Life keeps hurtling forward, bursting forth. It’s spring in California, the jasmine’s come in and the streaky roses. It’s been raining hard all morning; just now it stopped abruptly. Lyn writes in My Life, “she observed that detail minutely, as if it were botanical. As if words could unite an ardent intellect with the external material world.” This is Lyn, vitally observing, drawing it all into relation, the mind and the world, botanical, passionate. Making words hold life, making words as life. “Such that art is inseparable from the search for reality,” she writes.
A short interview with Souvankham Thammavongsa
Souvankham Thammavongsa has written three poetry books, Small Arguments (2003), Found (2007), and Light (2013), all published by Pedlar Press. Of her most recent collection, The Globe and Mail said “[t]his new collection confirms Thammavongsa’s place as one of the most interesting younger poets at work in the country," and the Trillium Book Award jury, awarding her the prize for poetry, called the collection “a landmark in contemporary poetry.” Her first book won the 2004 ReLit prize. Her second book was made into a short film by Paramita Nath and screened at film festivals worldwide including TIFF, L.A. Shorts Fest, Dok Leipzig and other places.