Amarys Dejai in Conversation with Chinese-American Writer and Filmmaker Haolun Xu

Haolun Xu is a Chinese-American poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker. He was born in Nanning, China, is from New Jersey, and now resides in Austin, Texas, as a current MFA student in the Program of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. His writing has appeared in literary journals such as Electric Literature, Narrative, Gulf Coast, Joyland, jubilat, and more. His debut poetry chapbook, Ultimate Sun Cell, was published with New Delta Review in 2021, and he has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. Additionally, Haolun’s narrative short film, Long Beach, concluded principal photography at the end of April 2022 and was a semifinalist for the 2024 Dumbo Film Festival. In an interview with Sontag staff interviewer Amarys Dejai, Haolun Xu discusses his passion for writing and the arts, his various influences—in both human and literary form—and his creative endeavors.

AD: When did you first discover your love/passion for poetry? Was there a single event that transpired, or did you develop this passion over time?

I wasn't really a poetry fan until I was twenty-one. I was an economics student, though not a very good one, and had prepared myself to go into research or some vague life like that, one I wasn't really prepared for anyways. I think it's interesting though, being able to remember clearly what it felt like to meet poets when I myself was nothing close to such a thing. They had a mystic quality to them. Nowadays, meeting poets is a very different feeling, similar to that of two birds talking with each other in the air. 

It's almost silly how dramatic it was. I was at a book sale in Princeton, NJ, in 2016, when I accidentally knocked over Final Harvest by Emily Dickinson. When I read a page of it while putting the book back, it really did feel like getting hit in the head with it. Something about Dickinson's verse activated something else in me. Then, I was able to understand poetry as if I could look at the inside of a clock or wristwatch and know how it works. It was a very instantaneous feeling. One or two people I've met have had almost the same experience as me, which I find valuable. Sometimes it's almost eerie how similar everyone is.

AD: What does writing mean to you? How does your craft play an integral part in your identity?

I am very embarrassed to say it, but I would probably consider myself to be a rather serious writer. I take myself almost too seriously, I feel. It's something I've staked my life on, and even sometimes my ability to feel at the same wavelength to the people I grew up with or know, which means I feel apart from them. I also think it's sometimes very unfashionable to try so hard at my poems. In fact, I do not think that it is effective or helpful at all, but it is, I suppose, my own kind of devotion to the form. A friend once told me it's important to separate yourself from the identity of a writer and to see writing as work. I think this better applies to fiction writing, which feels almost as a physical act of labor, than it does to poetry. I would say this idea only applies to poetry half of the time. Poetry is so odd. It seems to ask the poet to believe in some strange, big life story and to, even occasionally, to live in the selfish system of such an inner world. I try my best to simply say, “I am Haolun." The poetry is elsewhere, but it always comes back around.

AD: What came first for you: filmmaking or poetry? How does either one play into the other?

Poetry came first, which I think is very important. Filmmaking was very, very difficult to learn due to my own poetry process. A friend once said to me, in a great moment of honesty, that the reason why poetry is the better medium for me at times is because poetry is volatile, solitary, and ultimately selfish. I chuckle at that, but I do believe in that at times. Filmmaking requires a steady, level head and a very realistic frame of communication and sense of time. Directing particularly requires you to never fully retreat into yourself and to remain in the idea with others. Sometimes when I talk about filmmaking to my talented film friends, like Ryan Quon, it feels like every instinct I have as a poet is set in reverse: left is right, up is down, backwards is forwards. But I do think I'm starting to grow as a filmmaker to some degree where I am able to manage the two processes. But it's difficult—very difficult.

AD: What is your writing/creative process like?

I usually begin poems with their title, which are almost always these weird phrases that pop into my head. I can spend anywhere from a day to two years trying to figure out what that title means or what it wants for or from me. I usually have the ending in mind already, which helps a lot too. I believe a lot of poets think of the process as solving a maze backwards. I have noticed I usually write a lot of poems in a very random season of the year and will generate around fifteen to thirty pages of poems. I've been writing poetry seriously for five years now, so I have no idea how my process will change in the future. For fiction, I usually have a more concrete plan: I center it around the characters and their ideologies, what they believe in, and how that is challenged. I could go on talking about fiction and poetry for a very long time, a terribly long time; I haven't learned yet to be concise. 

