London Writers' Salon

#170: Mary Jean Chan — Emotional Truth in Contemporary Poetry: Imagery, Juxtaposition, and Finding the Right Form

Episode Summary

Award-winning poet Mary Jean Chan on emotional truth in contemporary poetry, the imagery and juxtaposition that hold big feelings on the page, writing queerness, family and grief with care, and what submissions and prize judging reveal about poems that endure.

Episode Notes

Award-winning poet Mary Jean Chan on emotional truth in contemporary poetry, the imagery and juxtaposition that hold big feelings on the page, writing queerness, family and grief with care, and what submissions and prize judging reveal about poems that endure.

You'll learn:

• Why emotional truth sits at the centre of Mary Jean’s work and how you can use it as a compass in your own poems.
• How to move from a single striking line into a finished poem by working on rhythm, line breaks, and imagery.
• What juxtaposition and understatement can do for poems about grief and other intense subjects (and how to avoid tipping into melodrama).
• How to decide whether a memory or idea belongs in a poem, a short story, or another form.
• Ways to write about queerness, family, and other vulnerable themes while setting boundaries that protect your relationships and your wellbeing.
• How to approach submissions, rejections, and prize lists so they support a long-term poetry practice rather than define your worth.
• What reading and judging for major prizes can teach you about sentences, images, and books that stand out in a crowded field.
• How to sustain a poetry life alongside teaching, study, and care by staying attentive to everyday moments and small pockets of time.

Resources and Links:

• 📑Interview Transcript
• Adrienne Rich
• Poetry School
• Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong 
• Submit your work to Faber
• Pity by Andrew McMillan
• Billy-Ray Belcourt 
• National Poetry Competition 
• The Window by Mary Jean Chan 
• Seamus Heaney 
• Mary Oliver
• Western Lane by Chetna Maroo 
• Prophet Song by Paul Lynch 
• Whereas by Layli Long Soldier 
• Contact page 
   

About Mary Jean Chan

Mary Jean Chan is the author of the poetry collections Flèche and Bright Fear; Flèche won the Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for multiple international prizes, while Bright Fear was a Guardian Best Poetry Book of 2023 and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Writers’ Prize, and the Dylan Thomas Prize. They co-edited 100 Queer Poems, co-wrote Siblings, teach poetry on the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford, and have judged major awards including the Booker Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize.