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Becoming Someone Who Isn't

by Jill Chan
 

These are poems of mystery and subtle beauty. Complex and strangely open, Jill Chan’s second book of poetry delves into the realm of the mystical in the everyday themes of love, hope, despair, and beauty where ‘light has no answer beyond its brightness.’    

Jill Chan was born in Manila, Philippines, in 1973.  She has a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, migrated to New Zealand when she was 21.  Her debut collection of poetry, The Smell of Oranges, was published by Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop in 2003.  She divides her time between Manila and Auckland.

Reviews

This is an attractive book by Jill Chan. Trained in chemistry, she makes good with 'the word' and this little book is an excellent example of that. A new voice delving into the realms of love, hope, despair and beauty is always welcome and Chan's contribution to this is very fresh and welcome. Her first book, The Smell of Oranges was by the same publisher in 2003. Jill Chan was born in Manila in 1973. Origin of Wakefulness (1st section) leads into A Station in the Snow, then, Becoming Someone who Isn't then the last section: Journal. Many of the poems are introspective, but certainly not turgid. Very serious work, this, but otherwise filled with wonder, like 'Sunday' and 'Lunch' - some good work, well worth getting.
Trevor Reeves Southern Ocean Review

A still quality and liveliness exist at the same time in elegant verses, written by a poet originally from the Philippines and now resident in New Zealand.  The messages and meanings hint at fair discipline, knowing oneself and acceptance of life’s trials, along with human difficulties. The images are lovely even when they deeply disturb me, I am not sure how Chan achieves this except through obvious talent and careful editing.  Her word play delights me.
     ...leaving enough of ourselves/ behind/ we continue in pieces              - from Clouds.   
     Possibly the title refers to how we adapt, or could refer to how language can take away what troubles us and we then reinvent lines and ourselves with editing.  Certainly, the poise and insights found in Chan’s poetry seem to have appeared effortlessly, however I know such writing requires extraordinary discipline and rewriting, beyond any obvious talent. This poetry is an excellent example of what effort makes of natural gifts.  The beauty and intelligence in the language really shines, in many subtle ways.
    The night is there/ for all/ but some/ only see it/ if they stop pretending it is theirs,/ the corners disappearing into them....    - from The Night
    The cover shows a curtain that could also be a mask, and the poems also talk about change, adaption, the eloquence to be found if your attitude’s attuned.  Also, the verses hint at ‘otherness’.  I think this is a collection about cultures overlapping, while a young woman matures and learns. I enjoyed hearing Chan read her work at Poetry Live recently, and recommend such readings so you may hear these simple words, their beautiful arrangements and the delicate yet spirited tone the poet gives them, aloud. A book people could enjoy for many years.  Each time I read the verses they seem fresh to me, full of new ideas.  Highly recommended.
Raewyn Alexander  Magazine - annual arts - Issue Five

   Jill Chan’s poetry is full of tender moments buffeted by a world in which there is “something far too close to ourselves.”  It’s a comfort to read these poems.  Even though they’re often sad, they celebrate the essence of life and reflect a spontaneity rooted in the everyday themes of love, hope, despair and beauty.
   These are the sort of poems you curl up with and keep beside a favourite armchair, poems you turn to time and again: “laughing / with silent sparks, / the times shaken off / returning” (“View”).  The poet’s introspection turns things over and looks at from all angles, always aware of relationships, landscapes and feelings.  In “All There Was”, “You listened while / I talked about things / both of us / knew nothing about.”  I think of those times when we “talk past each other”, where “Sometimes the things / we belong to / don’t belong to us” (“The Night”).
   Yet, there’s an affectionate recognition here, based on the knowledge that “When you wake / think of the words you couldn’t say” (“The Way To The Centre”).  Sad she may be, but the unmistakable strength of Becoming Someone Who Isn’t  lies in the respect the poems show for other people’s feelings.
   This poetry can’t be left alone, you think: I’ll just read one more.  Not all is introspection: other poems leave no doubt that out there is the so-called “real world” . . . “That April, New York burst out of the square / into the streets we found measured / under our feet “ (“Cartography”) and that when you are at home you “yourself escape through the window” (“You Want To Place The Sun Back In The Sky”).  On that note, Chan’s poems are as far from pretentious as you could get, yet they are not simplistic.  They are full of grace and rhythm and craft.
   The melancholy that runs through this collection is like a fine mist drifting without settling; it enriches the poetic landscape without blotting it out, for “When you are here, / the nights seem to assemble darkness / like bows” (“When Here”).  There are no false heroics here; but the pain is real – too real at times – and there is no magic answer for it.  As we are taken on a journey through the pain of “Love Without Song” we discover

There isn’t the tension
of a quiet spoke
in a wheel going a mile then two
then turning round
skirting the importance of returning
where none would go.