I often write under the rule that poetry is best written as a way to document life both inside and outside of the poet. The unique aspects of poetry allow for this documentation to be absolutely ridiculous in its range; it can be greatly metaphysical or abstract. Each year, I try to capture a different tone or express the recent hard lessons that I've learned. Maybe this year the lesson will be about how long and extensive a poem can be, or how cerebral and expansive its scope can become. Maybe next year I'll write shorter poems or more experimental poems that break apart and have no direct narrative structure. 

I have noticed, too, that with every poem I write, I try to make it very complete. I am a disaster in this way, and I often don't know if it ever really works out. I always aim for a strong poem, a final aura. I have been thinking lately, though will probably always, that aura is the most important thing about both a poem and its poet. But perhaps I am superficial about that. I have noticed also that, each year, I try to cover my blind spots. I always end up writing in a way in which I try to tackle the aspect I am the most current, the most neglectful of. Last year, I focused on my inability to write a proper throughline. The year before that, I focused on my inability to write freely and happily. I don't remember what I had focused on the year prior to that, which itself is a funny feeling.

AD: Are there any poets, artists, or literary figures that have or continue to influence your work?

I've met so many writers and artists in the last few years alone that I could go on for a week about every one of them. I have found guidance from and positive impressions in many of the people I have met, whether in person or from a distance: Brandon Taylor, Derek Chan, Kwan-Ann Tan, Patrycja Huminek, Vivian Hu, Divya Maniar, Tawanda Mulalu, Sarah Ghazal Ali, Luther Hughes, Séamus Fey, Chen Chen, Jay Gao, Alina Stefanesceu, Anthony Veasna So, Ryan Quon, Fia Zhang, Darius Atefat-Beckham, Kyle Okeke, Marit Liang, Sally Wen Mao, Shangyang Fang, Lucie Xinyue Huang, Gabrielle Bates, Spencer Yan, Daisuke Shen, Angie Sijun Lou, I.S. Jones, Stephanie Niu, Taneum Bambrick, Jessie Li, Kailani Michiko, Hua Xi, Jen Lue, K. Iver, Steven Espada Dawson, Kaylee Jeong, Malvika Jolly, Meg Kim, Jia Sung, Alexander Chee. My newfound MFA poetry cohort members, Daphne DiFazio, Irene Han, Cami DuMay. It's not so much that I am so close to all of them personally, but rather that their work and processes are quite extraordinary to me. I’d also mention writers such as Liu Xia, Samuel Beckett, Natsume Sōseki, and Yasunari Kawabata. I enjoy them and their work a lot. 

Some of those mentioned I, unfortunately, have not been able to talk to for too long, such as Anthony So, who has passed. Some of these people don't really know anything about what I have been writing lately because both time and life can be so limited. I’ve mentioned only a fraction of the people that I have had the luck to meet so far. We sometimes weren't able to talk about writing as much as I would have liked to. Despite this, the way they see the world, their perspectives, and how their impressions have impacted me all carry me greatly as an artist.

AD: How does your identity or experiences influence your work? What are some things you wish to honor/convey in your writing?

I often write about New Jersey or wherever I am, the people I have known and the ways they've changed me. That's really it, I think. Perhaps I could be like Rukeyseyer or Williams and capture the concept of this country or the world within these small spatial parameters. I can only hope one day I'm that smart or capable. I wish I wrote more about being Chinese-American or my political beliefs and did so more clearly. I write about these in more quiet ways on the page, though I'd like to be more assertive in the act. I write about missing people, even if I saw them hours ago, or simply being tired. I think it’s natural to miss people even when you're with them, despite how much the therapists and wellness gurus might disagree.

AD: Could you share an experience where a poem that you wrote changed or impacted your mindset or perspective on something?

