{"id":414,"date":"2013-11-05T13:36:22","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T18:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/?p=414"},"modified":"2014-01-15T09:01:44","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T14:01:44","slug":"catching-up-with-kon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/2013\/11\/05\/catching-up-with-kon\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching up with Kon"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend we\u00a0ca\"Notre<\/a>ught up with ND\u00a0MFA alum\u00a0Desmond Kon (2009) as part of our alumni interview series.\u00a0\u00a0Kon\u00a0filled us in\u00a0on\u00a0his new book, recent whereabouts, and tons of other new happenings in his life.\u00a0 Read on for more.<\/p>\n

1. What sparked your interest in writing?<\/span>
\n<\/b>Many small moments. This is not an exact science, but I remember my mother placing Steinbeck\u2019s Grapes of Wrath<\/i> in front of me. I was six or seven, and I really liked its cover. My dad once gave me the best gift ever \u2013 he allowed me to pick out comics from a catalogue \u2013 that led to my subsequent obsession with X-Men, New Mutants, Batman, Wonder Woman, Teen Titans, Alpha Flight. At junior college, I started reading lots of fashion and lifestyle magazines like Details<\/i>, Esquire<\/i>, National Geographic<\/i>, Harper\u2019s Bazaar, Vogue<\/i>, Newsweek<\/i>, Time<\/i>. I always mention Ray Gun<\/i>, which had the most radical design aesthetic ever. Totally jaw-dropping awesomeness.<\/p>\n

So it made a lot of sense to major in journalism as an undergraduate. My other major was sociology.Throughout secondary school and university, I wrote and illustrated a great deal, working in different editorial capacities. I guess I was lucky to know my passions and obsessions, what I\u2019d be willing to commit time and energy to. I was writing poetry and fiction right through. Time and distance from the writing has allowed it to gain polish. I\u2019m happy about that because of all the genres, my heart ultimately lies with poetry. As Baudelaire said, \u201cAlways be a poet, even in prose.\u201d<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0What current projects are you working on right now?<\/span>
\n<\/b>My new book is just going to press, to make it in time for the Singapore Writers Festival in November this year. It\u2019s titled The Arbitrary Sign<\/i>, published by Red Wheelbarrow Books, thanks to the wonderful work of Chris Mooney-Singh, Savinder Kau\"The<\/a>r and Marc Nair. The book received a grant from the National Arts Council, so we\u2019re thrilled about that. This book is a playful stab at the quintessential alphabet book, asking questions about meaning through the gaze of the continental philosopher. It tries to elevate the age-old format into something more esoteric \u2013 the connoisseur\u2019s poetic aperitif, if you may. My nephews and nieces would balk at its premise.<\/p>\n

I have another book scheduled to be published late this year. It\u2019s titled I Didn\u2019t Know Mani Was A Conceptualist<\/i>. It\u2019s by Math Paper Press, the wonderful brainchild of Kenny Leck who runs this awesome bookstore BooksActually. They produce beautiful books, and I can\u2019t wait to see what they come up with.<\/p>\n

I have a collection set to come out next year, titled Sanctus Sanctus Dirgha Sanctus<\/i>. It tears apart the sestina, and through its design, launches the complexity and compression of the line to crash headlong into the blank space of the ineffable.<\/p>\n

3. What is the most exciting thing that has happened since receiving your MFA?
\n<\/b><\/span>Lots of good has happened all around, so much so it\u2019s hard to pin down one thing. Well, something totally awesome and exciting just made my day. I just got word from the National Arts Council that I\u2019ve been awarded the Writer-in-the-Gardens Residency at Gardens By The Bay. I\u2019m totally indebted to the fabulous team at the Arts Council. The Gardens By The Bay is such an amazing world-class attraction, it was named World Building of the Year in 2012. It also hosted Prince William and Duchess Kate when they visited Singapore last year. People rave about the Supertree Grove and Flower Dome and Cloud Forest. It\u2019s really an honor to be able to immerse in it fully \u2013 the residency will run for six months, and I\u2019ll be working on a novella written as a series of diary entries.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be doing several public talks at The Gardens By The Bay. At least one session will focus on Ecopoetics, followed by a writing workshop. Participants will be encouraged to write for an upcoming anthology, Never Never Lalaland: Ecotopia Strangeness<\/i>, to be published by Squircle Line Press. Never Never Lalaland <\/i>is the anthology for the green advocate or environmental conservationist. Here is an Ecopoetics that laments, confesses, lilts, dreams, historicizes and fictionalizes. What would an eco-utopia look like? How does one dream of something paradisiacal, yet allow it its foreignness and alienation? What alternative world would such a poem conjure, one already open and willing to be made strange?<\/p>\n

