I interviewed the poet Bernice Chauly several months ago for StarMag and the article is out today. Unfortunately, it's a much shorter version than the original piece I submitted - a real shame as Chauly's answers would, I believe, interest anyone who enjoys her work and also anyone interested in creative writing and in the local literary scene. However, you can read the full, unedited interview below:
Bernice Chauly
Interview by DAPHNE LEE
SOME of her poems make me feel uncomfortable,“ said a friend of mine to whom I’d given Bernice Chauly’s poetry collection, Book of Sins.
She didn’t mean that the poems were bad, simply that she felt that they revealed things about her - secret, painful things that she never thought any one else would share let alone understand.
Chauly’s poems are deeply personal. They may or may not be autobiographical in detail, but the stories they tell feel like they were shaped by real, not simply imagined emotions, and of course memories. They are Chauly’s emotions, memories and stories, but they also speak to and for women the world over. They are familiar tales, but, filtered through the voice of an individual, they defy the cliches of everyday experience and become significant, compelling and unique.
This is Chauly’s second collection of poems. Her first, going there and coming back, appeared in 1997. More than a decade between books isn’t surprising when you consider what a full and busy life Chauly leads. She juggles motherhood, teaching (at the School of Performance and Media in Sunway University College), writing, organising spoken word events and the occasional acting gig. No wonder she often looks tense and tired.
Chauly supports her life’s passions (creative writing, photography and her two daughters) by taking on more practical assignments. Although romantic, she’s too smart and too responsible and loving a parent to consider going the route of the tortured, starving artist. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t suffer for her art. In fact, as a woman and a mother, I found many of her poems painfully touching. I can only imagine what she must have felt writing them.
She confirms that “Some were easier to write than others …. It’s cathartic most of the time, a release of many sorts and levels. It's like ‘Ok, I've written about it, now its done, I've let it go, I can move on".
Of course, Chauly is not the first writer whose work is in some way a result of conflict. Many of the world’s finest artists led turbulent lives or lived during turbulent times. Chauly talks about Aristotle's Poetics, which “discusses tragedy as one of the fundamental cores of poetry.” She says, “Artists are inspired by their own conflicts and tragedies - whether it rages within the depths of their hearts or whether it rages on the streets. Conflict creates drama, if there is no conflict, there is no drama, no story.”
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