“When My Therapist Tells Me My Depression Must Help My Writing”
Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: I’ve been working with a long vertical format in my studio for the last year. It mainly came from my current research on Vietnamese mother-of-pearl inlay lacquer, and I wanted to work on some of the same challenges of this aesthetic and format for this collaboration. Poet William Fargason: The mode of the poem is a “When ___ Says/Does ____ to Me” form that I came up with. I have other poems in this mode… Often, I can’t think of a good response in the moment, so the response percolates for days/weeks until it comes out in the form of a poem.
William Fargason is the author of Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara, winner of the 2019 Iowa Poetry Prize. He lives with himself in Towson, Maryland. Millian Pham Lien Giang is a visual artist and educator who focuses on many modes of visual art perception in her practice. Overlapping themes of gender, class, and culture are captured through images, objects, and events in her work.