Celebrating our Ockham Poets: Q & A with Grace Yee, winner of the 2024 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
Q & A with Grace Yee
Grace Yee is the author of Chinese Fish (Giramondo Publishing), which won the Victorian Prize for Literature; the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry; and the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in 2024. She holds a PhD (University of Melbourne) on settler Chinese women’s storytelling in Aotearoa New Zealand. Born in British Hong Kong, she grew up in Ōtautahi and now lives in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri land.
What does poetry mean to you and why is it important?
Poetry allows for so much to be said – and felt - with so few words. It requires precision, but at the same time, there is an openness to it – to play, experimentation, interpretation – that makes it accessible to all who wish to engage with it.
Why does Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day matter?
Because it democratises poetry: in the streets, anyone can chance upon it. I love the idea that someone who doesn’t normally read poetry might encounter a poem poster somewhere that gives them pause for thought.
How would you describe your kaupapa as a poet?
It’s very grounded in-the-world. I integrate lived experiences (my own and other people’s), and very specific material details. The main through-line in my work is that the past is never past: historical events are insistently present.
What poetry are you reading and loving right now?
Bhanu Kapil’s Incubation: A Space for Monsters – about a woman who leaves London to hitchhike across America, and Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Lonely, a hybrid work of poetry-documentary-memoir. These two books are extraordinary in their scope and complexity.
Have you discovered new poets or new poems on one of Phantom's poetry posters? How do you feel about getting poetry out to the community in this way?
I haven’t yet, because I live in Melbourne, but I look forward to discovering some when I’m over for the Christchurch Word Writers Festival in late August! I think the Phantom posters are a fantastic initiative, because they allow people to discover poetry serendipitously, in the course of their everyday lives, which is how and where poetry should be: integrated into our lives.
What did you enjoy most about writing your award-winning book?
Playing with the words and forms, arranging and rearranging, experimenting with voices, etc. And I thoroughly enjoyed the historical research, which involved many happy hours trawling through archives and interviewing people.
