Jacob Wanuch: A Spark in the Shadows

Interview vie email with Deva Eveland
Poetry translation by Zhenming Tian

.EXE

These adorable automatons

They spurt rhythmic noises

Evaluate foreign receivers

Judgments non-critically incorrect

Find new things to stare at

Test new commands

Hastily assembled orders

Haphazard happy accidents

Ad hoc living, compiled data

Harshly tuned decision matrices

Nightly memory dumps

Overloads and shutdown

They run their little batteries dry

Shut off their non-vital pieces

Stomp back home

To fill up once more on Emptiness

.EXE

这帮无辜的机械人

肆意喷吐有规律的声响

他们评估外部接收源

判断失误而草率

目光搜寻不懈怠

检测命令接踵而至

他们汇编指示，手忙脚乱

偶有意外之喜

特定的生活，被编制的数据

经调谐的决策矩阵，嘈杂聒耳

晚间内存转储

超载即关闭

他们干到电流干涸

无关紧要的零件通通熄灭

归途踉踉跄跄

待虚无再次充盈身体

DE: Can you talk a little bit about where your ideas come from? Images? Experiences? Pondering the universe? (I was especially curious about .Exe and Textiles).

JW: I haven't given this much thought before. There always seems to be a spark in the shadows. I never consciously create the first line or two of anything I write. It just comes out and from there it feels a bit like a game of balancing strange blocks on top of each other. I usually know where the blocks come from with the exception of the first one.

.exe came from a place of total social exhaustion. I'd spent a week and a half where I never had more than maybe ten minutes to myself. I felt overdrawn and all the idiosyncrasies of humans just felt so strange after being around the quirks and needs of other people non-stop. It felt like when you say a word so many times that it seems to lose its meaning.

Textiles started from a place of feeling isolated, a bit of existential unease. It became a form of therapy to remind myself that we're all a part of this larger sort of emergent organism. In the same way that some termites create enormous temperature-regulating nests without any one of them planning it, I think our civilizations and the knowledge that passes along them have done some pretty spectacular things through ordinary humans. Although I guess at times we do great things more intentionally.

That poem also drew on the Fates of Greek mythology, and the Apollo lunar missions.

Textiles

Threads hang

In planned tangles

Each and the other

Unremarkable

And essential

An organization

Started in baskets

And plant-made braids

Drawn long

Held like hands

To cross the seas

We drew wires

Thinner and thinner

Made memory

Stuffed it with a set

Of True and False

It was a map

Knit by little old ladies

It led to a place

That never stopped moving

Pulling the waters high

We touched the moon

With a tapestry

Squished to preserve

A yes-no story

Against cubed-circle emissions

We are threads

We are fabric

We are weavers

DE: How has the experience of living in China affected your writing?

JW: This is a two part question for me. I think exposure to Chinese culture has influenced my thinking in general, and I have writing that draws heavily on the details of things in China. I also have writing that remains wholly grounded in my Canadian roots with no relation to China. So it shows up but not always.

The second part is that China is one of the more homogeneous places I've been and it's the first time where I'm an obvious outsider. Especially in the earlier months of trying to adapt to life here, I ended up feeling fairly isolated. Sometimes the lack of familiarity and my subsequent incompetence has left me feeling like it's a strange dream, not real life. And so I write that into some things as well.

I find that cultural exposure is more becoming a factor and isolation is declining and I hope the trend continues. Loneliness can be found anywhere, so I think it's the less interesting theme.

 DE: How do you know when a poem is finished?

JW: I know the first draft is not finished. It's sort of like I have to wait for the paint to dry and see if it came out alright. From there I adjust words and fine tune the way it reads until it's something that I like the feel of.

When I'm writing the first draft there will be a point where I'll run out of things to say. If I'm lucky, I'll also be satisfied with what I've said, otherwise I'll dump it into the scrap yard.

I'm very much a 'put it out there and move on' person. I used to never finish my projects so I've had to train myself to let things go when they could still be improved. I know I'm at the point to do that when, x number of drafts in I don't know if I'm making it better or worse anymore.

DE: Do you believe in free will? A line in your poem Superdeterminism begins “There is a theory…” as though you yourself don’t wish to affirm it as true or not.

JW: I studied philosophy so I could write an essay on this but I suspect it would be boring to most people. Short answer, I don't believe in free will.

I still believe in moral responsibility and I believe that the choices we make are not only meaningful but the only meaningful thing we can do.

I wrote 'There is a theory' because there are competing ideas on how to explain some apparently faster than light phenomena. Honestly, my grasp of quantum physics is pretty weak despite my efforts to understand it.

Mainly, I don't affirm the theory I subscribe to because I know that I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Superdeterminism

A lost thought  

Snuck through  

The cracks in the glass

I couldn’t bear to sleep

Yet

I no longer wished to wake up

There went the illusion of fine

No longer wandering

Just lost, perfectly on course

Rain drops, hardly bigger than mist

Spraying over the rim

Of this unreal world

There is a theory

Even paradox is no problem

If all was decided backwards

If time is symmetrical

Somehow

Here we all are

Tumbling upstream

Superdeterminism

失落的念头

偷渡潜行

穿越玻璃间的裂痕

我畏惧沉睡

却呢

又疲于奔命

安然无恙的生活那是昙花一现的幻觉

不再流浪

只是迷惘，却仍按部就班

细雨潺潺，恍若薄雾

溅散于水面

映射这虚头无厘的世界

有这么个理论

矛盾竟可迎刃而解

假如万事因果颠倒

假如时光对称

不知怎的

我们却不约而同

逆流翻腾

Jacob Wanuch is a Canadian living in Chengdu. He likes whiskey, sweaters, and beautiful pens, none of which he can really afford. He is always working on various projects and is currently writing his first novel. 

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