Line / Break with Monica Sok

Interview Transcript

Laura (00:00): I am Laura Buccieri, the Director of Publicity at Copper Canyon Press, and you are watching our new interview series, Line / Break, which goes off the page and into the homes and minds of our beloved poets. I’ve always had the dream of seeing more poets represented on screen, talking shop, answering questions, and taking us behind the scenes of how they do what they do. In this episode, we are speaking with Monica Sok. Monica, thank you so much for being here. How is your morning going?

 

Monica (00:32): My morning is going pretty well, is rainy and I’m having some green tea. I’m doing good. How are you?

 

Laura (00:42): Right. It’s not rainy, but it’s pretty cold, hence my outdoor jacket inside, but I would love to, before we dive in, I’d love to have you introduce yourself if possible, maybe name, pronouns, where you live, most recent book you’ve published.

 

Monica (01:01): Hi. My name is Monica Sok, and I go by she/her. I live in Oakland, California, which is Ohlone land. My most recent book is A Nail the Evening Hangs On, which I’m really excited about. It’s my first book. So, grateful. Thank you. Thank you, Copper Canyon.

 

Laura (01:24): It’s such a beautiful book too, physically, and obviously writingly. I don’t think that’s a word, but I made it up. But, really, I was so excited to work on that book with you. I would love to just dive in if possible. I wanted to go back almost to the beginning, or to a beginning, and ask how, why you started writing poetry, or why you were drawn to poetry even. Was it, you felt represented in the language? Were you excited by it? Was it just by chance that you happened upon it and started writing it? I’d love to know that story, that moment.

 

Monica  (02:20): Yeah, I get this question a lot and then I always feel like I really don’t know how to talk about my origin story as a poet. I believe that I really just love language, and I think that I started rhyming with a friend one day as we were walking home from campus. I was 19 when I first realized that poetry was something that I could access, something that I could do for myself and that it opened a whole door to different literary communities. But also, it helps me connect with people in my community because I grew up very isolated in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As a Khmer girl who is born to refugees in that landscape, I was really looking for myself in certain narratives and media, and I didn’t see myself anywhere. I think that language has always felt like an empowering tool for me.

 

Monica  (03:35): Most recently, I’ve been trying to learn Khmer. I’ve always been in search of my people, my language, my culture. When I stumbled upon poetry, I realized that I could engage. I could engage with my history that way. I also felt that I could see myself in the work of June Jordan. This all was happening in Washington, DC, where I was starting to find myself as a poet. That’s where it began. That’s just a little cursory review of how it began. But I do think that why I’m drawn to poetry is a question that I’ll have until I actually can find language for that. For me, it’s liberating, and it’s something that helps me learn the kinds of histories that were kept from us in the American education system. It’s a subversive practice. It’s a study of freedom for me, which I’m recalling a conversation with the poet Nabila Lovelace, who talked to me about poetry as a study of freedom. I’m grateful for those words from her, but I think that I’m constantly evolving as a poet. To go back to my origin story as a poet, it just feels like forever ago. And then again, not so long ago.

 

Laura (05:20): I get that. I mean, thinking back to high school, like how poetry was taught, even middle school, how poetry was first taught, I think as rhyme in middle school, and then how in high school it was maybe taught as about nature, almost, for me at least. Then I don’t think it was until college that I understood that language could do what it did in poetry, because we were reading a lot of contemporary poetry and I was just like, “Wow, that’s allowed or that’s possible?” So, I do relate to that a bit. Did you start reading poetry around the same time that you started writing poetry?

 

Monica (06:16): Yes. I had been exposed to some poems like Shel Silverstein, just as a kid, I would read what is that? The Sidewalk Book? I forget what it’s called now.

 

Laura (06:32): Isn’t that … I feel that’s what it’s called.

 

Monica  (06:35): Is it called Sidewalk?

 

Laura (06:37): Like The Sidewalk? I’m gonna have to fact check this.

 

Monica (06:40): Yes, fact check it.

 

Laura (06:40): Yeah.

