I'm excited to be interviewing IWWG member, Yun Wei, from her home in Geneva, (from my home in Boston), for this webinar to talk to her about her stunning and intriguing poems and writing process, as well as her dual life in Geneva, Switzerland and Brooklyn, NY. Yun will read selected poems as we explore the theme of politics in poetry and her belief that poetry has the power to enact the change that politics promises. Here’s an excerpt from her poem, Second Child, published in 2017 in the Roanoke Review, inspired by the reversal in 2015 of the Chinese government’s one-child policy. Yun writes, “I was born as the first child but I thought of how easily I could have been a second one. This poem is an ode to all the second children who would have been born were it not for the government’s intrusion in this incredibly private decision, an intrusion in the body and in the construction of one’s future.”

Umbrella child,
chance child,
tomorrow child,
we’ve met before,
shaken hands and parted ways
before the rain invited itself in.

I urge you to read the entire poem and preview Yun’s exquisite voice and poetry by listening to this audio recording of her reading “Second Child” at the Roanoke Review: http://www.roanokereview.org/yun-wei/2017