Alan Lau Answers Jacket2's Five Questions

At Jacket2, Anna Marie Hong spends time with Alan Lau, who has served as arts editor for the Pacific Northwest's premier Asian Pacific Islander American newspaper, the International Examiner, for over 30 years. Haven't heard of the International Examiner? Hong explains that the publication "was founded in 1974 as a community newspaper serving the multiethnic and multinational Asian population of Seattle’s International District, which was then contending with pressing economic and housing issues, as activists established much-needed social services in the neighborhood. Although locally focused, The International Examiner has also pioneered arts coverage for national and international Asian American artists and writers." More about Lau (and a little preview of their conversation): 

Alan is the author of three poetry collections: Songs for Jadina, which won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; Blues and Greens: A Produce Worker’s Journal; and no hurry. With Lawson Fusao Inada and Garrett Hongo, he authored The Buddha Bandits Down Highway 99. His awards include fellowships from the Japan-US Friendship Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Seattle Arts Commission, the California Arts Council, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan. The ArtXchange Gallery represents his visual work. 

Anna Maria Hong: You’ve been the Arts Editor for The International Examiner for over thirty years. How do you choose which books of poetry to review? Has your criteria for selection changed over the years? 

Alan Lau: We are a little different than mainstream newspapers and magazines where an editor will assign what he or she wants to have reviewed. We simply don’t have that kind of budget to give me as an arts editor the clout to pick what I want reviewed, and the reviewer simply reviews what he or she is assigned. Of course we do try to support local Northwest writers and I, as an editor, may have preferences, but in the end, what eventually sees the light of day on the page or online is what our volunteer writers are interested in personally and want to review.

Hong: In your opinion, what are some the most exciting developments in recent Asian American poetry and poetics?

Lau: When I was writing poetry in the late 1960s and early ’70s, I could count the number of Asian American poets who had books out on maybe my two hands. Now there are literally dozens of poets with books published, more than we have pages for to review. While I am a poet myself, and I really think it is important that poetry is represented, the arts coverage is just one part of what an Asian American community newspaper is expected to cover. What I do find exciting now is that Asian American poets can experiment and write about anything that interests them. I think, in the beginning, poets had to create a wheel first and try to roll it down the hill. Today’s poets can disassemble that wheel anyway they see fit. Anything is valid.

Read on at Jacket2.