Rita Wong Interview 2
Details
Rita Wong Interview 2
Metadata (MODS) |
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| Titles | Rita Wong Interview 2: Clip 2 |
| Name | Rita Wong |
| Name | Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Type of Resource | sound recording-nonmusical |
| Genre | Interview |
| Identifier | Interview |
| Identifier | rita wong interview clip 2 |
| Abstract | Rita Wong explains that she hopes to foster empathy and generate cultural change through her poetry. |
| Extent | 5:26 |
| Form | nonprojected graphic |
| Note | Joanne Leow: When you’re writing the poems, or you’ve been doing a project that has many channels for public outreach…there are the poems, but there’s a book as well for younger people, what are you trying to—what do you hope to achieve with the writing itself, with the text? 0:13 Rita Wong: I think a bunch of different things. One is, I’ve always been a writer and a reader for as long as I can recall, and I think I’ve gained a lot from reading, and so if I can share something and give back—I see my writing as a process of reciprocity, generally. And then, with regards to the water project per se, this sounds kind of audacious, but what I’m really hoping for is a cultural transformation. [Laughs] Joanne Leow: No, that’s great. Rita Wong: I would like to see a shift in our values and a shift in our priorities that puts land—our relationship with the land and the water front and center, instead of being always this resource that we use or that we take for granted or that we exploit. I think there’s a lot of learning that we can do from listening to Indigenous perspectives around relationship to land and water, and the importance of reciprocity. So, I think that, sort of, the small goal, or the small tactics, lead, hopefully, to a larger transformation. I don’t know that I’ll get to live to see that, but that’s certainly what I would hope for. 1:28 Joanne Leow: Maybe one more question about undercurrent itself before I want to turn to talk about the very important work that you’re doing, especially with the Site C Dam. When I was reading the book in particular, there were all these—what was really conscious of was the fact that you were in that book, front and center in some ways, in the sense that your voice was really clear. There are some books of poetry that are about the environment that seem very detached from it, they seem kind of more far away, but here, I’m always conscious of my body, your body, the reader’s body, in that space with that water…the many meanings of the word “undercurrent,” even. So, if you would just like to maybe talk a little bit more about that, like where do you see bodies, really, in relation to the kind of landscapes, the kind of ecologies that you’re writing about? 2:15 Rita Wong: I think on a very practical level, when you live in a watershed, you become part of that watershed. And I don’t just mean that metaphorically, I mean that literally. So, if you were drinking the water from the Bow River in Calgary, you’re part of that watershed whether you understand that or not. Yes, we’ve treated the water so that we don’t get sick or whatever, but that doesn’t mean that the water isn’t still from the land and still of the land. And so, just to remember that we’re part of that watershed as opposed to separate from it, I think is part of how I think about bodies. And so, the body, as it’s sort of formulated under late capitalism, is this individual consumer, consumerist unit, right, that’s somehow separate from everything around it, but really, it’s not. And if you follow the trail of water into your body and out of your body, and throughout the ecosphere and the water cycle, the hydrological cycle, you would see that your existence very much depends on and is part of these larger cycles or patterns or rhythms. And so, I think there’s something that you can do as individuals to just pay attention to that and to be aware of that. So, I think, for example, contemplative practices, meditative practices, being aware of the body, those are important places to start in terms of decolonizing the body, in terms of asserting agency over your own body. And I think there’s something important about autonomy of the self that isn’t just about you…your own power, like when I think about autonomy, I don’t think about somebody like Donald Trump or whatever, I think about how each of us is born with gifts or passions, and if we’re lucky in our life we get to fulfill those, whatever it is that we’re born with and whatever it is that we might want for own journey. And when we’re able to fulfill that for ourselves, my hope, and what I’ve seen at times, is that you’re more able to serve other people as well, like the larger collective good. So, I see those things as interconnected and interdependent, not as mutually exclusive. 4:44 Joanne Leow: It’s really interesting because, I mean, you were talking about those capitalist discourses of body in space, in ecology, and so often the narrative has been one of purity and contamination, really, it’s just like, “I need to keep my own separate—like my being separate. I need to eat particular things or drink particular things or behave in particular ways in order to keep myself pure,” and what you’re saying—well firstly, that’s impossible, right. 5:08 Rita Wong: Yeah. We’re all contaminated, (laughing) increasingly so, whether we like it or not. And I don’t see the contamination as only a negative thing, I see it also in terms of, as I said, interdependency. |
| Access Condition | Contact Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Subject Topic | High-- |
| Subject Topic | -- |
| Subject Topic | -- |
| Subject Topic | Water-- |
| Subject Topic | Poetic Intervention-- |
| Subject Topic | Culture-- |
| Subject Topic | Preservation-- |
| Subject Topic | Embodiment |
| Subject Geographic | Pacific Ocean |
| Subject Hierarchical Geographic | North America--Canada------Vancouver |
| 2010-2020 | |
| Subject Local Name | High------Water--Poetic Intervention--Culture--Preservation--Pacific Ocean--2010-2020--Embodiment |