From social behaviors and customs to art and the food we eat, the culture of a place or a community is made up of many facets. And as the poet laureate for the city of Redmond, Dr. Ching-In Chen’s work to celebrate the city’s culture goes well beyond poetry alone.
Chen, an assistant professor in the University of Washington Bothell’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, was appointed by the city of Redmond to serve as the poet laureate for two years starting in January 2024. This summer, Chen was also awarded a $50,000 fellowship as one of 22 poet laureates around the country to be recognized by the Academy of American Poets, supported by the Mellon Foundation.
With funding from the fellowship, Chen kicked off the Read Local Eat Local project during the Downtown Redmond Art Walk on Sept. 19 as a way to connect poets and local food establishments.
“One of the main goals of the Redmond Poet Laureate program is to broaden the awareness and beauty of poetry, and express the spirit of Redmond culture,” said Angela Birney, mayor of Redmond, in a press release. “I am excited that Chen is being recognized for this award and I look forward to participating in their upcoming project by visiting our local businesses to collect, and be inspired by, our community-created poetry.”
Cultivating new platforms
As a Chinese American child of immigrant parents from Taiwan, Chen was in part inspired to become a writer because of the lack of representation in required readings of their early education.
“I wasn’t really finding a lot of stories that reflected my life experiences,” they said. So, drawing from experiences growing up in a multilingual household, Chen developed an experimental style that often plays with syntax and that explores themes of identity and culture.
Chen also incorporates these themes into the curriculum for courses in UW Bothell’s MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics program, bringing to the forefront the diverse voices that were lacking from their K-12 experiences. Now, as a poet laureate, Chen aims to create new platforms for diverse writers to share their work, as well as opportunities for the community at large to engage with poetry.
“For me, the job of being a poet laureate is to encourage more poetry in unexpected places, and I’m especially interested in making space for new kinds of voices,” Chen said. “The Read Local Eat Local project spotlights different kinds of poets and highlights the diverse talents of the community.
“It’s a fun way to get poetry out into places where you wouldn’t normally see it, such as food establishments, and to get to know the community through connections around food and different people’s relationships with food and celebrating folks’ cultural backgrounds.”
“For me, the job of being a poet laureate is to encourage more poetry in unexpected places, and I’m especially interested in making space for new kinds of voices.”
Dr. Ching-In Chen, assistant professor, School of IAS
A cultural richness
Starting with the September art walk, local food establishments in the project will be distributing postcards that feature community poems throughout October (or until they run out).
“I think we have a lot of cultural richness here in Redmond, and we really had a wide range of poems,” Chen said.
From one poem that looks back at a local bar that opened more than 100 years ago to another that brings readers into the present moment to make a family recipe, the artists’ collection encompasses an array of perspectives on food. “It was really cool to see in the range of poems all the different ways that folks are making community, often through food,” Chen said. “I’m glad to be a part of it.”
The project invited the public to send in poems and submissions came from both experienced poets and those who have never before been published. Chen encouraged current and former students to submit, and reached out to other alumni to serve on the selection committee.
For MFA student Geneviève Hicks, Chen’s suggestion that she submit was the push she needed.
“In an ongoing struggle to see myself as a legitimate poet, I often need encouragement to put my work out into the world,” Hicks said. “The opportunity to write in poetic form about gardening seemed à propos. The other topic that is always alive for me is how to live together in this world, in harmony.”
Supporting new voices
Hicks’ poem, “Fins de Bagnol/neighbor bestows his bush bean seeds,” was inspired by her experiences gardening with a neighbor after moving to the Broadview neighborhood in Seattle. In this poem, she aims to capture the mess and beauty of learning to live alongside others.
“I hope readers can sense that, just like plants and gardens, relationships take work and can transform. Maybe, the reader might even be inspired to reinvigorate a relationship with a challenging neighbor or even to grow some beans next year,” she said. “I have extra seeds and am willing to share!”
In a poem titled “What to make on Saturday,” 2024 MFA alumna Korede Oseni reminisces on Saturday mornings spent making food with her family and community as a child in Nigeria. “I have a strong relationship with food because of my African heritage,” she said. “Those Saturday mornings are some of my favorite memories as a child.”
She hopes that, in sharing her own happy childhood memories of cooking and making something with a loved one, her words will bring to mind similar memories for others.
“After reading and listening to various artists, poets and writers at the event, it was clear that we all had precious memories and moments with food, and the people they reminded us of,” Oseni said. “It was also clear that while we all wrote about and from diverse meals and cultures, we had similarities in where these moments originated from — family, friendships and love.”
A growing community
Chen plans to continue the Read Local Eat Local project in the second year of their appointment. The fellowship will allow Chen to expand it beyond a local scope to include international writers. This year, as a board member for Seattle UNESCO City of Literature, Chen invited the Nanjing City of Literature and Slemani City of Literature to collaborate to select an excerpt of a poem to be published in its original language and in English translation. Chen hopes to collaborate next year with more Cities of Literature and Gastronomy and invite poems about food from around the world.
Through this and other projects that will be supported by the fellowship, Chen wants to foster student and alumni engagement.
“The communal-based projects that Ching-In curates are a draw for me,” ,” Hicks said, “as I believe that working with and alongside other artists enhances my creativity. Even though writing a poem may be a solitary endeavor, knowing that other word-workers are crafting towards a shared goal is buoying.
“Working in community and performing work together,” she said, “builds essential skills for the kind of world that I want to live in, the kind of world I want to help create.”
