Mary Jean Chan is a dear friend of mine from college and a remarkably talented poet. This past weekend I got to see her after over a year and half apart. We decided to read poetry together and read Li-Young Lee’s “The City in which I Love You”, a collection of Mary Oliver’s poems and some Rilke. It was such a wonderful feeling to read the poetry aloud–poetry should be enjoyed out loud. Anyways, we were inspired after this and timed ourselves for 10 minutes to do a free-write on the topic of family. We each wrote separate pieces and at the end of the 10 minutes came together and combined our poems. The piece you see here is the outcome of that and the different handwriting corresponds to each of what we wrote. We were so pleasantly surprised by the outcome that we vowed to write more poetry together in the future. Enjoy!
About Miyuki Baker
Miyuki is a resident of the place where many circles overlap. They’re a queer, multi-racial/lingual artist, activist & academic passionate about using common or discarded objects, stories, zines, and performance in public spaces to make accessible art. Their research examines how we practice “hope” and meaning through space, architecture and the environment. They’re currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of Performance Studies at UC Berkeley.
After graduating from Swarthmore College in 2012, where they were involved in queer Asian activism and making art, they received the Watson Fellowship to travel the world in search of queer artists and activists and made 8 zines highlighting what they learned under their publishing house Queer Scribe Productions. From 2014-2015 she lived in Ecuador and traveled by bicycle from Ecuador to Colombia cataloging traditional textiles, music and food. After returning, they built and lived in a mobile tiny house for a year (until selling it in May 2016).
Mary Jean Chan is a dear friend of mine from college and a remarkably talented poet. This past weekend I got to see her after over a year and half apart. We decided to read poetry together and read Li-Young Lee’s “The City in which I Love You”, a collection of Mary Oliver’s poems and some Rilke. It was such a wonderful feeling to read the poetry aloud–poetry should be enjoyed out loud. Anyways, we were inspired after this and timed ourselves for 10 minutes to do a free-write on the topic of family. We each wrote separate pieces and at the end of the 10 minutes came together and combined our poems. The piece you see here is the outcome of that and the different handwriting corresponds to each of what we wrote. We were so pleasantly surprised by the outcome that we vowed to write more poetry together in the future. Enjoy!
Hey Miyuki! 