Thank you, Mei-mei.
So the authors will take some questions now.
We have a mic, which I can pass around.
So if you have questions for the authors.
This question is directed for Alice.
As you were reading, I was really
drawn to the quickness of your delivery,
particularly in the first piece that you read,
which seemed to create this sort of heightened
sense of emotional urgency.
And I wonder for those readers who
are picking up your work for the first time who
aren't in this sort of intimate arena
in which the rich aural qualities of your work
come across, if you intend for them to have
the same experience of speed.
Does it matter how the work is read?
And what sort of visual cues do you rely on, typographical
or spatial, to sort of create that sense of pacing?
What you need to do is look at the book.
It's a very particular book.
And it's arranged in a very particular way.
The words are very close together.
And I think you're forced to read it fast on the page.
I don't know if you would necessarily
feel the same kinds of emotion that I was conveying.
And I don't know if I would convey
the same ones every single time because it makes--
each performance is different.
And different kinds of shapes get made every time.
But in this book--
this book is trying to replicate the mind in action, partly.
And partly, it's being something like a Byzantine church
with mosaics and icons in it.
And the words break apart because they're like pieces.
They're like pieces-- they're like mosaic pieces.
And the conception is very intricate.
But it's a particular book.
It's a special book.
And you have to look at the book to find out what I'm doing.
Does that answer it?
I have a question for Alice and a question for Mei-mei.
Alice, I'm wondering if you would talk about your writing
process.
I certainly experienced your poems as, as you say,
replicating the mind in action.
And it's so interesting to try to wonder about--
it feels as though your writing is the mind in action
and there is no replication involved.
So I just wonder how-- if you can talk
about my experience of writing.
You can't do the mind.
You always end up making art.
And that was what I did.
And prosody takes over, some form of prosody.
And you and you're inside that.
And I'm not sure the mind has that at all.
But on the other hand, I don't know what the mind is.
And I don't know what writing is.
And they're not very separate from each other
when you're the mind doing the writing.
I wrote very, very--
it was composed on the computer.
I wrote it very fast.
I was wondering about the pace.
Yeah.
I started with a dream image, usually, and then
and wrote very fast, as fast as I could.
And then that was one day.
And then the next day I would shape it.
And it's in stanzaic shapes based on the number six,
which is the magic number for the Byzantines.
OK.
Good to know.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
And Mei-mei, I noted that when you
introduced your poems after the first one,
you said they get rougher.
And I cannot say that I experienced them as rough
at all.
So I was curious about what you meant by that.
Well, if you saw--
the first one is really is finished when I read.
Oh, that kind of rough.
OK, go--
The other two, I was still--
I use radiant too much and the and things like that.
And so those are things that I hope
would get a little lighter touch as the poem is finished.
Well, for what it's worth, not bad.
This is a question for Mei-mei.
Are the plants talking to you more now as you listen to them?
Well, yes.
And I share this with Lainey, that there's a process.
There are books about it.
And it's a process.
But after a while the whole process--
the process of communicating with your plant
is internalized.
So it can happen at any time.
And you don't have to be together.
And I suppose that's true of all who communicate.
Yeah.
More questions?
No?