4. Yes, you founded Squircle Line Press. Tell us a bit more about this endeavor.<\/span>
\n<\/b>We\u2019re a boutique press, which means we really pay\u00a0attention to the finer details of putting a book together. We\u2019re big on\u00a0aesthetics, and do so in order to make your book look its stellar best.\u00a0We\u2019re excellent with providing editorial consultancy to individual clients a\"One<\/a>nd corporate entities alike, offering copyediting and design services for a wide variety of books. To view some projects we\u2019ve been happily involved in, please wander here<\/a>. We\u2019re putting together several anthologies, with an open deadline till enough good work has arrived to make for a solid line-up. We\u2019re in no rush \u2013 we just want to make beautiful books. We\u2019ve created our own Reading Room, where visitors will find a list\u00a0of journals, books, and resources we adore.\u00a0Here<\/a> it is. This is some reflection of the sort of work we like, and it is a considerable range from the more traditional fare to the wildly experimental.<\/p>\n

\"ForrestThis year, we\u2019ve focused a lot on our Broadside Series, which can be found here<\/a>. There are some truly amazing writers on our list, and they\u2019ve got a string of accolades to fill their already impressive credentials. We\u2019re really proud of this Series, and so thrilled that such esteemed writers have come onboard. These are the fifty lucky breaks an artist needs, to quote the actor Walter Matthau.<\/p>\n

5. Where are you now, and what does a typical day in the life look like?<\/span>
\n<\/b>I bought and paid off a place in Singapore, so I guess this is my base. I grew up here, and having travelled abroad, have come to love it even more. Its efficiency is splendid for the working writer. There\u2019s always something to eat around the corner, so you don\u2019t need to worry about prepping a weekend trip to the supermarket to stock up. The necessities like banking, utilities, cable, phone services can be done in a jiffy. Teaching is always gratifying, and the youth of the students I meet is wonderfully energizing. Students possess an untouched wisdom prophetic of the critical genius to come of their generation. I like being a witness to that generative process. I read a lot in between things, and always have a book in my bag. It\u2019s Gaston-Paul Effa\u2019s Ma<\/i> now. I write in bursts, and work on several book projects at once, all of which seem to be coming to a head at this time. The paid work of editing and design, of course, invariably are a priority, and I become the willing and shameless slave, at the beck and call of my client.<\/p>\n

6. Who or what\u00a0influences your writing the most?<\/span>
\n<\/b>My moods influence my writing the most. So I\u2019ve learnt to attend to my moods. To just write whenever I can or must, and then find where the narratives all fit in a larger, more coherent whole. I also work well from an Archimedean point, and that can come from a scene in a movie or a trope that spirals out into its own trajectory. Or a nice poster I walk past in a mall. Or a nice quote I see in a hallmark card. Everything is a text, as the Derrideans say. Everything is a spectacle. So I read everything I can get my hands on. Even pamphlets left in my mailbox. It helps me be real since most writers get heady in the rarefied world of ideas and literature.<\/p>\n

7.\u00a0I noticed\u00a0you’ve lived a number of different places throughout your life.\u00a0 Are you a big traveler?\u00a0 How does \u201cplace\u201d influence your writing, or does it?<\/span>
\n<\/b>I\u2019m fortunate to have parents who believed that travel would open our eyes to the world around us. I\u2019m always thankful for that. My parents took us to Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Philippines in the 1970s, and we saw Japan, Europe and America in the 1980s. My work as a journalist had me covering stories in Australia, France and Spain, while my postgraduate studies found me at Harvard in Cambridge, and Notre Dame in South Bend. That immersion in American culture was mind-blowing, and it was such an incredible time of personal growth for me. I can\u2019t be more thankful for the hospitality, and made awesome friends during that time. Recent years have brought me to the Czech Republic, Indonesia, Korea and Switzerland. I\u2019ve also been exploring more of Malaysia where my grandmother lived out her years \u2013 I took a road trip and saw Malacca, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Kelantan. I mentioned it in an essay forthcoming in the 2014 anthology Altogether Elsewhere<\/i>, edited by the lovely Pooja Makhijani.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf all possible subjects,\u201d Auden said, \u201ctravel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.\u201d Then there\u2019s John Berryman who said, \u201cWe must travel in the direction of our fear.\u201d In my poetry, the mere naming of places creates a presence very different from, say, a person or an object. This naming adds the particular to the space of a poem. For me, the brevity of most poems is more than compensated for the vastness of metaphor a word or phrase within a line might afford. When a place is read as allegorical or metaphorical, there is no end to where the reader might go, or be led into. With place names, how do we contain or encapsulate the richness of history and tradition and culture? That tropic behavior that transcends limits \u2013 the boundary of meaning \u2013 is what interests me. Of course, I\u2019m always aware of and worry about potentially Orientalizing any culture, which now seems unnecessary given my processing of how I appropriate the notion of place. I think subconsciously this method \u2013 to the madness, really \u2013 comes from having lived in Singapore, where different cultures mesh, like a plate of rojak, as we say it here. We pride ourselves on this heterogeneity actually, and that people get along despite coming from different countries. We\u2019re a country of immigrants \u2013 from when we began until now, when it seems as evident as before. Travel allows me to encounter the new and unknowable \u201cOther\u201d \u2013 it reminds me not to take subjectivity for granted, even as I\u2019m constantly jostling within a place of alterity.<\/p>\n

