker’s memory or landscape of the year. Sometimes when I write, there’s an image I can’t get out of my head, and I don’t want to turn it into a metaphor. I try to translate the moment into a compelling wondering—maybe relatable, maybe epiphanic. Oh, and I learned from William Nuʻutupu Giles, an afakasi Samoan writer, that sometimes people don’t remember titles, but they remember the subject, like his “Deodorant” poem or Gabriella Bates’s “The Dog” poem. Unforgettable poems. So, I try to begin a poem with that idea in the corner of my mind.

Shareen K. Murayama : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I don’t know if a poem is ever finished because when I step back and squint a little, looking at a poem’s form, its bold strokes or highest point of contrast—sometimes even years after it’s been published—I tell myself to keep walking backwards, preferably out the back door, and maybe no one will remember I wrote this one. In fact, now I’m wondering if I’m rewriting the same poem, obviously using different words or scenarios, to replay-rewrite-finish new or arrive at a different landing in order to express what I feel compelled to share. Mechanically, I also feel like the poems need to be read out loud, claiming space (or not) as needed. Every turn or color or metaphor should be intentional or intentionally whimsical or exemplify some type of economy (or not). 

Shareen K. Murayama : part one

Shareen K. Murayama is a Japanese American, Okinawan American poet and educator. Her first chapbooks, HEY GIRL, ARE YOU IN THE EXPERIMENTAL GROUP? by Harbor Editions and HOUSEBREAK by Bad Betty Press will be published in 2022. She’s a 2021 Best Microfiction winner as well as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. Her art is published or forthcoming in Pilgrimage Press, SoFloPoJo, SWWIM, Flash Boulevard, The Willowherb, and elsewhere. You can find her on IG & Twitter @ambusypoeming.

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

I’ve heard poets say, “I worship at the altar of poetry.” Love that! But I’m not that monogamous or rather I have faith that poetry’s the lover I run to when I need to feel special, feel love. It’s not that poems hold answers, but they inquire or shift your stance to see a part of the world differently. Poetry’s also intimate, like you’re stumble into bed with pillows fluffed, you turn to your partner, or in this case, a poem or book, and ask, “So, what’s on your mind?” And then you listen.