ROXAS-CHUA 姚

Uncial

MY ASEMIC WRITING PROCESS

MY ASEMIC WRITING PROCESS – From a current exhibit at the Portland Chinatown Museum

Asemic is a type of open-form writing that has no intentional meaning or prescribed language. There have been many writers throughout the world and each one has their own technique. My approach to this open-form of writing is through poetry and somatic feeling (relating to the body, especially from the mind).

As a transracial/transcultural adopted person, I find that I cannot claim a “first tongue.” I grew up learning and speaking Hokkien, Mandarin, Tagalog, and English. Writing in asemic form gives me access to imagery only a meld of languages can. To me, it is the visual representation of the poetry I write.

When I’m writing a poem, sometimes I cannot carry its weight. Because of this, I dip my calligraphy brush into ink, place it onto paper, and think about the poem I am working on. I find this process invites my whole body to participate in the inquiry through the open movement of brush, wrist, and memory. Then somewhere between the repeated brushstrokes, an image appears that ends up in the lines of the poem. I then record myself out loud as a way to hear how the poem wants to be read.

All of the asemic pieces shared in this exhibit were created during and after site visits to John Day, The Dalles, and Astoria, Oregon. One of the main pieces in the exhibit, EVERYTHING IS MEMORY, is a two-part installation called Gold Lightning and Lullaby Scripts. I feel this installation is the heart of my experience with the Portland Chinatown Museum residency. Through this work I was able to gather, widen, and deepen my inquiry into finding a place in this community and be a part of Oregon’s history.

The scroll hanging from the ceiling was inspired by a dream where I saw gold lightning illuminate the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon. In the dream, the lightning led me to a container filled with a metallic liquid broth. The gold ink script is accompanied by smaller scripts which are written using liquid ingredients my late mother Betty used in her cooking (soy sauce, rice wine, red vinegar, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and other spices). Her image is on the wall above you, painted by my fellow artist-in-residence, Alex Chiu.

The bottom part of the installation is a collection of asemic calligraphy inspired by works gathered from a live installation during the Public Archaeology Day at Kam Wah Chung in John Day. Further inspiration came from other works I created in the field. The ink used includes excavated charcoal from heritage sites, wood remnants and flue soot from the Wing Hong Hai Co. building in The Dalles, plant material from Chinese mining camps, and flowers from Astoria.

It is important to me that I present my calligraphy work as “broken” pieces rather than their completed form, so they may be seen as artifacts. Because of this, the scroll and books used in this installation will be torn into pieces at the end of the exhibit so they stay in conversation with the temporary nature of things. Everything will be returned to the earth after this show.

For a fuller personal experience, I invite you to scan the QR CODES with your mobile device to hear audio recordings of the poems and other sounds.

Illuminating Time – Portland Chinatown Museum Artist-in-Residence Exhibit

Opening December 1, 2022 at the Portland Chinatown Museum.

Nephew

PAUNAWA

We made oars
out of the arms of time.
Perhaps it is tenderness
we’ve been looking for,
not kindness. Perhaps
it is not prayer we need
to say. Perhaps it’s time
to let the hand do what
it does best—press
Itself unto a chest
and push a galaxy into
the other. Minus time
and its arms, minus
god and its hovering—
we are made of each
other. Tellurian,
earthling, boat maker
—row harder!

_________

Listening to Abecedarians:

Ephemera & Sharpened Tusks

Ephemera Against Sharpened Tusks

Field notes from the wild periphery:

When my guardian-mother died in 2005, I had a dream about seeing parts of words on tree leaves and flowers. I saw rocks smudged in blue-violet moss; color of mimeograph ink. It was then I began burying a lot of my poems in the backyard, poems about loss. I write about loss to this day, poems that are mostly not meant to be seen and transformed into earth again. In 2008 I sold ceramics meant to be broken, etched spheres with markings I didn’t know still had a lot to say later on in life. In 2015 I printed poems I wrote for my first semester in grad school and chewed them like a wasp to make paper nests. I presented them to my advisor because I was infatuated with nests of all kind. I also remember immersing myself in a tub of pulp from poems written about my biological father. There were lots of them. I made paper out them them. I’ve turned my biological father into paper now. I wanted to know how to float with paper and words.

In 2017 audio recording came back into my life after my involvement with our local hospice right after my mother’s death. I recorded patients who had special messages for people who mattered to them, people they loved–daughters, sons, grandchildren, inmate lovers, estranged family members, neighbors, and pets. Sonic immersion is a practice now. I upgraded my equipment using residency and honorarium money. I bought myself contact mics so I can listen to vibrations and fainter sounds. I scored a hydrophone to listen to rivers, oceans, and creeks. I acquired directional and ambisonic mics to I listen to birds and claim my insignificance in the wider nature of things. When the pandamic began, I started backing off from the capital P in poetry and decided to stay in the periphery in all the pageantry. It’s a personal choice and not a putdown to those who seek its business and culture. Captial P in poetry has its place but I prefer the outskirts, the alleyways, the imperfections, the broken equations. I choose the lower cases in things because to me poetry is a method and not a goal.

A few weeks ago, I asked a group of archaeologists and anthropologists to participate in my practice of creating ephemeral work. It was the most memorable experience. We laughed as we tore an open-form calligraphy piece I created that inspired a poem called 14°32’18.7″N 120°59’35.3″E. which I will share in a few days on-line. I really like shared experiences. The notes I write about them such as this entry fills me. In this shared experience with my new friends, I’ve felt a shift in what I do, where I don’t want to see or share my work as “P”oetry but rather emphasize the lower case perspectives and celebrate the quiet sharing, the sit-around-the-fire story-sharing—where everything becomes an invitation to respond to one another. Less competition, less judging, less noticing the most beautiful lotus in the pond. There’s beauty in the muck, there’s beauty in the ugly, there’s beauty after the pageants—we are all swans. Friends, that’s where you’ll find me from here on out. I will not compete. It’s taught me a lesson. I’m here to connect the dots now.

_____

Listening to Two Star

Carved into stone…

Carved into stone,
etched into bone;
paper or skin—
memory is my
only language.

#openformscript#openformcalligraphy
#lowercasepoetry#lowercaseasemic
________
Listening to Ida: