Gutter Catches Up With Former Guest Reader, Sean Wai Keung

Gutter recently caught up with Sean Wai Keung to chat about guest editing, new writing and air fryers amongst other things! Read our Q&A here:

Sean, you were our very first guest reader for the BAME Issue back in 2019. How did you find the experience?
Really positive, it was a lot of work but at the same time it was so rewarding in terms of both connecting with Gutter and the Scottish BAME Writers Network. While I did have some experience of reading submissions beforehand it definitely wasn’t to the same scale and I loved being part of the process of reading through all the work everyone sent in. I’m still really proud of the issue that came out of that time and it definitely made me want to do more.

 
Is there anything you particularly enjoyed about working with Gutter?
It’s a really special experience to read through so many submissions, even if some of them maybe weren’t to my own tastes or didn’t make it into the final mag. When you have so many subs you get a perspective on the things that people are writing about, and how they are writing about them, within more recent moments, which can be different to trends in what is being published or what I read in other places.

Having gone through the placement, do you feel there were any obvious benefits in terms of experience/opportunities that followed?
The obvious and immediate benefit was that it gave me the confidence to want to reach out and find other opportunities to be a reader and/or editor. Following on from the placement I took on a role as a Poetry Editor for EX/POST, which is an international, online-based zine and at the time was completely new, so I’ve been able to go through the process with them of developing issues 1-3 and I felt able to do that in part because of my experiences with Gutter.

It also helped with my own writing experiences, my own editorial processes and how I approach things including ordering my own poems into pamphlet or collection manuscripts. It can be hard to get working experiences of those kind of things within poetry and so I definitely appreciated that element of the placement as well.

In 2020, as well as your pamphlet, Be Happy published by Speculative Books, we understand you were involved with the Bella Caledonia Many Voices program. Can you tell us about that briefly?
I worked on a series of interviews with food-in-community groups and initiatives for BC on a project I titled ‘Many Voices Many Kitchens’ and part of the reason I wanted to do that was because of my experiences with Gutter and seeing the wide range of submissions that came in. It helped me to realise the extent of stories, narratives and viewpoints in Scotland, and it made me want to do more within my own practice to highlight and celebrate groups who help to promote expression from those groups. Through my work at BC I talked with groups who worked with refugees, vulnerable people, those in food poverty and more, and once again Gutter helped me a lot with that just in terms of my self-confidence to take on such a project.

 
We’ve heard the news that you will be guest editor for a forthcoming issue of The Dark Horse alongside our very own Shehzar Doja. Congratulations!  Given this is now your third time guest editing for another magazine, do you feel very comfortable in that role now?
Every time I work with different people on an editorial project it’s a completely new experience. With Gutter I came in at a bit of a later stage than I have with the Horse, so for instance I’ve had to work with Shehzar to come up with things like the call-outs and submission dates, which I didn’t do for Gutter just because I came into that project at the reading stage instead. But then both of these experiences are very different again to my work with EX/POST in that because I started with them on Issue 1 there was no pre-existing history, readership or culture to live up to! So while maybe I am more comfortable now in terms of my confidence with my editorial skills and ideas, I also think that there will always be different challenges to be had with any editorial role – maybe that’s part of the appeal! 

Your first full length collection, sikfan glaschu is out on 15th April with Verve. Firstly, what does sikfan glaschu mean? Can you tell us about your experience of putting the collection together? How did it come about?
‘sikfan’ is an anglicised way of saying ‘time to eat’ in Cantonese. It’s a phrase I very dearly associate with my own background, history and identity. Then ‘Glaschu’ is the Scots Gaelic word for ‘Glasgow’. The collection has a lot to do with experiences of food, restaurants and eating in Glasgow, and using those experiences as a door to explore further identity and migration topics, so I hope the title reflects that in being both a mixture of cultures and in terms of taking a different approach to ideas that may be already familiar to audiences.

In terms of putting it together, I was lucky in that it came about really quickly and quite organically out of the whole lockdown experience. I originally wanted to collaborate with people about shared meals we’d eaten, but then that turned into just me writing about my associations and memories of restaurants, and then before I knew it I’d written so many of them that the idea to turn it into a collection came about. I suppose all those times eating out pre-lockdown finally paid off!

Speaking of food, we saw that you recently purchased an air fryer. How’s that going?
I resisted the air fryer for a long time because I was convinced that they couldn’t be as good as people had told me they are… I was wrong. It’s magic. As someone who does occasionally get sucked into buying completely unnecessary kitchen appliances (looking at you, pizza scissors…) I’m pleased to say that my experiences with my air fryer have been nothing but positive – my potatoes have never been better. 

What would you say to anyone interested in an editorial placement? Do you have any advice for potential future applicants of our guest reader program?
As with a lot of things in literature/publishing, I think that always approaching people and opportunities with enthusiasm and warmth is important. Reading and editing is a lot of work, but it’s also exciting work, and so if I was to offer any advice it would be to not allow things like fear-of-rejection or self-doubt get in the way of that excitement.

Lastly, here’s an opportunity to pitch your upcoming work. Go!
‘sikfan glaschu’ will be out on 15th April from Verve Poetry Press and you can get a signed copy with a special disposable chopstick poem direct from me if you wish via gumroad.com/microwavable. I’m also currently working on a community engagement initiative with Tramway and Glasgow Life looking to celebrate food culture in the Govanhill and Pollokshields areas through writing, memory and cooking workshops, so follow me on social media (@seanwaikeung) to find out more about that as and when it happens!