Rain Taxi Interviews Koon Woon

Poet Koon Woon talks with David Fewster of Rain Taxi about describing himself as a "paper-son poet." They also discuss his latest book, Rice Bowls: Previously Uncollected Words of Koon Woon (Chrysanthemum Publishing, 2019), memories of growing up in China, living as a young poet in Seattle, and more. An excerpt:

DF: Around what time did you begin to study poetry seriously?

KW: About 1982, when I lived at the Republic Hotel in Seattle’s Chinatown. I lived in #317. I was being ridiculed and bullied in the U-District and I could ill-afford to eat when my room on 16th NE was $170 a month while my SSI was only $300 a month. I called my mother when I would have paranoia and she would yank the phone from its jack. She finally told her younger brother Chay to find a room for me where he lived, and that was it. The room was a tenement but it had one redeeming value—it had a small table that I can place a typewriter on. The rent was $60 a month.

Allen Hikada, my former teacher at Seattle Central Community College, told me that maybe I should take a workshop from Nelson Bentley at the UW. Hikada had done a Master’s Thesis under Bentley’s supervision. I went to Padelford Hall on the UW campus where the English Department was but N. B. was never in his office. I got impatient and I called his home.

“Have you done much of this poetry stuff?” he asked.

“Yes, even including some that you rejected,” I fibbed. And so he let me come to the evening workshop…

Read on at Rain Taxi.