   Maybe some poems like “When It Is Nearly Afternoon”, “Losing His Name” and “Century” – poems about despair, maybe these are a little raw, but then the pain is raw.  The images are certainly powerful.  Appearances, the other underlying theme of some poems, details the consequences of “saying / what is least expected of us” (“Appearances”) and of being forced to live with the choices we make.  The poet’s gaze is unstinting.  In this sense Chan’s poems are clearly acts of survival that transcend these sad places to contemplate the nature of existence.
   I do not, however, want to give a false impression of this book.  Chan’s interests are varied.  There is plenty of humour in many of the poems; others deal with nature; or with the poet’s birth; others that are concise domestic scenes laced with irony.  Throughout them all there is a strong sense of narrative lyricism; also a fine balance between levity and seriousness; resignation and hope.  There is a great economy of language and stylistic eloquence within the scope of her narrative.  The title poem “Becoming Someone Who Isn’t” demonstrates a witty reason for the poet’s lack of sleep:

A white page
is the origin of wakefulness.

Be like a station
in the snow.

Evening dips
and I still sleep
like this,

fitfully feeling
a hand beside me.

This, and other poems reveal a frequent sense of self-mockery and humour.            
   The wonderful prose pieces in the section entitled “Journal” move easily through the logic of its own conventions of the frustrations and joys of everyday life.  There is a deceptive simplicity in Chan’s imagery, which gives the reader a rewarding sense of recognition and discovery, as in the piece called  “Painting”:

I couldn’t do a proper frame.  The light has decided where to fall and one could only follow.

The only reason for painting is to blend the edges of the work with the brushes of your own windowed life – Swirl the colours as if you knew where to land.

Reviewed by Patricia Prime, Takahe

 

This is Jill Chan ’s second collection of poetry, her first being The Smell of Oranges, in 2003. She was born in Manila and moved to NZ in 1994. She has a degree in Chemistry and spends her time between Auckland and Manila. After an acute episode of mental illness she started writing and publishing poetry as part of her recovery process. She has been published in a number of literary journals, and is editor of the e-zine Poetry Sz which aims to demystify mental illness by publishing work from those who have experienced mental illness. This new collection of 45 poems is divided into sections, entitled Origin of Wakefulness, A Station in the Snow, Becoming Someone Who Isn’t and Journal.
            The collection covers he relationships, emotions and thoughts of he poet expressed in a reflective way. They are personal and in that sense the feeling evoked is one of being confided in. Anger, passion and joy are no expressed explicitly. Many of the poems in he collection are marked by an underlying thread of melancholy, resignation or acceptance. They are written in free verse with a finely edited use of words and imagery: “Dust is wakeful/like light/pressing on the eyes” (‘Century’); “The sun now/directionless, unique” (‘Painting Without A Sunset’).
            Origin of Wakefulness contains 12 poems which cover the beginnings of a relationship, hesitations and unwillingness to commit clearly expressed: “Still, we rapped/defences/like mice,/each kept address/moving ” (‘All There Was ’); “You hate the dark./I don’t like he light ./We stay, alone with our diversions.” (‘Dark/Light’)
            A Station In The Snow is a collection of 15 poems which continue with the unfolding and uncertainties of love, as well as poems involving other subjects: the confusion of dementia in ‘Losing His Name’, and he gentle irony of he poem ‘After Having A Book Signed By One of he Poets’.
            Becoming Someone Who Isn’t contains 12 poems broadly about longing and separation. “I want to claim/the brightest star./I am weak./My eyes are mirrors/no one stops in front of.” (‘Stars ’)In ‘Birth’ Chan covers her story of her birth and her progress onwards:

            I am slowly moving away  
            from my birth  
            toward another  birth.  
            That of a wind carefully shhhhing the leaves
            off the ground.  

            Journal has a different format, although she writes in he same style. It consists of short prose in which the poet asks questions of herself and others and reflects on her answers: “I shall find the answers hooking hands, playing with he familiarity of lying together. Which? To each?” (‘Antecedent’) Ultimately ,in ‘All Things Are As They Are ’ the final piece, she appears to come to a place of acceptance and self-knowledge:

I am still behind the eyes of everyone I don’t know. They harvest the best light. I locate it, sure as a follower is sure of being misled/mislaid.   

            Chan uses words and images in a complex way and her internal ‘voice’ comes straight off the page. Her poems have a mystical quality. Like thoughts, many of the poems are left open-ended and can appear obscure. However, this allows he reader to spend time enjoying both the lyricism and the gift of individual interpretation: “I hollow out my fist,/impossible as stone/never turning,/given to drowning/blind.” (‘Continental’) These poems reveal more the more they are studied and in his way they stay fresh.
            Chan will be the editor of a new literary e-zine called Numinous : Spiritual Poetry, a bi-annual magazine which she plans to launch in June 2008.

