Author Karen Rigby Gleams in Kaleidoscopic Poetry Collection, Fabulosa

Mixed Asian Media - May 28, 2024

By Jalen Jones

In the first poem of her upcoming collection Fabulosa, Karen Rigby’s personified poems arrive like assassins, “wearing satin or suede to haunt you when they leave no trace.” Much like an assassin herself, Rigby’s writing is precise, yet powerful.

The acclaimed poet slices through glamorous movie premieres, packs of wolves, and phone calls with her Chinese emigrant mother as she finds ways to turn her innermost thoughts into enrapturing images. Eager to know more after reading the collection, I spoke with Rigby about some of the hidden gems in her upcoming work.

*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

As a poetry collection, Fabulosa is saturated in so much glamor. Through these poems, we go to movie premieres, wear designer clothes, and even attend the Olympics. What brought you to tie these glamorous images together in this collection?

I've always really been drawn to all of the arts, not just poetry or literature, but also visual mediums. Whether it's painting or performance or, as you mentioned, fashion. I knew when I was writing this collection that I wanted to gather my favorite things, and use those as a way to express my own ideas, thoughts, and feelings.

What got you started on this idea? How did you go from the initial concept, into the final, precise execution that you have now?

I heard another poet say once that your second book is, in some ways, in argument with your first book. I don't necessarily think that's always the case, but it made me think about what I said the first time around. I knew [that] this time, I wanted to take a deliberately more playful approach — that's where you get a bit of the pop culture, the television references. I wanted it to be a little bit more accessible, not necessarily so deeply steeped in an artistic world, so that it could reach more people. Every book has its own language, its own vocabulary, its own set of images. So I knew that in this one, I wanted to have a different kind of vocabulary than I had first around. 

What really set it off was the opening — “why my poems arrive.” That was an announcement of this as my persona for this collection. This is my aesthetic. This is how we're going to fill into this book, from the outside. I use that opening poem as a kind of structure. As you can see, there's some repetition in terms of the way [I write that] “my poems do” this, or “my poems do that.” Having that kind of framework — that scaffolding, that way of holding the bones together — allowed me to start bringing in other elements that I never planned on initially. Elements about my past, about adolescence. What I feel pulls it all together is voice and style. That kind of kaleidoscopic, fragmented sense of, “However different all of these poems are, all of them reflect the author.”

There’s this recurring motif of wolves that pops up throughout Fabulosa. Among all the glitz and fabulousness, we have wolves, which I found very intriguing! What was that about?

It's important to me in poetry to show contrast, and to have a “multi-layeredness” in order for it to work. It creates a kind of tension for the reader so that you're able to see some facet of your own experience being reflected back. I wanted to have a kind of theme where you can keep bringing back images in different ways and in different forms, that call back to the previous times that you've used it. That repetition builds up momentum and gives the collection a unity. Even though all the topics are disparate, you can still find little glimmerings here and there that are holding it together. 

As a poet myself, I often struggle to know when a poem is finished. It always feels like you can add more, or change something. How did you know whether a poem was finished when making this collection, and what signaled to you that the entire collection as a whole was complete?

I've read somewhere that you're really only writing one poem for your whole life, and every poem that you write is going back to that central theme, or that central memory that you keep returning to in different guises. So maybe the book isn't finished at all! 

In a more practical sense, the book unfolded like maybe over the course of a decade, and after a certain time [I was] like, “This needs to be done. I can't keep adding on to it. I can't keep tinkering with it, I have to have a sense of completion.” So, when do you know when the work is finished? I think it's instinctive. It's also a willingness to let something be unfinished or incomplete. I mean, you have to view your art as something that's unfolding over the course of life. It's not like you have to get it all right, right now, at this time. There'll be other books, there'll be other avenues to explore. For Fabulosa, it was complete.

Do you see Fabulosa as an explicit sequel or continuation of your previous work?

There'll be some continuity, but I don't see it necessarily as a sequel. Perhaps, maybe as a response. I'm exploring more topics in depth. In the opening poem I mentioned what one critic said about my work: “I'm a little bored with the aesthetic.” And I put [those exact words] in my poem, to really just say, “OK, then I'm going to use that.”

One poem in particular, “To My Chinese Emigrant Mother Who Asks How Much

Do You Weigh Now Every Time She Calls,” was really a heavy hitter. You were able to explicitly include part of your identity in that poem. How does your identity fit into your poetry overall? 

I'm half-Chinese, and my father is half-Panamanian, half-white. I don't usually use that as material, except for some exceptions. I think the way I see it is that every experience you've had — your background, your upbringing, ethnicity, all of that — does it shape you as a writer, whether or not you're actually writing about these topics?

Sometimes people feel the pressure that they've got to represent. Because if I don't, who else is going to do it? So maybe, in that sense, there's a little sense of responsibility about, How am I portraying things, or, Am I speaking in a way that's truthful to other people? For me, it would be more roundabout. Having that mixed background, in a way, made me a reader. There was so often tension when your parents are of two entirely different cultures. There's a lot of working it out, and figuring out how to get it together as a family. And sometimes as a kid, you think, I don't know how to react to this. So, I became a heavy reader, and really relied a lot on that. I went to the library often. In that sense, you could say that having a mixed identity might be what propelled me into being a writer.

You can preview Fabulosa before its release, and keep up with Karen Rigby on her website. Be sure to get your copy of Fabulosa*, available in bookstores on June 10! 

*Disclosure: As an affiliate of Bookshop.org, MAM will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.