There is a particular discipline in making something nourishing from what appears modest. For generations, the women in Suri Chan’s family worked with what the new land offered — unfamiliar herbs, altered textures, substitutions born of necessity — and still produced meals that tasted unmistakably like home. That lineage of adaptation and insistence now reappears in Suri’s poetry. She builds with ordinary language — brief lines, everyday images, small confessions — yet the emotional architecture is expansive.
Known widely through her Instagram platform @poemsbysuri, Suri Chan has emerged as one of the defining poetic voices of queer diasporic womanhood in the digital age. A prize-winning poet and illustrator, she writes from the vantage point of an immigrant shaped by a long line of migrations. Her work attends to the quiet negotiations of identity: the tenderness and friction of queerness, the inheritance of displacement, the politics of being visibly Asian in Western spaces, and the labour of feeling deeply in public.
Her debut collection, But I Don’t Feel Empowered, resists the marketable sheen of empowerment discourse, opting instead for vulnerability that is neither ornamental nor apologetic. In her poems, softness becomes a method rather than an aesthetic. Illustration accompanies the text not as decoration, but as an extension — a visual echo of the emotional undercurrents. What might initially read as minimalism is, on closer inspection, precision.
In conversation, Suri speaks with the same clarity that shapes her verse. The following interview traces how migration, memory, digital intimacy and queer self-fashioning converge in a body of work that feels at once immediate and ancestral.
Rock & Art (RA): Your work often explores the limits of communication — what can be said and what resists translation. When did language start feeling like both a tool and a challenge for you?
Suri Chan (SC): Many people of colour speak their mother tongue. My first language was “broken English”, because that’s what I was first taught. For example, ‘’would that be alright?’’ translates to ‘’can or not?’’
I never learned any of my native languages. It was difficult being the only cousin who couldn’t speak Mandarin/Cantonese. I felt like an alien at family gatherings.
Being the bridge between cultures has benefits, though. I may not be fluent in my native language, but I can communicate effectively with a diverse range of people across cultures. Codeswitching is my superpower.
RA: That tension between expression and translation seems to echo throughout your work. When you write, do you think in one mode first, or do numerous coexist from the start?
SC: My poems usually begin with an image. For example, my repressed queer self is expressed as a little girl, tapping inside me.
I then try to piece the pictures together to form a coherent narrative. I write with reckless abandon, then edit later. Most of my ideas hit me out of nowhere, and my job is to catch and assemble them before they disappear into the ether.
RA: You’ve described poetry as an act of reclamation — especially as a woman navigating literary spaces shaped by Western traditions. Could you share a moment when that resistance became personal rather than theoretical?
SC: It became personal when I swapped my old-timey English birth name with an ethnic one.
Southeast Asia (where I grew up) is heavily influenced by colonialism. Many people adopt Anglicised names, similar to those of Asian immigrants to the West.
I reclaimed my power and identity by doing the reverse. Discarding my Western name was my way of not letting whiteness be the default.
RA: Many poets from diasporic backgrounds carry the expectation of representation. Do you ever feel pressured to “speak for” your community, or do you reject that framework altogether?
SC: Being a queer Asian immigrant definitely comes with the expectation of ‘’speaking for’’ my community. Though I wish I didn’t have to. I wish I could write about universal human concepts without having them tied back to my background.
I jokingly dressed up as a diversity checkbox for Halloween once. I’m often the most diverse person in a room, and that means I’m often ‘the voice’ of the community.
A part of me loves it, though. Growing up, I never saw people like me in the media. I like to think I became the representation I needed.
RA: You often blend performance, visual art, and poetry in your work. What does the stage or image allow you to express that the page cannot?
SC: My poems are imagery-heavy. So, it feels satisfying to turn the concepts into something tangible. I often say that I’m an artist before a writer because I love expressing ideas more than I love words. Words are just the fastest tool for that.
RA: Thinking back to your formative years, was there a moment when you realised that poetry could be a form of survival or self-definition?
SC: I often write about confusing, painful or messy emotions. I write to metabolise an experience—to rebuild the shattered pieces of myself on my own terms.
That’s when I saw poetry as a form of taking back control. The shattering is out of my control. But when I rebuild, I choose the colour of my wings.
RA: The literary landscape in the UK has become more aware of its need for inclusivity, yet structural biases remain. How do you navigate institutions that may still other voices from under-represented ethnic backgrounds?
SC: I try to remind people that underneath the specific cultural nuances, I’m just writing about love, womanhood, pain, healing, and family. There’s a universal thread tied to every personal story.
RA: “But I don’t feel empowered” could describe a recurring pulse in your poetry—the sense that visibility isn’t always liberation. How does your work engage with this contradiction?
SC: Visibility can get us closer to liberation. But people of colour won’t be fully liberated if we contort ourselves to fit default narratives. I think true liberation comes when the mould bends a little to fit us, too.
RA: In your writing, there’s a recurring presence of mothers, ancestors, and ghosts. How do spirituality and heritage inform your understanding of art and healing?
SC: I’m the first woman in my bloodline to live a life that’s purely mine. I’m the first openly queer person in my entire family. I think about that a lot—partly because of the guilt, partly because I’m astounded by the taste of freedom. Why me? Why any of us? My female ancestors remind me to make art and live passionately, because I can. I imagine they would punch me in the face if I let it all go to waste because I was a bit scared.
RA: You’ve mentioned mental health in previous talks, particularly how art can hold grief without glamorising it. How do you protect your inner space while sharing so vulnerably with audiences?
SC: I don’t quite have formal protections (maybe I should). But I tend to only share things I’ve already processed. This keeps me a safe distance away from my art and audience. I feel like this also protects my privacy.
I’m pretty shameless when it comes to sharing my work with strangers on Instagram (@poemsbysuri). I’m happy writing for 76,000 people under a cloak of anonymity.
I feel self-conscious with friends and family, though. I don’t want them to misinterpret. I mostly don’t want to be THAT seen. I’m still trying to be okay with loved ones reading my work.
RA: Collaboration seems central to your process — from working with musicians to visual artists. What does collaboration teach you about authorship and letting go of control?
SC: I started as a girl writing poems alone in her room. I’m an introvert with a specific vision, so letting go of control was something I’ve had to learn.
Delegation is so important, especially as someone who is bad with tech, music and math.
I still draw my own page illustrations, though. The poems are so personal; I want every part to be mine. Maybe that will change in the future.
RA: Looking ahead, what do you hope the next generation of poets from diverse ethnic backgrounds in the UK will inherit — or refuse to inherit — from ours?
SC: I predict that more diverse poets will not lean into their differences as much and instead, write more universally.
It’s like how young people aren’t ‘coming out’ nowadays. They just bring their same-sex partner home to dinner.
As the world becomes more diverse, ethnic minorities will be less eye-catching and more human.
RA: Finally, if poetry is a form of time travel, as you’ve written before, where would you go — and who would you want to meet there?
SC: It’s funny because I’ve asked my friends a similar question: ‘’would you rather travel to the past or the future?” They pretty much all pick their favourite historical era.
But I want to visit the future—way off in the future, maybe a few hundred years from now.
We already know the past. It’s frustrating that I won’t get to find out how the story continues.
So, if I could pick, I’d definitely travel to the future and find my distant relatives. I’d also want to see what the descendants of celebrities are doing.