There are some times when poems I've written crack things open for me. They are signs of luck, that the winds have changed and I'm now writing in a new way, and that the next year or two will be either a lot easier for me or bring a whole lot more work. "Great Bottomless Well" was a poem that took three months to write and came out with Gulf Coast. I really got into a groove there with that one. "Cruel World As A Litany Of Stars" is a poem people are very nice to me about, though it took me more luck than work to write. Recently, the poem "Three Winds" also provided a shift. Afterwards, I was able to write more in a narrative way: I became able to better capture the flow of life and time outside of myself. I was also able to overcome writing only about myself and steer away from that more often. Lately, I've been writing longer poems that are around three to six pages each, which is something I've never done before. I hope I'll find a way to share those soon with everyone.

AD: What was the first poem you ever wrote and/or published? How have your feelings towards your work changed during your career? Is there any poem or piece that you have grown to feel differently towards, negative or positive, as time has gone on?

I feel It’s very dramatic, but I wrote my first poem at a hospital in a time when I was doing terribly as a twenty-one-year-old. It's called Es La Ley, which was one of the signs the hospital had above a patient’s bed. It was a nice poem, and I liked the ending—something about a fly at the bottom of a coffee cup. 

I am so shy about my chapbook, Ultimate Sun Cell. I'm embarrassed about it for no reason, and I have no idea why it's so hard to be proud of. It's a very intimate feeling to have something like that in the world. But, even now, I'll look back at the poems in it and think how it really is quite a wonderful and lucky thing to have written them. I can say that with some ease because, now, it feels like a different person wrote those poems. I'm impressed that those poems can manage themselves in the way they do. They feel far away, like a friend of a friend or book someone told me about but I've never read.

AD: What books, works of literature, or works of art do you find yourself returning to, either for leisure or to improve your craft, research, or inspiration?

With poetry, I started out by reading a lot of contemporary poets in 2018: Emily Jungmin Yoon, Claudia Rankine, Monika Sok, Sally Wen Mao, Chen Chen. Recently, I have been reading a lot of the poets that emerged after 1950: Richard Wright, Denise Levertov, Charles Olsen, William Meredith. Also recently, Larry Levis and Robert Hass, who are poets whose writing I feel are able to do things I could not conceive of. I try not to read too much Louise Glück or a few other poets whose writing I adore, although I'm not sure why. As a person who wants to be a practicing literary artist, I feel that it’s too “risky” to read them. One day I'll figure out how to say why or justify this thought. 

For fiction, it's always Joyce. I love James Joyce, and I'm horribly obnoxious about it. I truly would dress up for Bloom's Day if I found the right city to do that. I read a lot of the Japanese Modernists: Yasunari Kawabata, Junichiro Tanizaki, and Taeko Kōno. Also, Soseki and Mishima I read very cautiously. I read Mishima like I drink alcohol, rarely but with a lot of guilty pleasure.

AD: What advice would you give to somebody who wants to “become a poet” or someone who may be beginning that journey?

I can see myself getting yelled at for saying what I am going to say. I would tell anyone who is in that position of “beginner poet," which I am not very far from, to please feel special. Though to a reasonable amount, as long as you're not terrible to others and let others feel this way too. Please allow yourself to feel like you are at the center of your life, that you are talented and intelligent and lucky enough to make it as an artist. I absolutely believe there are times that will come where you have to put that aside, but not right now. Please don't do that. Please don't let other people get to you. A lot of people are figuring themselves out and are very tired and will say things to you that will be of no help. I myself am often that person who will tell others to contain or slow themselves down, or to be quicker with the whole thing. Please allow yourself to have the most luxurious and long-winded wishes for yourself as an artist and for what you want to create, to the point where it feels like a secret, and believe in that future. I think some of the heaviest weights that a person takes on is the burden of believing in themselves, and it is sometimes a terrible and difficult feeling to describe. But you've got to do that. No one else can do it for you, and no one else will write it for you. That's what my friend Hamza once said to me, and I think that's very good advice.