The Lounge Chair Interview: 10 Questions with Kim Koga

By Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Why do you write?

Last year I fell into a very deep depression. It had been 3 years since I wrote anything and I had been ignoring that part of myself. I started doing mental exercises and journaling. I discovered that writing is an integral part of my being – that I loved being around writers – that I needed to write to be healthy and to take care of myself – so I started writing again. In other words, I learned that writing (in all of its forms) is essential to my life – so I write.

Tell us about your most recent book or writing project. What were you trying to say or achieve with it?

I have been writing a long poem called girlgirl. I’ve lost my thread as to what I wanted to write when I started so my project tumbles along and morphs as I morph. I started writing it over a year ago. I’ve never had a project over this length of time before so it’s completely new to me. I want to investigate foreignness and my foreignness in it – feelings of foreignness despite “belonging”. The divergence between name and culture, and interrogating my feminism. I’m interested in exploring a world that is post-apocalyptic in which girlgirl can enter and fuse through – holding up her eye (which has fallen out of her face) to the world and see what is projected through her lens, and possibly how those things are distorted or enhanced by the lens.