8. What advice would you give to current MFA students?<\/span>
\n<\/b>\u201cNever hope more than you work,\u201d as Rita Mae Brown said. Write as much as you can during these two or three precious years, even what seems like doggerel. Keep a vastly open mind when you enter the workshop environment. The workshop shouldn\u2019t be a place to validate your ideas, but rather a place of great learning and exploration. There\u2019s always room for revision and rewriting and rereading and reinvention. Every participant in the workshop is vital to the process, each immediately becoming your reader, ideal or otherwise.<\/p>\n

Even though I might have been clueless of it at the time, each of my professors gave me such insight into their own worldview as professional creative writers themselves. The importance of their lessons became evident very quickly after I completed the MFA. Joyelle McSweeney opened my mind to hybrid work, her own fabulous books testament to how writing doesn\u2019t limit itself to stock genres. Then I had Orlando Menes, who took me back to traditional forms, and had me appreciate the sestina and sonnet and ghazal all over again. Those, as well as the important work of translation. With John Wilkinson, it was amazing discourse over the relevance of the lyric today, even as he gave me a long reading list that included Frank O\u2019Hara and John Wiener, two of my favorite writers today. And Cornelius Eady got me thinking about the \u201cevent\u201d poem \u2013 always difficult to write \u2013 and what it means to be comfortable writing through a postcolonial lens. He was my mentor, and his advice has stayed with me. He said: \u201cDo whatever it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n

9. What do you feel is the biggest challenge\/struggle of being a writer?<\/span>
\n<\/b>Keeping the writing going when the day job leaves you exhausted by day\u2019s end. And getting a book published. Or rather, getting the book you envisioned yourself writing published. I\u2019ve had to learn hard to juggle my work life and the writing life. The upside is I teach what I love. I\u2019ve managed to create and teach new courses, all of which excite me. These include classes in poetry and fiction, children\u2019s writing, literary theory, global and postcolonial literature, and book publishing. And then there\u2019s the editing and design. Just being able to have my life revolve around the literary arts is a real blessing. I\u2019ve cited this anecdote numerous times but I do so here again. Cate Marvin mentioned to me once that she decided a long time ago to go where her poetry takes her. That mantra has stayed with me, and I try to live by it, to steer through to the course. And stay true to the cause, so to speak.<\/p>\n

10. Writing alone or in public places?<\/span>
\n<\/b>Both. I\u2019m most productive in my room, and my MacBook is my best friend. That and a set of big-ass headphones that block out all other sound so the music is crystal clear with a deep bass.\u00a0 It\u2019s come to a point where I sometimes find myself muttering to myself at an eatery or in a queue. I must look positively insane. I get a lot of crazy energy in the middle of the night when I\u2019m awakened in mid-sleep. It would be easier to return to slumber but I\u2019ve disciplined myself to haul my ass out of bed and write down these bursts of language while they\u2019re still fresh.<\/p>\n

11. What do you do in your spare time?<\/span>
\n<\/b>Here\u2019s something from Nadine Gordimer: \u201cWriting is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you\u2019ve made sense of one small area.\u201d I\u2019m only just beginning to really understand what this means, and boy have I half a lifetime\u2019s worth of trauma and neuroses to unpack, with no end in sight. I\u2019d like to say that I have a life \u2013 that would be chic \u2013 but I really don\u2019t. I\u2019m a through and through geek, replete with the thick black nerd spectacles.\u00a0 My philosophy is any energy I\u2019m expending on something could be energy I\u2019m using to formulate a storyline or rewrite a poem or put together the chapters of my next book. It has become a deep commitment that I attend to the language in my head, at all hours of the day, as much as I can. I think it\u2019s a kind of service, not in some grandstanding way but in a real nod to the self. That this is what I hope will obsess me for the rest of my life, and cull me the happiness I\u2019ve desired all along. I really can\u2019t imagine being more useful to society in any other way.<\/p>\n

KON’t get enough?\u00a0 Check out\u00a0Desmond’s website here<\/a>\u00a0and keep an eye out for his forthcoming book, The Arbitrary Sign<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Cheers!
\nJulia ’15<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend we\u00a0caught up with ND\u00a0MFA alum\u00a0Desmond Kon (2009) as part of our alumni interview series.\u00a0\u00a0Kon\u00a0filled us in\u00a0on\u00a0his new book, recent whereabouts, and tons of other new happenings in his life.\u00a0 Read on for more. 1. What sparked your interest in writing? Many small moments. This is not an exact science, but I remember my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":478,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25397,25395],"tags":[25419,25423],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-interviews","category-writer-updates","tag-alumni-interview","tag-alumni-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/478"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/mfa-creative-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}