Tiana Nobile is the author of Cleave (Hub City Press, 2021). She is a Korean American adoptee, Kundiman fellow, and recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. A finalist of the National Poetry Series and Kundiman Poetry Prize, her writing has appeared in Poetry Northwest, The New Republic, Guernica, and Southern Cultures, among others. She lives in Bulbancha, aka New Orleans, Louisiana. For more, visit www.tiananobile.com.
This summer, I met with a dear friend and poet, Muriel Leung. For me, it feels like kismet that both our books — Imagine Us, The Swarm (hers) and Cleave (mine) — were released a month apart in Spring 2021. We’ve known each other for many years now, first meeting as undergrads at Sarah Lawrence College. We talked about the paths that led to the creation of our books and the power of Asian American mentorship and poetry as a means for healing.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This November, to recognize and honor National Adoption Awareness Month, I've invited adoptee poet Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello to curate a folio of poems by 10 Asian American adoptees. This page features Tiana Nobile’s “’Lost’ first language leaves permanent mark on the brain, new study reveals.” I invite you to take a moment to read her moving introduction to the folio here, as well as the other nine poems in this collection.