Poet Jun-long Lee on the chimeric inner country of memory

Jun-long Lee is a poet, visual artist, and filmmaker. He is the author of Abode (Athabasca University Press, 2025) and several chapbooks. His poems have

appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, The Malahat Review, Grain, Riddle Fence,

Conjunctions, Jubilat, and elsewhere.

Poet, visual artist, and filmmaker Jun-long Lee

He is based in Calgary (Moh’kinstsis) on

Treaty 7 lands and can be found at www.leafshaped.com. In this interview, Jun-long shares the experiences that have shaped his writing, including the chimeric inner country of memory, the books and authors he likes to read, and his detailed editing process.

The chimeric inner country of memory

OCW: What life experiences have shaped your writing style?

JLL: I get stuck dwelling on past mistakes, failures. Good memories, impressions, possibilities as well. Often when I can’t sleep or even when I’m reading, and quite unintentionally, I’ll circle around an image—the smell of turpentine and dying houseplants and the feeling of carpet under my feet in a sunlit spot on the balcony of my childhood home, for example—around and around; this kind of circling inevitably makes its way into my poems. Practically anything might return and make a lasting mark: a person met only once or not at all, something seen out of the corner of the eye, smells both good and bad, someone loved, certain kinds of light, certain kinds of falling. Repeatedly reflecting on these—turned backward or inward—has influenced the way I write, which is usually backward or inward.

Poetry collection Abode by Jun-long Lee

Rhythms or textures from what I’ve read might intrude years later when I’m working on something unrelated. I have also spent many years living all over the place, so those land/ruin/cityscapes—mixed together into a chimeric inner country—play a big part in my writing.

OCW: Can you trace any common themes across your writing?

JLL: I tend to write about the same things over and over: lichen, moss, ruins, saints. Dead plants. Qualities of light, qualities of smoke. The idea of language as spell/prayer/curse; the idea of ruination/overgrowth by the natural world as healing. What I used to be (mushroom?), who I could have been, what I might be later (mushroom?). Inner landscapes are important for me—ones turned inside out by memory—as are places of pure language.

Poetics and the books that annihilate

OCW: Which authors and/or types of books do you like to read?

JLL: Poetry disguised as prose fiction: works by authors like Clarice Lispector, Hilda Hilst, Fleur Jaeggy, Wolfgang Hilbig, Gerald Murnane, and Jean Genet. As for poetry itself, recently I’ve been reading Danielle Collobert, Lyn Hejinian, and Norma Cole. I also enjoy theory and philosophy, though I treat this type of reading as an extension of poetics. Lastly, a pair of novelists who obsess me: Thomas Bernhard and Can Xue... I’ll read anything by these two! Closer to home, I really admire Sylvia Legris and Lisa Robertson.

OCW: What advice/guidance would you give to writers?

JLL: Make opportunities for uninterrupted writing, if you can; maybe you can work two or three jobs at once to fund a year-long sabbatical. Or apply every chance you get for arts funding. For me the first hour of every session is always unbearable and agonizing staring at the page/screen, so having extra hours to continue is a must.

I feel like this is the most commonly advice given, but I stand behind it: read! There’s the Faulkner angle of reading everything and anything—to learn even from what is mediocre—but I like the Kafka angle... read only books that annihilate you. Maybe you can rebuild something interesting from your remains. Read your favourites again (and again)—you’ll find something new every time. To contradict all that: give a chance also to that weird-sounding book from an author or country or language you know nothing about.

The cave system of the editing process

OCW: Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

JLL: I make minor edits while composing first drafts, which are usually handwritten and messy. The early versions of my poems are usually not very good.

The real work begins when I start editing the poems within the context of a book or a longer sequence. Each poem might be seen as a small chamber in a cave system. I might resize them, strip down walls, dig tunnels to other rooms or create new rooms altogether. I might wall some up, flood others with water or blood. Either way, I never discard anything; I have rewritten some of my worst poems into my favourite ones.