"If you are a creative person, you cannot escape yourself." ~ Aimee Wai
Poet of the Week 6.30.24
Photography by Jonathan Grado
Aimee Wai is an Austin-based writer who once forgot she liked to write and then remembered. She grew up in the Rocky Mountains and studied Geological Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. She works in consulting by day, and at night likes to watercolor, read Frank O'Hara, and eat Chinese broccoli. She is busy at work on her first collection of poetry.
You asked me what I wanted
and I said I want it all. I want to lay on the floor and hang art on my walls. I want to dig my hands into sand and watch it fall back together. I want to make time for everything and do nothing with it. I want to sweat in the shower and scream at the bottom of a pool. I’m hungry and I want it all. I’m hungrier than a bird that swallowed the big blue sky.
“If you are a creative person, you cannot escape yourself.
“When I was younger, I would write like it was a possession. I needed it to cope. Then, some dramatic things happened, and I tossed all of my work into a wood-burning stove. I put blinders up and drowned myself in math and engineering.
I am at a point where self-abandonment has caught up to me. We are complex creatures who have needs outside of food and water and security, like expression, purpose, and resonance. I want to be full in more ways than one. I talk a lot about hunger because I’m looking in the mirror at a thin figure.”