Nancy Loader  a fine line (NZ Poetry Society Magazine)

Jill Chan’s new work continues to interrogate the sense of alienation felt by the individual in a global village. The opening lines in ‘The Night’, perfectly sum up this sense of dislocation. ‘Sometimes the things/ we belong to/ don’t belong to us.’ Chan anatomises here what could well be the feelings of the salaryman; the wage slave; the virtual reality clone. Further on this poem offers little hope, inferring that it’s best we admit there are unstoppable forces - social, natural and economic - which control us.
            Chan does invoke the natural world and its transcendent archetypes. Sky, light, tree, silence, rain: images which form in one consciousness as it struggles to make connections with another. However, there is little comfort to be had from such mysteries. In these poems profound human connections remain as longed for as they are unrealised. A faithless lover is gently chastised in ‘February’. The two are parted by geography, but the unbridgeable aspect of their separation is emotional.
            In ‘When It Is Nearly Afternoon’ the imperative to connect is suggested in the title’s recognition that time is passing. This idea is then played out in specific gestures made towards the ‘other’. ‘You are lying on the couch./ Black hair against the green-grey leather,/ blanket corner pulled.’ Here an impulse to intimacy loses out to detachment despite the achieved engagement of the concluding couplet. ‘I’m holding you now/ with heart and eye/ blankly swimming.’
            The juxtaposition of light and dark: waving in recognition versus waving off: the inside contrasted with the outside: Here are tensions which reverberate through the collection. And they are evoked in uncanny language, which is not afraid to risk exhausting the reader with complexity.
            In the matrix of her slippery ideas, Chan’s precise observations of the material world offer only transient footholds. In ‘Appearing’, ‘The green plastic chair/ The unused teacup’, are concrete images which emerge like islands from a sea of philosophical puzzles. The last couplet of this poem typifies Chan’s preference for immanence over transcendence: ‘yet letting what is said slip like/ the rain that drops without anyone noticing’.
            Becoming Someone Who Isn’t positions the reader on the edge between pleasure and pain: These poems are a disconcerting textual metaphor for our uncertain times.
Janet Charman New Zealand Writers’ Ezine

 

Review in Poetry New Zealand

About Jill Chan:  

Jill Chan has had work published in major New Zealand literary magazines Poetry New Zealand, JAAM, Takahe, Brief, Southern Ocean Review, Bravado, Trout, Deep South, Spin; in well-known international e-zine MiPOesias, and featured in their audio podcasts on miPOradio; in foam:e, and many other print and online zines.

She has read at an Amnesty International benefit reading alongside established poets Riemke Ensing, Anna Jackson, Michele Leggott, Murray Edmond, Alistair Paterson, C.K. Stead, Iain Sharp and many others.

She has read at various National Poetry Day events. She has been mentioned in the list of new and emerging writers in PEN's American Centre's year-end members survey for 2005.

Jill is the editor of an international magazine, Poetry Sz: demystifying mental illness,  featuring outstanding poetry by people living with mental illness. It is updated three times a year in March, July and November. New and established poets from countries like UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Poland, Denmark, Macedonia, Uruguay, and many others have been featured. Since its inception in 2000, more than 120 poets have been published in Poetry Sz.

The e-zine started as an experimental project for Jill, who at that time was just recovering from mental illness: "It gave me the opportunity to visualize and actualize a goal at a time when I needed to. Because while recovering, I was at a stage of feeling around and needed some grounding."

The e-zine has served as a venue for poets who are just starting out and who went on to be featured in various literary journals and publications. In addition, among the established poets featured in PoetrySz are New Zealand poets Meg Campbell, Peter Olds, Mahirarangi Tocker; various well-known American poets like kari edwards whose work had been featured in the Best American Poetry anthology, New York poet Steve Dalachinsky; UK poet Christopher Barnes who has a page in the BBC website; Coral Hull, a well-known artist/poet/activist from Australia, and Sandy Jeffs, also from Australia.

Poetry Sz aims to highlight and feature work that shows the diversity and excellence of work written by people who have experienced mental illness, and to foster awareness among readers of poetry.  

http://poetrysz.blogspot.com

TITLE               Becoming Someone Who Isn't
AUTHOR         Jill Chan
PUBLISHED    2007
CATEGORY    Poetry
FORMAT         Paperback
EXTENT          13 X 19cm, 64 pages
ISBN 10 digit   1-86942-083-7
ISBN 13 digit    978-1-86942-083-3
PRICE              $18

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