 

Monica (06:41): I can’t remember what it was. Maybe in this strange pandemic, I feel like I’m not remembering a lot of things. I think I’m being forgetful, but maybe I’ve always been forgetful, but sometimes I just don’t have space in my head to remember everything. Anyway, but Shel Silverstein was something that I like grew up reading and that was really fun. That was in my life. That was in my home library. But I grew up reading, going to the library, and I used to struggle with reading, which is like a parent in my “ABC for Refugees” poem. So, no, I wasn’t really exposed to poetry, like contemporary American poetry, until I actually came upon a class at American University where I studied with David Caplinger. I was actually … I remember reading Elizabeth Bishop. I remember reading Joel Bolton. There were poets that I was trying to emulate, like Robert Frost. And then I was like, “I just don’t know if I can write something like a snowy wood.”

 

Laura (07:58): What if you want to?

 

Monica (08:00): If I wanted to, yeah. It’s not that my teacher was imposing anything on me. He was very encouraging of me writing my narrative, but I don’t think I really explored the Cambodian narrative. I remember seeing a line about Cambodia in one of June Jordan’s poems, and I can’t remember which one, but I remember seeing that, and I was like, “Oh, this poet is aware of my history.” I feel reflected in that. I saw how expansive her poems were, and how unapologetic she was, and how she was in and of her people in her language.

 

Monica (08:50): I felt that poetry was not so different than just like talking to a friend, which are like poems that she has, for her friends, or poems that she writes that are like answering machine poems. She has a poem for Ntozake Shange. She has a poem that’s addressed to Eminem. I think she’s so playful, and I just really enjoyed seeing the way that she moved as a poet. When I discovered her writing at a Split this Rock event, I think it was her second annual festival, I remember seeing Sonia Sanchez there. I was like, “Wow, this is incredible.” I didn’t really know Sonia Sanchez’s and I’m still learning and discovering her work but I think I did not read poetry.

 

Monica  (09:46): I think Directed by Desire by June Jordan was probably the first fat collected poetry book that I wanted to read. So, I picked that up a long time ago in the library at my campus. I was very excited about her work and I don’t think that I really knew the poetry scene, so to speak, until I had to work at the reading series at NYU. That was also part of my education. Actually reading or listening to poets and seeing how they carry themselves, and getting to know the literary world, which I had not really known ever in such an intimate way. That’s the long answer to your question about …

 

Laura (10:39): No, I love that [crosstalk 00:10:41]

 

Monica  (10:40): I was reading poetry when I started writing, I was kind of…June Jordan.

 

Laura (10:46): Yeah, yeah.

 

Monica  (10:48): Then I’m discovering like, “Who’s Terrance Hayes? Who’s Tyehimba Jess? Who are all these other people who are doing such incredible work too? Who is Kimiko Hahn and Brenda Shaughnessy?” Luckily, I had those two as my teachers.

 

Laura (11:06): Too amazing.

 

Monica  (11:08): I’m grateful for what I’ve been able to learn and absorb just by being in New York city, among other poets.

 

Laura (11:18): I love what you said about reading poetry and experiencing it in a very solitary way, is one aspect of it. But then there’s that whole other aspect of the poetry community, physically, I mean not now necessarily, but in a room hearing a poet read, understanding what they’re about, who they are, and what they want to show to the world, I think, through their art, but also through them as a person, is also a separate part of the community that I think is almost what first drew me to poetry, period. I felt the language, yes, but then I started learning about poets themselves, and got started going to readings and started feeling super seen in the community. That just made me want to read more and learn more. I do really think that that’s a big part of poetry as well.

 

Monica  (12:25): Readings, I miss going to events and seeing people.

 

Laura (12:28): Me too.

 

Monica (12:29): I think I took it for granted.

 

Laura (12:33): I’m sure we all did.

 

Monica (12:35): I miss being in a room full of people who are just they’re packing the whole room because they want to hear a poet read. That is quite like a sensation that you get, just among people, and like squeezing between certain seats just to get to the empty seat in the middle of the row. Yeah, I miss that. I miss the way that we would intersect at these readings.

 

Laura (13:05): And that energy. I mean, it’s a lot. I’m curious, you bring up June Jordan who, to me, writes politically, is maybe a politically engaged poet. I’m curious, your work is a lot about memory, a lot about Cambodian heritage and inherited trauma. A lot of that. One, do you consider your work political? And two, I’m curious on how you feel about … Well, no, let’s start with part one and then … I don’t want to overwhelm. Do you consider your work political? I’m curious. Because, when we think of like political poetry, I feel like a lot of people think of really, really like urgent, like talking to the moment work. But I feel like I consider your work somewhat political, even though it’s housed in memory and ancestry, and things like that. I’m just curious about that.

