way that Deleuze and Guattari used these terms,
as a form of ‘‘flight from territorialization.’’
Childhood misery, of course, has also provided
some of the materials and themes in my writing,
particularly in the poems and the memoir. More
significant I think is the ideological weight that
bears on most of my thinking—the leftward
leaning perspective, the sympathy for the
weaker, poorer, the outsider.
MAQ: You are both a poet and a fiction writer,
and an academic to boot. How important is it for a
writer/writer-academic to keep abreast with the
global developments in writing and criticism? Does
the theoretical awareness, or awareness of criticism
and literary scholarship, interfere with the process
of writing which I believe is largely a spontaneous/
unconscious activity?
SL:A scholar and teacher in a top research
university is by the very nature of the institution
expected to be part of the leading edge in her
discipline; and as you know, disciplines are now
shaped within globally circulating discourses.
Air travel, the Internet (which has practically
made faxes unnecessary!), even the development
of English as a global language for the science,
technology, and infotainment industries, signify
that this academic must be a global worker as
well.
But a writer is not or not always an aca-
demic. I do not believe that a poet or even a
novelist needs to know what is happening in the
next village, not to say in ‘‘global developments in
writing and criticism.’’ A sense of history for a
writer may even shirk a sense of the global con-
temporary, which in its speed and transitoriness
may be only so much ineffectual noise for the
writer.
This is not to say that there is one prescrip-
tive mode for a writer to process his materials.
Doris Lessing is as different socio-politically and
stylistically from Jane Austen as a woman writer
can be, and yet one may trace certain similarities
of social engagement in their novels. ‘‘Theoret-
ical awareness’’ may be so much useless twaddle
for some writers and catalytic for others. Writers
are as varied as the fruits of nature and they
produce in many kinds of climates. Only total-
itarian absoluteness can silence them, and not
for long.
MAQ: Would you elaborate on the way you
write? Are there any idiosyncrasies associated
with your writing such as gulping down a big cup
of coffee as, for example, Hemingway did every
time he sat down to write?
SL:I write best given huge chunks of time.
Being away from familiar ground helps. Being
alone helps. Having other writers to talk to and
engage with helps; and if this appears to contra-
dict the statement before, that can’t be helped.
Not having to worry about laundry and meals
and public appearance helps. In short, I have
found that living like a pampered hermit, the
way that Thoreau did when he wrote of being
alone at Walden Pond while all the while he was
going off for meals every evening with the Emer-
sons and others down the road, helps. I would
live in a writers’ retreat, in the lap of a social
privilege that provides tranquil hours and a sup-
portive community when needed.
Alas, absent these conditions, I write in
between chores, on weekends and teaching breaks
and very occasional fellowships, after I have com-
pleted some research project. My memoir and
novel were written under such conditions. I
write long journal entries on plane rides. As for
poems, they usually arrive late at night and more
and more rarely as my nighttime energy level
declines with age.
MAQ: In what way does teaching influence
your own work?
SL:My immediate response is very little.
Perhaps if I spend more time pondering on this
question I may come up with a better answer.
My immediate response, however, is that the
time taken up teaching is time away from writ-
ing. In that way, teaching may have saved the
public from more books by me.
MAQ: How is writing a poem different for
you from writing a short story, or for that matter
an academic essay?
SL:A poem is an intense writing experience.
I have hardly ever written a poem in cold blood,
that is, as an exercise with no emotional occasion
attached. The heat of the feelings that move me to
the act of composing or that accompany that com-
position, to my mind, is what produces, cooks, the
rhythm, the pulse that gives rise to lines of words.
Such feelings become ‘‘embodied’’ for me in the
poetic form, in its sounds and rhythms.
Poetry does not sprawl for me—it is no
extravagant exhibition of language, rather an
extravagant exhibition of intensity, the form the
words take, their lines, images, rhythms, rhymes,
alliterative force, shaping an inward sense that isPantoun for Chinese Women