Interview: Jiaqiao Liu talks about Dear Alter

Jiaqiao Liu is a poet from Shandong, China, who grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau. Their writing has been included in journals including The Spinoff, badapple and OF ZOOS, as well as in anthologies such as Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2017 and A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2021). Jiaqiao has an MA in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Dear Alter is their first book. Jiaqiao talks to NZ Booklovers.

Tell us a little about Dear Alter.

Dear Alter is a collection of poetry about the human instinct to see faces in clouds and also what the clouds think about being seen like that. Replace clouds with machines and/or the celestial (and/or other humans!), add big questions about how memory and language work and fail to work, and a preference for queer possibilities over whatever Silicon Valley's selling, and you get this book, more or less. There's a roomba bopping around in there somewhere.

What inspired you to write this collection of poetry?

The title poem comes from a specific encounter: I was travelling and came across a display at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Tokyo, of the android 'Alter'. It is very obviously mechanical - metal, except for the face and hands - but reaching towards a 'humanness' in physical presence and action (mimicry). I found myself charmed by that gap, of being in flux, of not quite being one thing or another. How do you deal with things like remembrance and grief (and even language) when you're not quite human, or not seen as a (typical) human?

What research was involved?

Wikipedia, mostly! The good thing about poetry is it can be light on facts if you want it to be, but on the other hand there's so much available to play with, especially in the realm of scientific/technical language. I did end up reading more philosophy than expected, which is something I have no background in! I already had a bit of a pet interest in data ethics and also a psych degree - and the idea of objects and animals attaining souls is very East Asian (there was that video a while back, though I haven't seen it myself, about stolen artefacts gaining sentience and breaking out of museums).

Books I often turned to, or read some time before starting the manuscript:

God, Human, Animal, Machine - Meghan O'Gieblyn

Handbook of Chinese Mythology - Lihui Yang, Deming An, Jessica Anderson Turner

What Tech Calls Thinking - Adrian Daub

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff

Video games: Nier: Automata (2017), Can Androids Pray? (2019).

What was your routine or process when writing this book?

Creating a manuscript for a course is a bit of a pressure cooker situation and I don't think it's necessarily reflective of my process since, but it involved a lot of late nights at uni, printed poems spread out on the desk/floor, green tea, wikipedia (though, the tea and wikipedia haven't changed). I do most of my writing on gdocs (now moved to ellipsus), but some poems with less defined beginnings get thrown around in the notebook first. I also just did a lot of reading around, as required by the MA, which I'm grateful for - I'm a terribly slow reader otherwise.

If you had to choose your favourite poem, what would it be, and why?

I'm fond of the Chang'e poems (is it cheating to answer with a series?), because I've always loved taking myths and shaking them until something interesting falls out. There are so many different versions of the Chang'e myth, some more popular than others, and I enjoyed making her a little weirder than most.

Also, 'Inorganic Carcinisation in the Neo-Cambrian Era', which was a poem that surprised me - I only ended up writing it because I wanted the roomba character to return, which wouldn't have happened if I wasn't in the 'manuscript' mindset, so that was a novel experience.

If a soundtrack were made to accompany this book, name a song or two you would include.

That Death Cannot Touch - The Black Queen

Evol - Adrienne Lenker

What did you enjoy the most about writing this collection?

I loved being encouraged to experiment: with persona poems and different voices, with space on the page, with found text, and even tools like Greg Kan's text randomiser and Verse by Verse (here, I must say that although VbV is an AI tool, it is trained on dead poets who won't be materially impacted in any way). It was also my first time being in a dedicated writing group and having a supervisor (the incredible Chris Tse) - I wouldn't be the person I am now without the creative energy and relationships forged in those rooms.

What did you do to celebrate finishing this book?

In my head, there were several points of 'finishing' (submitting it as a thesis project, submitting it to AUP, finalising the edits) but for at least one of those, I bought cheesecake from my favourite Asian bakery on Aviemore.

What is the favourite book you have read so far this year and why?

Again, cheating slightly...firstly, Antigonick - Anne Carson: my first real foray into Carson (late, I know). What a way with words! Left my head full of fog for a week straight, in a good way. Recent honourable mention would be Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett: for me personally, Discworld is great for getting back into reading after periods of existential exhaustion. Funny, nostalgic, with a steel heart.

What’s next on the agenda for you?

Wrangling all the poems (and occasional essay) I've written since this manuscript. Since these are mostly standalone poems, I'm looking forward to the kind of link-making and wider scope questions you get with a longer collection again. First I need to remind myself how much I actually enjoy editing (I routinely forget this until I sit down to edit).

Auckland University Press