 

Monica  (14:19): Thank you. Yeah. I believe my work is political. I’m trying to find ways to talk about my work so that’s not just rooted in history, because when we say history, we just think, “Oh, this happened in the past.” Things are always happening at the same time. History is happening …

 

Laura (14:44): We’re repeating ourselves.

 

Monica (14:45): Yeah. The effects of the genocide in Cambodia, it lives inside me. So, I do think that my work is political in the sense that I’m naming what happened, but I’m also actively trying to heal it. That gives so much power to my oppressors, and trying to center a tenderness and desire, I think is political. Especially when perhaps you are writing a narrative in which people often expect like trauma porn or they want, they even just ask for the trauma porn.

 

Monica  (15:43): I think having written a book about intergenerational trauma and then still being aware of this very white western gaze on my narrative, is just something that I’ve had to navigate my whole life and, yes, in my poetry too. I just think that my journey as a poet is also about trying to bring a fuller picture as to what it means to be human. Even outside of the identity of being Khmer, I think it’s the struggle though. It’s a struggle. It’s something that I’m thinking through right now. I am taking Khmer classes with a linguistics PhD student at Cornell, and really grateful that I can learn from him, and be grounded in that work. I think that learning the Khmer language, learning this ancient language which nobody uses, which has no real commercial purpose in the US, no one’s asking to speak Khmer with you, and I don’t feel like this country values Cambodian lives or Cambodian history, or the language. Then the only thing they do know is like, “Oh yeah. Angkor Wat, I’ve been there, I’ve traveled there.” And then the whole genocide, they’ll know about that.

 

Monica (17:37): But, hopefully my goal is to reclaim some of these things, but also can I write about this morning when I walked outside and felt a little rain? Can I write about my loneliness, without it being something that white people will gaze on? I don’t know. I feel like this is a conversation I have with myself all the time. I don’t know. Now I feel like my answer is long and …

 

Laura (18:10): No, no.

 

Monica  (18:10): I’m not sure [crosstalk 00:18:11], but I think my poetry is political in the sense that I understand my history, and I understand the present day, and I understand that families were kept apart during the Khmer Rouge regime, and that to even hide, to be together, or to even just walk across the field, to find each other … love is political, that tenderness is political.

 

Monica (18:45): I think that writing a poem is political.

 

Laura (18:49): I do too.

 

Monica  (18:50): When I think about that time … like you were not supposed to write poems. Artists were executed. I know that what I’m doing can also be called dangerous.

 

Laura (19:04): No, yeah.

 

Monica (19:06): So, I think it’s political to even exist. That’s why I struggled to answer that question is sometimes, that, is the poetry political. Yeah.

 

Laura (19:19): Well, there’s no one way to be political. And I think that that’s always interesting. I like what you said about naming. That really resonates with me. I think that the power in naming and the power in having control of the naming, I think is really big. I’m curious, because you said you were translating from Khmer, learning Khmer.

 

Monica (19:54): I’m learning Khmer because I’d love to translate one day.

 

Laura (19:57): You want to translate. I’m curious. One, just how has that process been of learning that language, and two, in terms of naming, I’m curious naming in Khmer versus naming in English, maybe you haven’t gotten to that stage of work yet, but I feel as though that would be inherently different, and means something almost different to you.

 

Monica (20:29): Yeah. I think that that is a way for me to decolonize. I really do hear Solmaz Sharif when she says that English was the first defeat. Learning Khmer is also helping me with my grief during this time. This grief was something that I’m going to have to live with for a while, but I can show you the consonants. This is a really messy page. I spilled something here and there and some of the characters are cut off, and some of them are wrong actually. Let me show you another version. But that’s a consonant sheet that I got from my teacher from this Cambodian school of San Francisco. Because I used to take classes at the temple and on Sundays in San Francisco, but it was something that I couldn’t keep up with, while I was at Stanford.

 

Monica (21:33): And these are the vowels. I find myself really just enjoying learning my language, my ancestral language, holding me down in a way while I’m experiencing grief and isolation. I do feel like perhaps I’m also dealing with trauma, this collective trauma that we’re all dealing with …

 

Laura (22:00): Of course.

 

Monica (22:01): That is all compounded, and I’m aware of myself and I’m aware that learning Khmer is bringing me a lot of joy, but I do think is the way for me to decolonize. I do think that … so going back to your question about, what did you say again?

 

Laura (22:24): Like naming.

