By Peggy Sturdivant

I warned Shin Yu Pai that neither my column nor the Ballard News-Tribune necessarily generate much interest in a volume of poetry. Perhaps a literary event, an author of local interest, a book set in Ballard. But almost as if I was a student consulting their adviser, in a quietly professorial way Shin Yu (pronounced Yee) illuminated the thematic link between her new poetry collection and my column: a connection with place.

Originally from California, Pai’s past moves have been for purposes of study or jobs. While working in Texas she met her future husband; they moved here in 2007 for her intended Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Washington. After two years they moved instead to Arkansas, returning to Seattle in 2012, this time to Ballard, fittingly for her Texas-born Swedish-American husband.

Pai’s vita, which includes teaching, several poetry collections, commissioned works, artist-in-residence at Seattle Art Museum, an MFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago, curatorial experience and her own visual art and photography, is daunting. Friend and Ballard poet Carol Levin puts it simply, “Shin Yu’s brilliant.”

As an example of this I had to have Shin Yu explain the title of her new book to me, “Aux Arcs.” Even though this would be pronounced in French at “o-zarks” I had not made the connection to Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains. She explained the etymology, probably derived from the French term for the region that cartographers drew as the largest bend or arc in the lower Arkansas River and a starting point for exploring the Ozark Mountains. More personally Pai sees her time in Arkansas as its own arc, possibly a detour that put her uncomfortably off-track.

“I came to this place as a professional. I’d framed my life around work,” she said of her position with a philanthropic organization based near Little Rock. While there Pai traveled almost monthly for work and welcomed the opportunity to be away from Arkansas and how it informed her poetry. As a partner in a bi-racial marriage she experienced race and gender issues that ultimately made her reconsider choosing location as a function of work. Pai and her husband decided to return to Seattle, initially without jobs, making “a leap of faith.”

As they were literally crossing the state lines leaving Arkansas, Pai realized how much she longed to belong to a place, as though it became most obvious when Arkansas was in the rear view mirror. Yet she still needed to explore her relation to the place where she had been living. This is a different twist on place-based writing, more akin to the way an artist might use negative space, allowing what’s unfilled to illuminate.

Shin Yu Pai reminded me that I write about place, although I don’t recall her precise words. I was taking notes on her words about her work, not hers on mine. I thought about this after we parted. I write about Ballard because I love being connected to Ballard. It doesn’t mean I don’t see the flaws in our past, present, and choices for the future. I am also connected to the cottage and island where I’ve been spending time all of my life. Being absent from there so much does strengthen the bond; every foghorn sounds a call from home.

I lived in San Diego for a few years. I don’t write about it much because I didn’t belong there, in any sense of the word. Years before I considered having children I knew I would never want to raise a family there. It simply wasn’t my place to belong. When I moved to Seattle, even though I had never even visited before, I knew I had come to a place that I would make my home. We are all lucky indeed if we can work where we feel we belong.

When I lived in a place with too much sunshine and too few library cards I wrote about anyplace but there. After I left, Chevy Chevette Scooter stuffed like a Jack-in-the-box, I chose to remember only the view of palm trees from my own rear view mirror.

In “Aux Arcs” some of the poems dissect what made Arkansas a place that Pai didn’t belong, concluding with a sense of coming to terms with her relation to that place. In “Ozarks” she writes of the mountains and ends with these lines:

I am one w/the summits

when decamping.

Like so many of us, either by luck of birth or by some instinct, Pai has chosen Ballard as her place to settle. When we met she clearly understood that my writing about her wouldn’t necessarily promote her published works, but she seemed to want to announce to the Ballard community that she wants to belong to this place we call home.

Shin Yu Pai will be part of the It’s About Time Writers’ Reading series, now in its 23rd year, that takes place every second Thursday of the month at Ballard Library at 6 p.m. Next event is September 12th.

Follow Ballard News-Tribune on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ballardnewstrib

And Twitter at http://twitter.com/ballardnewstrib