Interview with Anise Kim, poetry contributor

In an interview with Anise Kim, we explored the themes of her poems “dropping fly season” and “flood warning in north georgia.” Kim’s pieces revolve around the complexities of growing up Asian American in the southern United States, her identity involving South Korea, the United States, and Mali, and more. 

Q: Why did you choose to use the phrase, "dropping fly season" as a metaphor for death? 

A: I remember writing the first two lines of “dropping fly season” after a conversation with my grandmother. She was talking about all her friends who had died, all the funerals that she didn’t get to attend, and the expression “dropping fly season” seemed to fall into my lap like an act of divine inspiration. It made me sad to imagine all these old people from her generation dropping like flies—known for their short lifespans—and to think that we will all inevitably enter that “season” of our lives. Also, I feel like “dropping fly season” sounds quite casual or even twee in its tone. That was definitely intentional, because even though my grandmother was sad about her friends, we were all sitting around the dinner table and very casually talking about these elderly people dying as we ate our food.

Q: What is your favorite imagery, metaphor, simile (any figurative language line) that you used in these poems? 

A: I love the image of a “butterfly high” and someone “inhaling the powder of their wings, / thin as paper / floating in a yellow, opium sky” in the “dropping fly season” poem. I like how feverish and dreamy it sounds, and also I really love the word opium (odd, maybe). 

Q: In your poem, dropping fly season, you mentioned writing melancholy as poetry. Is that the primary reason why you write--to help you process a difficult emotion? If so, how does writing affect your way of dealing with intense feelings? If not, what is the reason you write? 

A: I think there are a lot of reasons I write, and processing emotions is definitely one of them. I hate talking about my emotions with other people, so I tend to keep them to myself and get “emotionally constipated.” Making these uncomfortable, unpleasant emotions of mine into poetry—something that’s beautiful and artistic—feels like a tiny, cathartic exhale after holding my breath for so long.

Q: You mentioned you were born in the United States and moved to Mali. How does your ethnicity and nationality influence the literature you write?

A: When I was younger, I used to think my three-sided identity was a curse. Like I never felt Korean enough or American enough or Malian enough, so I was always just walking around feeling insufficient and incomplete. But now that I’ve matured (slightly), I realize that these three sides to me come with such different yet equally rich experiences, languages, and imagery that I can tap into for my writing. Sometimes I’ll write a poem that’s set in Mali, and I’ll talk about the bougainvillea crawling over mud brick, the sound of the call to prayer, or the sleepiness of a hot afternoon during Ramadan. These images come to me instinctually because they’re a part of my personhood. Just like I can write about “squatting like a dog at the dinner table” and eating my mother’s Korean-style mackerel—or what living in rural North Georgia is like. My ethnicity, my nationality, and the place where I grew up are endless sources of inspiration. 

Q: What do you hope for your readers to feel or understand when they read your writing? 

A: I always felt a little misunderstood when I was younger, just because whenever I told someone, “I’m a Korean-American who lives in West Africa,” they’d have a confused look on their face and never really knew where to place me. So if anyone reads my poetry and feels like they have a better grasp on me, the way I grew up, and the places I’ve called home, that would be great! But less as a person with a complicated identity and more as a simple writer who loves beautiful language, I’d love my readers to hit the head-in-the-hands pose that I do whenever I read something that’s moving and wonderfully written. 

Read Anise’s poems on our website, templelitmag.com under the “Read Tab.” Temple Lit Mag is a magazine that publishes Asian American youth writers, and we are always on the lookout for emotionally complex and raw works. Interested? Feel free to submit to Issue 03!