 

Monica  (22:25): Naming something in Khmer is different. Yes, I think so. Absolutely. That’s something that I’m learning right now. I’m learning that … So, in Khmer, the word to translate is បកប្រែ and បត់ is like fold and flip, បកប្រែ . To flip in a foreign language …

 

Laura (22:55): Oh, wow.

 

Monica  (22:56): [crosstalk 00:22:56] to like something is the word for that is ចូលចិត្. I believe this is correct. I learned that ចិត្ត is a way to say heart, an old way to say the word heart, or perhaps a poetic way. I have to look in my notes again. But ចូល is to go in. So, to like something is to go inside the heart. And so, it’s poetic for me, and I feel like since the book came out in February of 2020, and then the shelter in place order happened, and we’ve had several months of this pandemic of just staying at home and trying our best to get through, I’ve met a lot of grief during this time. I think that this is grounding me, this learning Khmer is grounding me.

 

Laura (23:53): Sure.

 

Monica  (23:58): I don’t know that I have been able to fully celebrate my debut because I’ve had to experience so much loss. Not just like the loss of a book tour, but the loss of actual people in my life who inspired my writing. I just want to say that Khmer is a way for me to reconnect with poetry outside of the English language. I’m really grateful for that. I’m just beginning this journey, so I don’t really know how to speak about it fully, but it means a lot to me to be able to learn this. If I can come out of this pandemic knowing more Khmer and being able to read and write, which I have been able to do, just on my second day of learning Khmer, learning certain sight words.

 

Laura (24:44): Wow.

 

Monica  (24:44): Learning the first two lines of the consonants and some of the vowels, and I’m going to have to learn all this special rules eventually. It was really exciting to be able to feel affirmed in a way that I’ve never felt affirmed before. It comes at a good time. It comes out a really good … when I could just fall into despair, but I’m here and I am moving through this, and I’m trying to be as gentle as possible. I’m excited to see how learning Khmer will impact the way I experience English. [crosstalk 00:25:24] That’s the first language I was exposed to. I’ve always known that me learning Khmer, or me just being Khmer, and having a certain Khmer mentality, also affects the way I speak English.

 

Laura (25:36): Of course. I’m excited for this journey. I really, really, really am. I wonder, could you maybe read us a poem of yours? I would love to maybe have you read a poem, and then maybe give a shout out to a book that you’ve been loving, or an author you’ve been loving lately.

 

Monica  (25:58): Sure. I love to do that. I’ll read a poem from A Nail the Evening Hangs On. It’s called

 Song of an Orphan Soldier Clearing Landmines

 

When I saw my father walking I kicked the road,

convinced metal brains at his feet

the humming they heard was a knife cutting,

not a living man’s voice.

They believed me. Like snakes and grass

they clicked to their tongues. The gods I met

promised me they could make a life happen

after what had happened

if I knew who my father was.

I clapped my hands to signal a stream

and my father followed my sound.

He drank and bathed as I cleared the land mines

and I hoped it was him. He slept

in the jungle, dreamed jaguar circling,

though it was nothing but fire burning.

 

Close to the Bassac, I climbed mango trees

to feed him. Along the way,

I waved my arms no. To himself, my father said, Yes.

 No, I did not bury the bodies

nobody had prayed for. There are things in this world

we must make one another see. My father

took me gently, each one of us gently, he took us to the flames humming my children

my children. Three provinces I traveled with him

like this, only to take him back to Prek Eng

where he found his sisters.

 

If my father were to tell this, he would tell you

he carried me over his shoulders to a nearby village,

that no danger touched him

and that the gods were watching,

they wanted to see me live.

 

Laura (27:39): Yes. I love that poem. Thank you so much for reading that one.

 

Monica (27:45): Thank you Laura. And a shout out I would like to give is to Tongo Eisen-Martin, his book Heaven Is All Goodbyes is a fantastic book, and he’s a really wonderful poet. Revolutionary. I love his work. Definitely read Tongo Eisen-Martin’s Heaven Is All Goodbyes.

 

Laura (28:06): Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. That’s going on my list. Well, thank you so much for being here, Monica. It’s been such a joy to speak with you, and I’m really just so grateful that you took the time to be here and share with us. So thank you so much.

 

Monica  (28:25): I’m grateful too. Thank you so much. Bye.

 

Laura (28:27): We’ll see you soon, bye.

 

[End Transcript]